Disneyland or national park?

I can’t even begin to tell you the fantasies I have about going to Glacier National Park and just letting all the nagging worries in life melt into the forested backdrop of natural beauty. As someone who lives in the Flathead, but hasn’t had the chance to visit the park this summer, I can tell you those dreams are all-inclusive.

No people, no cell phone, no dog, just me, nature, the sound of water and wild animals left and right.

Sunday was going to be that day. It was the last day of the season Going-to-the-Sun Road was open from the west side of the pass. My friend and I hopped in her car and headed past Lake McDonald for Logan Pass.

The leaves are starting to change. Red, yellow and orange merged with green on Glacier’s mountainsides. Water has stopped flowing in many of the falls and creeks that run underneath the road, but as usual the park’s visitors chug up the mountain in spurts and fits at 0-10 mph.

I guess after six summer seasons of visiting Glacier I should know better than to think the trip will be stress free and full of cherry blossoms, sunshine and rainbows. To really get away in the park, you have to hit the trail for an overnighter or take a 8-15 mile climb up a mountain.

Don’t get me wrong, just for the pure scenic value of it, a trip over Going-to-the-Sun is always worth the agony of slow vehicles, traffic jams, construction, picture takers and numbskulls who let their kids jump around on the edges of the slippery cliffs that water runs off of.

Let me put it this way, on Sunday we didn’t have to worry about missing the views on Going-to-the-Sun road or running into bears on the hike. And of course, it was a weekend at the end of the summer season, so we should have been expecting it.

Maybe this is horrible to say, I feel almost wrong saying it, because I do in fact enjoy my time in Glacier, but the more time we spent in the park on Sunday, the more it felt like I was at Disneyland.

Long lines, screaming children, photo ops that stop traffic, the only differences are hikers don’t have to give any tickets as they hit the trail and the reward for waiting in traffic is invaluable.

Bathroom lines, lines to take pictures of waterfalls and bighorn sheep, and people everywhere. Waiting in cars, crawling on rocks, walking the trails, taking pictures, waiting for nature to work its miracle magic.

It’s crazy. I always forget how packed the park gets in the summer, until I pack myself into the park.

Tourist numbers for the park were stellar this year. A press release GNP sent out on Sept. 11 said that more than 1.7 million people visited Glacier between January and August this year. That is an increase of about 13.5 percent over last year, and 630,000 people visited the park in July alone. That was a huge boon for the local economy.

I would love to know how many people visited the park on the last day the west side was open. It was a beautiful day. The smokey haze that hung over the Flathead Valley stayed outside the West Glacier entrance for most of the day. The line of cars was just as long as it normally is and if other park visitors were like us, they just wanted to see a little outdoor action before the clouds take all the warmth out of fall.

And that meant a nice short hike, because by the time we got to our destination planned hike, it was too late to do anything major. Especially because the shuttles aren’t running anymore. Who wants to get stuck on Going-to-the-Sun road as the sun sets, shivering and waiting for a nice someone to offer you a ride.

We went to Saint Mary Falls and Virginia Falls. It was a wide-trailed 3-mile (there and back) jaunt mostly on level terrain with a little up and down for the gluteus maximus. And the endpoints were, of course, beautiful and completely worth battling people and traffic to see.

As usual we were disappointed in ourselves for not doing something more strenuous or filling up on Glacier National Park a little more.

But, it was Sunday and we had another two hour drive ahead of us just to get back to West Glacier. So we took our small fill and left with the vision of coming back soon, only this time from the east side.

Who knows what will come of those visions, but the fantasies of another beautiful, stress free day in Glacier National Park have already begun again.