Bozeman Yellowstone Airport
How often does an airport rate a blog entry? From the moment we landed in Bozeman to begin our trip, I was itching to take photos and show you what a beautiful job they have done positioning the Bozeman airport as the entry to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks.
First, the airport is structured to look like a high-end game lodge. They have high ceilings, a huge stone fireplace, several sculptures and pieces (probably reproductions, but hey) from the Museum of the Rockies. I LOVE this airport.
I love the bobcat jumping off the ledge of the fireplace 🙂
And a last view of the mountains, from the airport.
Glacier National Park: Traveler’s Rest
So we are having this perfect day, this glorious day. Mountains, sun, lakes, Spring, bear, isn’t this a grand life?
Well, like every life, it has its moments. We find a perfectly average place to eat; it really looks promising and then everything we order is like pulled out of the freezer kind of stuff, not awful, just not what we would ever choose if we had known. In East Glacier, however, the season has not really started yet and a lot of places just haven’t opened yet.
Then, we are ready to get settled. I know where we will be staying is near Saint Mary, and I have directions. We keep following the directions, but it isn’t working. I call the B&B and tell her I am at the gas station by the gift shop and she gives me more directions, and we follow them and something is just not right.
AdventureMan is getting frustrated, I am feeling stressed and incompetent, so I call again, and somehow, this time, we discover that I am in the wrong place, about 30 minutes from the right place, which is East Glacier Village, or just outside.
Whew. Crisis averted. We get back on the road and shortly we see where we need to be.
These are some of the nicest cabins I have ever seen. They feel spacious on the inside, and are beautifully done. You can see East Glacier Village and the train depot from our porch. And the mountains.
We go into East Glacier Village to pick up some milk for our cereal in the morning, and we see the Two Medicine Grill, which seems to have fresh pie. We can’t resist fresh pie.
As we are leaving, I point out to AdventureMan the Railway Depot across the street. He said no it wasn’t. I was stunned. Sometimes this happens, and he is very adamant, and so sure that I doubt myself, but not this time. And then . . . then he did it. He said “Do you have a minute?” I held my breath so I wouldn’t laugh out loud. “Sure,” I said agreeably. So he turned the car around and zipped up and pulled into the terminal. “THIS is not the Depot!” he crowed. (Looking right at the sign that said Train Depot.) I just looked at him in amazement, and laughing, until he looked again and then he started laughing too. It was one of the best moments of the trip, and we howled with laughter all the way back to the cabin, where we sat on our balcony, looking out at the mountains, and ate our pies.
He had peach. I had cherry.
Glacier National Park: Many Glacier
We have to take the long way around to get up to the Many Glacier entrance, back through East Glacier Village to Browning, then up to Saint Mary, but no problem, because we’ve rented a cabin in the Saint Mary area. Going through Browning, we see tee-pees, just alongside the road:
This ride is just gorgeous, but it is not a great road. It isn’t a terrible road, but it is not paved, and from time to time there are serious potholes. There isn’t a lot of traffic, so we are not inconvenienced, it’s just we haven’t been on a road like this since maybe Africa.
Along the way, we see something we haven’t seen before, a Mama Black Bear but with only one cub. The cub looks older, maybe one year old, and life must be easier for the Mama than if she were trying to feed two cubs.
It was just us and one other couple. This was heaven.
Now I want to show you how the same scene looked in Hayden Valley, in Yellowstone:
It’s horrible. This was the Mama Bear and her two cubs trying to feed while people are scrambling to get their attention and photograph them.
Bear watching on the way to Many Glacier was relaxed – for her and for us.
Many Glacier Lodge
We want to come back and stay here. (Many Glacier Lodge is not open until around Mid-June) What joy, to wake up in the morning to all this beauty.
Glacier National Park: Two Medicine
Those of you who have known me since 2006, when Here There and Everywhere started, know that I am a religious woman, so what I am about to say won’t bother you. If discussions of a spiritual nature distress or annoy you, just skip down to the photos.
This journey, through Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks has been one of the most profoundly spiritual journeys I have ever taken. I can understand why our First Nation people consider these places holy ground. There is a majesty, and a grandeur, and a reminder that I am a very small piece of a very large and complex creation.
