Monday Answer
Sorry, was on a plane until late last night. As Dale pointed out, the place is Glacier Park Lodge just outside Glacier National Park in East Glacier, �Big Sky� Montana. Louis Hill was the railroad magnate from the Great Northern Railroad. In fact, it was he that got Glacier Park to be a National Park in 1910. Samuel L. Bartlett was the architect from Minnesota, but Hill was a very controlling boss. The trees in the lodge came from Washington and British Columbia as Montana�s Glacier Park is too high and to mountainous to support trees of that size. Great Northern, of the mountain goat logo, ran several lodges at Glacier.
If you have never been, you owe it to yourself to visit Glacier Park. It�s not for couch potatoes though. It seems every step is a picture, but after awhile even the weight of a camera is a burden when hiking there. Even if visiting only by car you have to take the fifty mile or so trip from East Glacier to the St. Mary entrance through the continental divide, to Logan Pass to Apgar on �Going To The Sun� road. You�ll have to come back the same way as there is little on the west side of the park. Half the time you are on the edge of a cliff with the clouds below you. It�s one of my favorite travels on earth even though it�s a pain in the rear jog of several hundred miles to get to the park.
As for Glacier Park Lodge, visit, but don�t stay. The expense is too great and the amenities few. No AC means windows open and freight trains at all hours can keep light sleepers up all night. Besides, if you made it that far you have the park right there in front of you and you can�t begin to do it justice if you are at the Lodge. It would be like standing outside the stadium (without TV) at the World Series seventh game. Cabins at camps in the park are much more convenient but make reservations well in advance as the season is short and the park itself cannot support a huge numbers of people. Make a mistake at Glacier and chances are you are on your own until well after the event!
Glacier Park shares the land with Canada and you can hoof it up the mountain through a remote, scary snow tunnel through the mountain at Ptarmigan and eleven miles of back country into Canada. You can hurt yourself doing the switchbacks up the mountain but if you make it you can give yourself a gold star for your forehead. May through early September after that too much snow makes the park roads not useable.
Check out Dale�s links
