Tourists worried about fire nix Glacier National Park trips

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Hotels and campgrounds in Glacier National Park are flooded with calls from worried tourists canceling their reservations or asking whether the Montana landmark will stay open as a wildfire sweeps through a popular part of the park.

Hotel owners are trying to talk callers out of changing their plans, while Glacier officials emphasized that only a small part of the 1,718-square-mile park is closed as the flames chew though parched conifer-topped ridges on its eastern side.

The blaze has shut down nearly half of the heavily trafficked Going-to-the-Sun Road, and officials were helping reroute tourists planning to visit attractions along the roadway to other scenic areas, park spokeswoman Denise Germann said.

"I think what we're offering visitors is a completely different experience throughout the park," Germann told The Associated Press on Friday. "So many people rely on the Going-to-the-Sun Road, but you and I know there is so much more to Glacier."

Kelsey Utterback, a 19-year-old University of Iowa student, had planned to stay at the Rising Sun Campground when her family visits from Chicago in two weeks. The site has been evacuated, but they're still planning to go to Glacier, she said. They're looking at campgrounds on the park's western side, far from the blaze.