The temperatures are in the 80’s, but roads are still closed and you have to go around.
I loved this write-up, and of course we had to take this hike. I didn’t hike to the top of the falls, but I am happy we did the hike to the view point. As an interesting aside, these falls were roaring. I’ve seen other photos of this falls that show it is actually two falls. In the spring, when the melt swells the flow, you can’t see the two, but when the upper fall diminishes, you can see the larger, lower fall.
Running Bear and Running Eagle 🙂
The General Store at Two Medicine Lake
Picnickers at the Lake
From West Glacier National Park to Glacier Park Lodge the Long Way
We have yet to drive the complete Going-to-the-Sun road, and we know it just isn’t in the cards this trip, even with the heat wave (temperatures are in the 80’s F.) it just makes avalanches less predictable. The road is closed.
So we have to go around, and the going around is beautiful. The map below is from Google Maps.
From East Glacier Park Village, we will be able to take Two Medicine Road. In the old days, this WAS the road into the park, and it is beautiful. (Don’t worry, I intend to balance all this navigation with a lot of photos.)
Map into Many Glacier and Road-to-the-Sun from East Entrance at St. Mary:
What is very cool is that these maps are free, online, at My Yellowstone Park.
You know we have a preference for having the road all to ourself, so an early departure – not too early, like 7:00 a.m. – gets us what we want. Google Maps tells us it will only take an hour and 19 minutes, but we are big on the experience, and we stop often, and it takes us a little longer.
The first thing we see coming into East Glacier Park Village is a gorgeous lodge, the Glacier Park Lodge. When I tried to book it, it said it would not be open when we visited and it wasn’t open, but . . . the people working to get it open were very kind, and a ranger showed us through the beautiful old hotel. It has huge timbers holding up the lobby, and a beautiful skylight in the roof so it all feels bright and airy and open. This place is gorgeous.
This hotel is one of the classic lodges, built to bring visitors to see these amazing sights in a time when there were no super highways, but there were trains. Just across from the hotel is the AmTrak stop.
There is a large golf course, many activities, a famous dining room, and best of all, it is located at the entrance to Two Medicine.
Kalispell Farmer’s Market, Glacier NP Apgar and Avalanche Creek
In our hotel, they give us an information sheet when we check in:
I had a tick once. It totally creeped me out. The news has it that ticks are now spreading Rocky Mountain fever. You can hike, but you have to be really covered up.
There is also, in the local paper, an ad for the Kalispell Farmer’s Market. I am such a sucker for a farmer’s market, and AdventureMan is a good sport, so off we go.
We spent quite a bit of time at this booth because having come through the Lake Flathead Orchard area, I have a yearning for cherries. I look for them everywhere. It is not the season, but I am wishing for some cherries. These people are growing cherries, and bottling cherry juice, which we bought. It was wonderful. We drank it like wine, and it reminded us of wine, and we also thought it would be good with champagne, like a Kir Royale, or a Samburu Sunset.
Glacier National Park is just minutes away; we are there by ten in the morning. I am posting this sign because we were constantly in and out of the park, a luxury we can afford thanks to our Senior Passes to all the National Parks which we bought when we turned 62 for $10 (or maybe $20, I can’t remember.). They are now $80, and if you love the national parks the way we do, and like the freedom of being able to travel freely in and out, these passes are worth every penny.
Today we head into Apgar, where many people stay, and especially we see a lot of campers. AdventureMan wants to go on that hike at Avalanche Creek up to Cedar Trails, and we are told he can rent bear spray in Apgar.
This is the Lake Hotel, in Apgar, not the Lake McDonald Lodge. This is more motel-like.
And wait until you see the view:
These are the recycle and bear-proof trash bins. Both are taken very seriously.
We take Camas Road, which goes off to the northwest from Apgar, and we go high into the hills, where I find just about the only mosquitos I’ve experienced on the entire trip. That is really something, because mosquitos are very fond of me, so it turns out that this is not he best drive for me.
