Best billboard of the trip by far. Saw this guy along Flathead Lake in Montana but couldn't react quickly enough to snap a picture, so I had to steal it from the Googlemachine. But this was way down the road on day 33; back to the start of day 32...
The Grand Tetons were fun, but now it's time to head into the great wilderness of Montana, with a brief detour through Idaho. After not being able to figure out what to do with the three days we lost because Yellowstone closed the DAY we arrived (did we forget to mention that?), we decided to skip the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho and sprint as deep into Montana as we could get without falling asleep at the wheel.
One last view of the reverse (west) side of the Grand Tetons, this time from Idaho.
Today's target: Missoula, Montana.
What's Mesa Falls? A two-hour, ten-mile detour...
Still worth it though. We eventually figured out that this was the first "real" waterfall either of us had seen up close -- or at least the only one we remember...
Now that we're only an hour and fifty minutes behind schedule, we figured we may as well, you know, get moving.
Approaching the area around Big Sky, MT.
The colors were too brilliant not to include this gas station shot.
By 7 p.m. we'd made it as far as Bozeman, MT. But we still had a few hours of driving left in us, so a quick pasta fuel-up at Naked Noodle, then back on the road.
We eventually made it to Butte, Montana -- an ollllld mining town with a massive open-pit mine just next to the downtown area. This was one of those places where the only history you can find about it involves being notorious for gunslinging, gambling, and brothels.
The ORIGINAL best-brothel-in-town. Seriously, it's the longest-running brothel in history. Check out the lower left-hand windows...creepy.
There's the pit.
Apparently the worst metal mining accident in history took place here. The memorial was actually one of the better ones either of us had ever seen.
Ok NOW we're on our way to Missoula. Just as we approach the city, smoke...
Turns out the smoke was just some farmer burning stuff. At this point in the trip we've gotten used to seeing fires basically everywhere we go.
Missoula, by the way, is an awesome place. You should go there.
Winter's go-to sustenance when she has been sprinting after a tennis ball.
This is what a panic-stricken dog looks like. "Wait, is she ever coming back?! WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE'S JUST CHECKING INTO THE HOTEL?! How do YOU know what she's doing??? You're just some GUY, you don't KNOW! WHEN IS SHE-- oh, she's back."
Annnnnd beer. This is Kettle House Brewery, home of Bongwater Hemp Ale. Yes, it smells a lot like bong water, and no I don't know what bong water smells like.*
*It smells A LOT like bong water.
This is Laura after asking some random guy for a drink. "Can I order my beer through you?" "What? No? I don't work here. And what does that even mean, 'order my beer through you'?" Bear witness to new heights of embarrassment being expressed here.
These are our new friends, the non-bartenders who don't take drinks "through them." Photo taken using "stealth-o-vision"
Another stealth shot that didn't work out so well. I was trying to get the picture of the little kids playing in the corner (right-of-center) but ended up pointed right at a woman who definitely saw the red flash of the sensor. This was the second shot she saw...
Mmmmm cheap tacos
This whole meal was like six bucks
Next morning, culinary heaven.
Probbbbably the best moment of the trip so far...
Quick stop at the Missoula Art Museum to see the Ansel Adams exhibit. This is "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico" -- one of his most famous shots. Starting to think that maybe we should just be posting black and white pictures...
The next morning, off to Flathead Lake and then Glacier National Park.
Sidenote: while in Missoula, we got that "chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk" sound fixed. It showed up in Vermont, went away for a few thousand miles, then came back, then went away just before we went to get it fixed, then came back in Montana. At this point it was so bad we were worried the tire would fall off or the engine would drop out of the car. Turns out that's exactly what was going to happen: Sears only tightened two of the six lugnuts on the front left wheel. After a free fix at a Missoula car repair shop (actually, we paid for it with cheap beer), we hit the road again. Then, of course, one hundred miles later, as we enter Bigfork, we start hearing an entirely different "rattttle-attttle-aaaatttttttllle-clank-clank-clank" from underneath the car. More on that in another post... no, it's still not fixed.
At one point back in September I said that this would be about a six thousand-mile trip, before realizing it would be more like 12k. That got a few laughs at the time.
Flathead Lake. Panoramic shots are much more fun.
Then the snow starts. The radio told us to hunker down for a week because "here comes winter." We ignored that warning.
So we finally make it to Glacier and are ready to conquer what has been called "the most beautiful scenic drive in the world" -- Going To The Sun Road. As we'd soon find out, it was something more like "The Sun Is Gone, Go Home. Road."
This is what our atlas says Glacier looks like.
This is what it actually looked like.
We got a FEW good pictures.
At this point the snow and wind got so bad that we actually thought we might die. The next two hours were a harrowing ascent into and then descent out of the park into the one-horse town of East Glacier. At one point a pickup truck heading for us at 50 mph started to fishtail and our lives flashed before our eyes. NO PICTURES.
Here's what the wind looked like the next morning.
As we approached the border, it looked as if we had maybe escaped Montana with our lives intact. This is what it looked like facing into Montana...
...but this is what Alberta looked like.
Slightly more manageable?
I'm not sure if it was Butte or a different mining town, but I have an antecedent on my mother's side that died in a boarding house fire in Montana, so, you know, those Fire-Proof Hotels are important!
ReplyDeleteAlso, so cool you got a shot of the way the snow flows across the road- I've tried many a time to capture that in Colorado, but it's hard. Lookin' good! Ok, well, you're surviving. :)