marysgardens

The Amtrak train departed Portland exactly on time on a Sunday afternoon in late June and arrived on time the next morning after breakfast into East Glacier, Montana, located on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.

We had spent the night sleeping on bunk beds in a private sleeping room with the rocking back and forth of the train, feeling a lot like a plane flight, but with a lot more space and privacy.

Our dinner had been served without the dining car, yet a nice dinner was provided to us as we sat in our private room and enjoyed the peacefulness and views out our window. Our Amtrak train from Portland hooked up with the famous Empire Builder in Spokane which travels between Seattle and Chicago. The Empire Builder had a dining car where breakfast would be served in the morning.

The evening meal was simple, fresh and tasty.

We treated that overnight train trip like an overnight plane flight and simply slipped off our shoes, lay down and went to sleep.

In the morning, we were served a full breakfast in the dining car that we had hooked up with in Spokane, Washington and it had plenty of breakfast options and our choices were well prepared.

The trip offered spectacular early summer views of the river terrain which shifted from forest greens to desert browns as we went along.

Would we take this trip again? Absolutely.

We continued down the river, enjoying the divergent and awesome scenery.

We arrived in East Glacier Park excited to see the Glacier Mountain National Lodge situated across the street from the train station where we planned to stay for the next four days.

The Glacier Mountain National Lodge is very historical and is filled with stories of early railroad and mountain ventures into the Pacific Northwest. The Lodge is designed with huge columns made out of colossal logs, The Lodge offers many options which we took advantage of to enter into Glacier National Park for sightseeing and hiking. We took both bus and boat trips on mountain lakes to get around.

I chose several photos to highlight the tours we took both by bus and by boat of Glacier National Park, while staying at the Lodge.

This was a spectacular round trip on the rails. It is also the second time we have taken it, and would certainly take it again.

Interested persons can book this kind of trip via Amtrak as a package tour. Or one may book the items separately for timing the train trip, the lodging and shuttle friendly hikes individually.

A nice starting point for this is http://www.nps.gov/glac.

For more information about Glacier Park Lodge, see http://www.glacierparkcollection.com