I did get out to take a couple photos, one of which is below. This is a patch of blueberries, the kind of patch where my sister and I and our friends would pick blueberries. We would move from patch to patch, but . . . you can see how easy it would be to be surprised by a bear, who loves blueberries as much as we do.
We drive back along the river, to the McDonald Lake Lodge, and have a lovely lunch in the lounge. I have the Penn Cove Mussels, in a silky sauce laced with saffron, and my husband has that wonderful charcuterie board again. I totally love that they have Ginger Beer. This isn’t the kind I love the best, with ginger sludge and pieces in it, but it has bite.
We head back to Avalanche Creek, AdventureMan takes a hike, I stay in the car and start writing notes to remind myself of things I want to remember when I start writing up the trip for the blog.
AdventureMan always laughs when he reads my trips in Here, There and Everywhere. He says “I want to go with you! You have so much fun!” I remind him that he was with me. What we really enjoy is going back several years later and reading about our trips. There are details we’ve forgotten, things we are glad to remember.
(My favorite trip is December 2007, because we love Damascus so much, and the Damascus we love barely exists anymore.)
We gas up so we can get an early start in the morning, and I see this sign.
We eat at the Three Forks Grill in Columbia Falls. It has a great rating on Trip Advisor. Sometimes we just order the wrong thing. It was a nice place, we just can’t remember what we ate.
This was the perfect way to end our day, along with the cherry juice from Flathead Lake. AdventureMan had the blueberry pie, and I had the cherry cobbler, bought at the Kalispell Farmer’s Market and waiting for us in our little refrigerator. Heaven.
Wonderful way to end the day.
Glacier National Park: Lake McDonald Lodge and Going-to-the-Sun-Road
We settle our bags in our hotel, and as soon as we can, we head into Glacier National Park, west entrance and hurry to Going-to-the-Sun-Road. We know it is early in the season and the road may not be open, but when we got to Avalanche Creek we learn that there was an avalanche just days ago and two bicyclists were trapped several hours while rescuers tried to get them out. You can walk or bike farther beyond the gate closing the road, but you can’t drive.
Meanwhile, there is much to see, but it is very very hazy. We keep thinking it will burn off, and it doesn’t. Later we learn that there is a huge grass fire in Alberta, across the Canadian border, and the smoke has all blown south. It is a little hard to breathe.
Nonetheless, this place is gorgeous. This river is the color of old glass bottles, and it is swollen with snow run-off. I would not want to raft on this river at this time of year, it is too unpredictable.
At Avalanche Creek, AdventureMan took a short walk in the woods, while I walked on the road. Â Guess which one of us spotted wildlife? I was taking photos of Avalanche Creek when a deer walked right in front of me and settled down in a little grove of trees.
In Glacier National Park, even more than in Yellowstone, there are warnings about bear everywhere, and there are all kinds of kiosks selling bear repellent.
I grew up in Alaska. AdventureMan has heard my stories about blueberry picking so many times that he can tell the story himself, starting with “when I was a little girl growing up in Alaska, . . . ” Â It never fails to crack me up. So, when I was a little girl growing up in Alaska and the blueberries would get ripe, my Mom would send us out to pick blueberries. We had big coffee cans hanging from string around our neck, and a stick. If we saw bear, we were supposed to beat the can with the stick and back away slowly from the bear. We were never never never to touch a cub, or to get between a cub and its mother. Those were the rules I grew up with.
There was a boy I knew who lost an eye to a bear, and had a big claw mark across his face. He was the lucky one. His friend didn’t survive.
So I keep my distance. I have a healthy respect for bear, for all wildlife. This is not Disney-does-wildlife, these are bear, in springtime, and they are hungry and focused on filling their bellies. You do not want to get in their way.
I spit on bear repellent. I think it gives people false courage. It might stop a bear. It might enrage a bear. I think the best strategy is not to be alone in bear country if you can help it, especially in a remote area, and to move away slowly if you find yourself in one of those “holy shit” moments that no one could predict. And I know it’s easy to say, and very very hard to know how anyone will respond to that kind of lethal threat.
