10-Rated Glacier National Park Sunrise

When all comes together, the rewards are worth every ounce of effort required to get the shot.
 
Getting to Glacier National Park is a modest challenge for much of the world - it is at best two flights away from most of the us - and three for many of us. For me, it started with an early bedtime and a 2:30 AM alarm setting. Actually, I set two of alarms for insurance. One was on my phone which was on the nightstand beside the other.
 
The phone went off first. I shut it off and tried to wake my wife (the family was joining me on this trip). After several attempts over a few minutes, she rolled over and in a somewhat unfriendly tone, said "WHAT?". That should have been my first clue.
 
I said "How much time do you want to get ready?" (I thought I was giving her the amount of time she requested the evening before). My next clue - She said "It's 12:30 AM!?" That's when I realized that I had an actual call - the alarm had not gone off. And that's when I learned that my trip to Glacier National Park had just become much more complicated.
 
A voice mail informed me that our first flight of three had been cancelled. I then spent an hour on the phone with someone from half way around the world trying to figure out how I was going to make one of the few daily flights into Kalispell. And one that returned to the same originating airport (don't ask).
 
A 3.5 hour drive put us on an afternoon flight that put me at the St. Mary Lodge at 1:00 AM PDT (3:00 AM in my EDT time). This of course resulted in a missed evening shoot - and required a sleep-in the next morning, so I missed an AM opportunity also.
 
It didn't take me long to get over the travel exhaustion. This national park is worth every ounce of effort and cost it takes to get there.