I find Lake McDonald Lodge very attractive. It was built at a time when railroad companies were on a building boom and they were trying to get people to go to very scenic places. Glacier was naturally one of these places. When you bring people to faraway scenic places, you also want them to stay somewhere, preferably a nice hotel. So these railroad companies also built hotels in these areas. Lake McDonald Lodge isn’t one of these railroad company built hotels, it was built by a rich private individual and one could argue that he picked the best spot for his hotel. The station is actually not that near the lodge. In fact, the nearest village is actually Apgar.
Back then, to get to Lake McDonald Lodge, one would travel by boat from Apgar village to Lake McDonald Lodge. This means that the entrance of Lake McDonald Lodge is actually facing the lake. These days, there is a road which runs near the lodge and the formerly rear entrance is now the main entrance. It is amusing to see how it has literally turned the Lake McDonald Lodge around. True enough if you look closely, you would see signs that the main entrance wasn’t meant to be the main one. In fact, when I first got there I was trying to look for the main entrance but there didn’t seem to be one which looked like a main entrance. There were indeed doors, but they didn’t look like a main entrance.
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