Lake McDonald Lodge is lovely. It has all the features I love; huge old timbers, a three story high lobby, a huge stone fireplace, homey furnishings. I love this place:
We walk out the front door (the Lodge was built before the road was built, so the front door faces the Lake, and today you enter the Lodge through the back door) to discover there is a Lake boat cruise leaving right now, so AdventureMan buys two tickets and we scamper aboard just in time for a sundown cruise.
Can you see how hazy it is? That isn’t fog, that is SMOKE!
It makes for an atmospheric photo, but . . . no visible mountains.
It is dinnertime when we return to the Lodge, and we know where we want to eat. Fortunately, it is early in the season, and we are able to snag a table without a reservation. This is the creek next to the dining room, as it empties into Lake McDonald.
This is what the Dining Room looks like. This was the best Lodge Dining we experienced. The food was exquisite and the service was experienced and sophisticated.The wait staff was really good at helping us choose wine that went with our meals.
I had a Farmer’s Market salad, with smoked trout on top. It was just right for me.
My husband had a salad, and a charcuterie platter. On the platter, the meats and cheeses were all from Montana. There was smoked duck, an elk sausage, and a bison pastrami, I think. I may have gotten something mixed up.
This was one of the nicest meals we had on our trip. We thought that the lodge prices were very reasonable, too.
From Missoula to Kalispell to Coumbia Falls and Glacier National Park
Our day starts off with our divine leftovers from The Notorious Pig, and we hit the road early. 
Once we leave Wye, we are on the Flathead Reservation. Things are done a little differently. There are bilingual signs, and there are special protected places for the animals to cross the highways.
This sign is not bilingual, but easily understood. AdventureMan and I are taking a short hike and he points it out. He knows I am irrational about snakes.
When we get to Polson, the road splits. The iPhone is working once again, and tells us to go up the east side of Flathead; I had thought we were going up the west side, but sometimes the phone has a better idea. This time, I think how much we might have missed – the east side is very rural, with gorgeous views of the lake and with orchard after orchard – cherry orchards!
First, we came to this beautiful Camp, Blue Bay.
It is early in the season, and there are only one or two campers, but we can see the signs that someone has been very busy preparing for the campers to come.
The Lodge is not ready for the season, but we peek in the windows; the lodge is my idea of camping 🙂
We see signs like this everywhere. Montana is working very hard to protect their lakes and rivers against an invasive mussel. All boats have to be inspected before launching. So far, this campaign may inconvenience the boaters, but the lakes and rivers have not been infested.
Sometimes I fall in love with a name – like Kalispell. We had a lot of fun in Kalispell, this day and the next day when we came back for a Farmer’s Market.
This day, AdventureMan parked so I could run into City Hall in Kalispell. Two women were there, and no customers, so I asked first if there were any German restaurants, and there weren’t, and then I asked where they might eat lunch and why. That started a great discussion, and then they mentioned the Split Rock, just up the street. It sounded perfect for us.
This is an old mercantile, sort of the predecessor to a much larger department store. Below is the interior of what is now a Cafe and restaurant. Their coffee smells divine.
This is what this room used to look like if you were coming in the door, a long time ago.
The special today is a French Dip Sandwich – I have a weakness for French Dip Sandwich – and this one is made of prime rib. So that is what I order. AdventureMan orders the clam chowder and half a club sandwich.
This is the best French Dip sandwich I have ever eaten. I limit the bread I eat, I limit the red meat I eat, but – not today. Today against all my better angels, I eat the whole thing. The dip is juicy and spiced, and hot. It is heaven, every bite.
This is what we had for dessert:
From Kalispell, we explored Whitefish, very picturesque. This is the old railway depot:
We get to our hotel, and we have a beautiful room. Here’s the funny thing . . . I thought we were going to have a view of the mountains. What we had was a view of the roof. Mostly the underneath of the roof!
Our room is square over the lobby, and we look out on the antler chandelier. I thought maybe we should ask to be another floor up, but when I looked at the rooms from the outside, I could see that the third floor also had a view of the roof. Aargh.
