Our Life in Alaska and Beyond

We went on the "orca quest" wildlife cruise out of Seward with Major Marine Tours. It was a shorter one (four hours) and it worked out great for us! It was a little chilly, but we brought hats and gloves and stayed warm, and luckily the water wasn't too rough and none of us got sick either! We ended up seeing quite a bit of wildlife (including lots of orcas!) and it was so fun! We also were in Kenai Fjords National Park for part of the cruise. So beautiful! Enjoy these pics!

Resident orcas. I rented a telephoto lens which was so fun to use!

This day in Glacier National Park was by far our busiest day. We started out by hiking to Hidden Lake in Logan Pass on Going to the Sun Road (GTSR). GTSR is so beautiful and actually a bit scary too, with really steep drop offs. (Thanks to Scott for driving!) On GTSR you can see all that Glacier NP has to offer with so many glacial carved valleys, steep cliffs, wildflower meadows, turquoise blue water, and amazing wildlife. The Logan Pass parking lot fills up super fast so we actually left our campsite before 6 am. We were worried we still wouldn't get a spot, but we did! However, by the time we had used the restroom and were ready to start hiking, all the spots were gone. 

The Hidden Lake trail is so beautiful, and we saw so much wildlife! Especially so many mountain goats! The views are just gorgeous every direction you look! The trail was only open to the overlook due to bear activity closer to the lake, but that's about as far as we wanted to go with the girls anyway (almost 3 miles RT). Again, these pics don't do it justice, but enjoy! 

View from the overlook 😍

After a coupe long days of driving we made it to Glacier National Park! We arrived in the afternoon on 7/22, but our reservation to enter through the West Entrance didn't start until the next day. I thought we would be able to just visit the visitor center in Apgar near the West Entrance, but not without a reservation. 

We had a few hours so we decided to drive over to the East Glacier/Two Medicine area. It ended up being one of my favorite areas of the park so I'm so glad we did! We hiked to Running Eagle Falls, which was just a short walk, but so beautiful. This waterfall used to be called Trick Falls because depending on the time of year, the flow changes between the upper fall and lower fall. (Spring has heavy flow from the upper fall, covering the lower fall; and late summer has heavy flow from the lower falls.) 

We wanted to do another hike while we were here, but the trail was closed due to recent bear activity. So after just a short time here we started our way back to West Glacier. (I definitely want to plan on spending more time in Two Medicine on our next trip!) That night we stayed in a nice lodge just outside the west park entrance. On our drive back we stopped at the Goat Lick Overlook. We saw lots of mountain goats, which was so cool! We especially loved seeing all the little baby goats. Enjoy these beautiful pics from our first day in Glacier!