hey jon,

i am interested in hearing about your time as a bartender in glacier national park. i received a job offer there this summer and would appreciate any information about lake mcdonald and the bar there,,, thanks!!

I think you will love Seward. I worked at Sweet Darlings Candy/Coffee Shop, just up from the Aquarium back in 2003, parked my RV on the Bay..have fun

Hi Jon:

They are right in town on the waterfront.... It has been 6 six years since I was there... Town is not huge.... there are different operators down on the waterfront where the boats leave from..... I leave 4/9.. and start 4/12... so I am going up a couple of days early and staying in Anchorage.. before I have to report to work.....

Hey Jon, how did you like working the Gunflint? I'll be working at Lutsen this summer, you have any good fishing spots to pass on? I worked at Denali for Aramark the last two seasons, I see you worked at Glacier Bay. You goin back? Denali is way down this year, I wonder if Glacier Bay is as bad.

haha looks like someone found out the news before i did...

hey John, just found out Lake is having new brand dorms built, some are done already & some are underway...each room has their own bathroom too! sounds like you lucked out with that!!

Apparently they are building new dorms, check this out:

http://www.nps.gov/glac/parknews/news2008-53.htm

I'm not sure if those are replacing all the old dorms or not but sounds like we might have picked a good year to work up there as far as housing is concerned. You should check out this site too, http://glacierparkchat.com/phpBB3/index.php . I'm pretty sure that's where I first read about the new dorms and there is some other good general information from people that know the park there.

yeah Lake Mcdonald housing isn't too good, if you opened the place or get there earlier than most you could get a two person room but if you come later you'll be in more of a crowded living arrangement. i got there before the season opened to set up so i got to share a decent size bedroom with one other person. Sorry i don't have any pics of the dorms or the bar..

I worked in Glacier seven times between 1987 and 2000. When I was there first, the bar at Lake was hopping and the bartender there made legendary cash. By the time I left, the scene had changed and bartenders often didn't do very well. The same was true for the bar at Many Glacier and I have no idea what the source of the downturn was. Maybe they raised the prices astronomically. Maybe the shortening of the average vacation had something to do with it. Way back when, the bar at Lake was considered about the best job there and I believe a good bartender who can make the place upbeat with a good level of service can still make the difference in the activity in the bar and, of course, his whole summer cash-wise.
The EDR has its moments. It is quite small and if the weather doesn't let you sit in the outside picnic table area, lunch at least is sometimes elbow to elbow. When it is very hot, the small room is boiling and when it is cold, it is freezing because the kitchen was keeping ALL the windows WIDE OPEN as they had insufficient ventilation back in the kitchen. At breakfast, employees often wore their coats. The meals were usually pretty good but on occasion they were a miss. The night staff was given a box lunch and the chef refused to put anything in it but a turkey sub for the entire summer. Even after the assistant controller called him to complain, the sometimes stale subs still kept coming.
The dorms vary widely. Typically you have a room with one room mate and a bath down the hall but at Lake that varies widely. As the night auditor there, I got a great private room with a private entrance fronting right on the woods away from everyone. I shared a bath with a room that held 4 or 6 people but seldom saw them. As roving relief night auditor, I was given a spare bunk in a "dorm" that was basically a wooden trailer, i.e. four small rooms in a line with two doors. Room 1 had 4 bunks, Room 2 was the bathroom, Room 3 had 4 bunks and Room 4 - only accessible by walking through Room 3 - had another 4 bunks. Although the bathroom had doors, there was just a curtain between Rooms 3 and 4 so it was almost always noisy trying to sleep in the day.
I don't know if you can ask about your dorm accomodation or not but HR could possibly have a handle on it. They assign the rooms as they get a full count of how many men vs. women, the ages and jobs of those wanting housing. While Lake had a few locals who were from the area and didn't use housing, it was not common for someone to move to the area for the summer and pay for off-property housing as there was none for quite a ways and between the time and gas, most jobs would not cover without making the summer pretty poverty-stricken.
Lake's beautiful and a summer can be great with the right crew or less so with a more dysfunctional group. When the weather's right and the bugs aren't, having steaks outside at the picnic tables was really a treat. By the time it was warm at night, there was often a group that would sleep out on the beach near the hotel and they seemed to really enjoy that.