After leaving the park (and our exciting bear sighting!) we drove down the road to the tiny town of East Glacier. I had to take a picture of this motel because i grew up only two blocks from the Sears department store, so Sears always has a place in my heart.
I actually just looked up the Sears Motel on Tripadvisor and they’re rated number 6 out of 6 hotels in East Glacier. But the pictures inside looked rustic and kind of cute. The reviews, pretty terrible.
We stopped at a tiny store with a big sign that said something about spoons…i just looked it up and it’s called the Spiral Spoon. The website looks pretty slick, but when we were in the store it was about ten minutes before they were about to close for the season so they didn’t have a lot of merchandise left.
Plus, we weren’t in the mood for shopping. We were eager to get to our hotel – for our last night we’d booked a room at the Glacier Park Lodge.
I’d booked a room with two queen beds and a “shared balcony.” Now, this lodge gets some pretty terrible reviews on Trip Advisor, but the room seemed good to us. I think the negative reviews were because people wanted something more fancy and updated. The lodge is very quaint, which we thought was terrific.
I also booked this place because it’s literally across the street from the Amtrak station and we were going to head out the next morning on the train.
Here’s the view from our balcony. I think there was one other room that could have shared it, but i don’t think the room was in use. there was another room on the other side, but they only had a window instead of a screened door opening out to this view.
The bathroom was old with a claw foot tub and the floors did creak quite a bit, but it was all good.
The enormous lobby had giant tree trunks lining it, and i know it had to have been spectacular back in the day. the lobby could have used a little sprucing up, but it was great to be there.
we had a delicious dinner in the lodge dining room, starting with some brie en croute.
the restaurant was too over-lit. you can just see the tree trunks in the lobby there over kevin’s shoulder.
Ha ha, this is one of my favorite photos of kevin – i can’t remember why he made this funny face, but to me it looks just like Calvin from Calvin & Hobbs.
We both had scrumptious bison burgers and i had an apple cider. mmm.
Here’s the lobby. very cool, and the doors to the rooms are original; i wish i’d taken a picture of one. The hotel was going to close for the season after one more night, so we got there in the nick of time. even though it doesn’t look crowded, there were lots of people, mostly tour groups, milling about.
After dinner we walked out to the end of the parking lot, and there’s the train station! We didn’t linger long outside because it was chilly with a terrific wind blowing.
I did sit outside on the balcony for a little bit to watch the beautiful sunset. a perfect last night.
Here’s a short video – in it i say that maybe it’ll be loud at night, and it sure was. it sounded like most of the hotel guests were whooping it up in the lobby, but luckily i had my earplugs so it wasn’t bad.
ok then,
mrs. hughes.