Bonus | How to Level Up Your Trip Planning
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Lacy Kowalski: Headwaters is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.
Daniel Lombardi: Hello. You're listening to Headwaters, a podcast from Glacier National Park. I'm Daniel.
Madeline Vinh: Hi, I'm Madeline.
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Daniel: And the point of this show is to tell stories about how Glacier is connected to everything else.
Madeline: This bonus episode is a little different, though. It'll just be Daniel and I chatting about different resources and strategies for planning a trip to Glacier.
Daniel: We are talking trip tips.
Madeline: Trip tips.
Daniel: Trip tips.
Madeline: We are here in the park. We're here in Headquarters in West Glacier and the Park is pretty quiet right now. But the best time to plan for a trip to Glacier is well before you get here.
Daniel: Mhm.
Madeline: So, Daniel, what are some of the resources that you'd suggest people look into?
Daniel: Well, I think we have to start with official sources. Right? We have a website, nps.gov that stands for National Park Service dot government nps.gov/glac. "GLAC" is short for Glacier. That is your primary resource. That's going to have everything you need to plan a trip to the Park.
Madeline: Okay.
Daniel: Glacier maybe is a hard park to plan for because it's a big place. It's a complicated place, but there are a few other things I think people should know about.
Madeline: Officially or unofficially?
Daniel: Both.
Madeline: Okay.
Daniel: Officially, we have a podcast that's called Headwaters.
Madeline: What?
Daniel: You're listening to it right now. Also officially, we have social media channels. We're always Glacier NPS, whether it's on YouTube or Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or whatever. You can look us up. Follow us and that should help you plan a trip.
Madeline: Cool. Okay, so there are a lot of great sounding official resources but you've kind of hinted at unofficial resources. What do the unofficial resources have that the official ones don't?
Daniel: In general, I think people are sleeping on unofficial trip planning resources. So think of things like Facebook groups, YouTube channels, general blogs, books.
Madeline: Mhm.
Daniel: Let me back out and say that official resources are great. The Park website is going to have when campgrounds open and close. How much things cost? How far are distances between things? When are campfire programs? The park website has all of that stuff and you can trust it. It's a .gov website. You know you can trust nps.gov/glac, but if you're on a Facebook group, I think you shouldn't be expecting to get the facts and the dates and the numbers. You go to a Facebook group to get the opinionated, subjective, you know, human personal-.
Madeline: Mhm.
Daniel: -answers. Let me show you one on the laptop here, if I can get this to open up.
Madeline: Daniel is typing. He's using one finger at a time. He's typing aggressively. You might sometimes hear that.
Daniel: Sometimes I can use two fingers.
Madeline: But today is not one of those days.
Daniel: Okay, so I just went on Facebook and I searched Glacier National Park or National Parks. There are tons, dozens, maybe hundreds of Facebook groups. Gosh, yeah. And they are dedicated to helping people plan trips to national parks. It's an amazing resource that I don't think enough people know about.
Madeline: It sounds like thousands of people know about them.
Daniel: You, you got me there.
Madeline: But I'll compare that to the millions that visit national, national parks.
Daniel: Okay, so this group is it's a private Facebook group that anyone can request to join. It's called "National Park Trip Planning Advice and Help By The National Park Obsessed." And to give you an example of what it's like... Here's a post by Caitlin. Here, maybe I should have you read this.
Madeline: Caitlin says, "Just curious. In your opinion, what has been the hardest national park to plan? I've just started traveling to the parks and will hit my fifth this year, but so far for me, mine has been Glacier.".
Daniel: Ooh.
Madeline: Tough.
Daniel: I liked this one comment that someone responded to Caitlin with. Millie said Glacier was hardest for me, too, because quote, "because of the sheer number of amazing things to see and hikes to do, etc."
Madeline: You know, I don't hate that you can't go wrong here.
Daniel: Here's another unofficial source that I recommend people check out if they're if they're interested in this kind of thing. Go on YouTube. Type in Glacier National Park and look up travel vlogs. You're not going to get dates of campground opening closure, but just getting a visual look at what it's like in the park at a certain time of year, what it feels like to travel. It can be really helpful preparing you before you come visit.
Madeline: Just if you maybe want a little bit more of a visual. Sounds like vlogs are great.
Daniel: So here's a vlog from Nicole from last year. This is vlog "Video 13 Northern Montana and Glacier National Park Solo Female Traveler."
Madeline: Okay, so that's kind of like a POV, day in the life.
Daniel: Yeah, I love it. So this is one woman's experience visiting Glacier, traveling alone. You want to know what that's like okay. This person has already done it and recorded it, and you can get their opinion about it.
Nicole: So I just pulled over to see what the deal with reservations were for Glacier and-.
Madeline: Sounds great. People can look into those. Are there any hazards that people need to be aware of venturing into those territories?
Daniel: Any unofficial source you're using to plan a trip. I think you take it with a grain of salt. So if you're on a Facebook group and you're like reading the comments, it might be helpful. But also just, you know, keep some skepticism in your mind when you're reading through that kind of thing. Or if you're watching, you know, some random YouTube video about the park.
Madeline: Right. Okay. So it makes sense that that would be both a pro and a con. If you're looking for someone's opinion, sometimes you'll agree with that, sometimes you won't. So you still might need to have a little bit of a critical lens going in.
Daniel: Exactly.
Madeline: Okay.
Daniel: All right. Well, this has been just a little bonus episode. We are actively working on future seasons of the podcast, but they're not going to be coming out for a while. So stay tuned. Stay patient, stay subscribed, stay hydrated.
Madeline: All right. Headwaters is made possible with support from our nonprofit partner, the Glacier National Park Conservancy.
Daniel: You should check them out at their website. It's glacier dot org because they're our nonprofit partner. The Park's official website though nps.gov/glac.
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Madeline: If you have a moment to leave us a review in your podcast app, we'd appreciate it. It helps a lot.
Daniel: Next time we're going to do a mailbag episode. So if you have any questions that you want the Headwaters team to answer on this podcast, just send us an email, put Headwaters in the subject line and our email address is glac_media_lab@nps.gov. We'll put it in the show notes too. Thanks for listening.
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