Yellowstone to Missoula: A Day of Transition to Glacier National Park
I’ve had one odd problem on this trip, which is that my iPhone went wonky in Yellowstone National Park. I figured out that if I downloaded maps while I had wi-fi connections, sometimes they worked in the park. It was a pain in the neck, and I didn’t always remember. The phone always knew where we were, but the maps didn’t always show up clearly. I am guessing it is a coverage problem, no cell towers, or something, but once we left the park, the problem was over. The phone could show me where I was.
We got a slow start – like maybe we slept in until 7 a.m. and then we went to Gardiner for breakfast, this time trying a place we had seen and wanted to try, Tumbleweeds. 
Tumbleweeds is also a book store, where both AdventureMan and I found used books at 50 cents each to get us through the rest of our journey. In the last week, I had totally caught up with all my unread New Yorkers (woo hoooo!) and was ready for something light. I found Margaret Atwoods “A Cat’s Eye” (not light, has to do with bullying among girls, and emotional manipulation) and my husband found a Ludlum book he hadn’t read.
The food was just exactly the kind we like, not fancy, not pretentiously served, but made in house from locally sourced ingredients, as much as possible. Their coffee was delicious, to start. AdventureMan had a breakfast sandwich, and I had Montana oatmeal, and an english muffin. They make their own bread. They make all their own food. We were happy to be there.
If it weren’t for the mountains, the road to Livingston, where we got on I-90, would have been pretty boring.
No elk. No bison. No wolves. No bear. Shortly after we left Gardiner, we discovered also that the weather had changed dramatically, and not only were we shedding layers, but it was getting hot. I checked the forecast for Glacier – in the 80’s. In the 80’s ??? Yikes! I packed for freezing!
We drove as far as Butte before our breakfast wore off. We had no idea where to eat, so we drove to the downtown area and stopped a couple guys on the street and asked them where they eat lunch. They looked at each other, said there are a lot of options, then one of them looked at us and asked “Do you like a little nuance?”
No one has ever asked us that before.
We said “sure” and he recommended Metals, and showed us how to get there. Just as we were entering, the two guys entered, too, and said “we thought as long as we were recommending it, we might as well eat there, too.”
The first photo I took was the menu, because it cracked me up and agrees so totally with how I would like to live my life.
Metals is a sports bar. I guess it has been several things, but it began as Metals Bank, as Butte is a mining town.
You can even dine in the bank vault.
I had an Oriental Chicken Salad, delicious, and AdventureMan had the Chef Salad with Grilled Chicken Breast, which was also very good.
We continued on to Missoula, where we have stopped before when we used to drive from Pensacola to Seattle, and like a lot.
Our hotel was beautiful and quiet. We were welcomed warmly, and the receptionist was very helpful. This was the Grant Creek Best Western Plus, and it had great beds, was very quiet and was an easy access back to I-90.
I had found a Montana food blog and we knew exactly where we wanted to go. There is a fabulous BBQ restaurant in downtown Missoula called The Notorious Pig. My phone got us there without any problems.
We know what we like. This is it. We heard someone come in behind us and order, and asked about desserts. The guy at the counter said “We don’t do desserts. We just do smoked meats.” You could hear the pride in his voice. You could smell the meats; holy smokes.
I had first ordered burnt tips, only to be told they had already sold out. The smoked turkey was a great choice, so moist and so delicious and – so much. So much of both my husband’s BBQ pulled pork and my smoked turkey that we good boxes back to the hotel and although the hotel offers breakfast, we preferred to have warmed up BBQ. It was that good.
I will tell you this was one of the most memorable meals on our trip because of the quality of the meats. Also, I had never had Fire and Ice pickles before, so this was a first for me, and I was hooked. I’ve always loved pickles. These almost tasted like dills – maybe they even started out as dills, but then pickled again in a sweet, spicy brine. Oh wow. I’m going to have to figure out how to make these pickles.
We had a great nights sleep in Missoula.
Yellowstone: Wonderland and Last Trip to Lamar Valley
When we finish hiking the terraces, it is still early. We decide we do not want to eat breakfast in the Dining Room, so we go into Gardiner, back to The Wonderland Cafe and Lodge. The Cafe is already full, a few tables with couples and one very large table with a local woman’s group. They are having such a good time, it made me feel like home. I saw one bring in a bag of books for another, and I thought “I could be happy living here.”
We order and are delighted with our choices. My husband tried Avocado Toast for the first time, and thoroughly enjoyed the combination of flavors. I had the breakfast burrito. 
It’s a hearty breakfast, and we know we won’t need to eat for a long while, so we head back out to Lamar valley, still looking for those wolves around Slough Creek. On the way back into the park, we stopped to take a photo at the 45th latitude. We thought that was pretty cool. You’ll note we are still in heavier clothes at this point.
On the way we hike up to Wraith Falls; it’s an easy hike, only half a mile there and back. You can’t really get too close with all the wood fall, but it is a lovely cascading kind of falls.
My husband had some interest in the petrified forest, but we figured maybe the next trip. What I like about this photo of the deer is that it looks like one would prefer to go one way and the other in a different direction. It kind of cracked me up.
Back in Slough Creek again, looking around for those wolves. Did not see any wolves, nor the babies we had heard about, but I took a photo of this wonderful rock. In Alaska, and in the Seattle area, people pay big money to have a great huge rock in their yard, like a landscape focus. I think it has to do with Scandinavian blood, and glaciation, the fact that these great huge rocks are brought from mountains, many miles, and then are dumped where the ice melts. You will see valleys full of great huge rocks, with no source in sight. Many have come for miles. This one looks to me like a very alien rock; he has a curved round head and on either side of his cracked (helmut?) you can see his alien eyes.
Also in the valley at Slough Creek, we find anglers; at one time three of them angling. We never saw them catch anything.
Out on the edge of a large plain between the mountains, a huge valley where the Bison were slowly brought back from near extinction, is this formation, called Soda Butte. It has a hot spring that kept springing up, depositing minerals, until it built this anomalous structure. We hiked around it to get a view of the other side.
We see bison grazing peacefully across the river, except for one, who is looking at us and moving quickly and purposefully toward us. Hmmm, those big guys can move pretty fast. We calmly and quickly walk to our car and get in. The bison comes all the way to where we were standing and fortunately, stops. After the adventure with the elk, we aren’t taking any chances. Most of the bison we have encountered have been placid and uninterested in humans, but wildlife is wild. They don’t think like we think, and we don’t take anything for granted.
No, I didn’t stop to take this photo, I was taking this photo when I noticed he was running towards us.
We see a clump of cars, and as we approach, we see a woman walking in our direction. “What have they spotted?” we ask her, and she says “Oh, there is a bear, high on the hill, they are watching him. He is the size of a little tiny dot.” We’ve seen a lot of bear. The rangers are already here, encouraging people to move their cars, park legally, but there a lot of sharp drops here, and not a lot of parking spaces.
I don’t know a lot about the Ranger program at Yellowstone, but it appears to me that there are a lot of trained people out observing animals, good at spotting them, and generous about pointing them out to others I would think they are photographers, but they are not. They have these super telescopes, like uniscopes, which are very powerful. If they are Rangers, out spotting game for the visitors, I think that is a lovely service.
We dawdle our way back toward Roosevelt Station, where the road heads out to Lamar Road. As we cross the Yellowstone River and head towards the junction, we see a large group of men and women walking in the direction from which we are coming. “What are you doing?” we asked, and they said “Ranger training.” How cool is that?
The Roosevelt Lodge isn’t open yet, but will open soon. How do we know that? We see stagecoaches, and what I take to be a chuckwagon, on rubber wheels, practicing in the large field where two days ago we saw coyote. They are having a lot of fun practicing. And note, a placid bison.
Back in Mammoth Hot Springs, we stop to take a photo of the old Fort Yellowstone church. This was our goal the elk attacked AdventureMan, and we never made it to the church. We have  a beautiful day for a photo.
We stop by the General Store, pick up some sandwiches for dinner on the porch, and some huckleberry ice cream cones to give us energy to pack up for tomorrow’s departure. The sandwiches in the General Store are huge, so huge we can never eat the whole sandwich. They are on big bread, and the bread is also thick. The filling is generous, thick. We hate to waste food, but we can’t eat the whole sandwich.
We’ve had a great visit to Mammoth Hot Springs. We can’t wait to bring our family here.
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