Boarding the Viking Forseti
We’ve been watching the Bordeaux weather forecasts for weeks. It shows it will rain every day of our trip. Fortunately, we’ve always had good weather-luck. It may rain from time to time, we may even get sprinkled on, but, for the most part, we don’t get rained out.
As we head through the suburbs of Bordeaux, I am reminded of Tunis, where we lived many years ago. The ground is dry, sort of pinkish red, sandy, with scant trees, and maybe a little green ground shrub here and there. The buildings look like something built in the old Soviet Union, all concrete and utilitarian and crumbling.
When we reach the wharf at Chartrons, an area close to the center of Bordeaux, the sun breaks through. It is a joyful arrival altogether. The Viking Forseti is docked next to a city park area, a skateboard park, with skinny French teenagers all practicing their moves. Next to the skate park is a children’s playground. It is a lively area, full of families, and we have to cross a busy bike and walking path to board the ship.
Once aboard, we are quickly processed and shown to our cabin.
I am taking a great risk here, telling you my innermost thoughts. In our family, we have a saying “That sounds like a first-world problem,” which we can say because we have lived in many countries which were not first world, and where people worried about serious things, like having enough food to eat, or finding a place to sleep where the police wouldn’t bother them or the like. We are on a Viking riverboat. This is luxury.
We booked a suite on the Forseti. When we walked in the door, I gasped. It was small! It was two rooms, three if you count the tiny bathroom. You entered into a sitting room, with a couch and chair and flat TV on the wall over a counter space for wine or fruits or books. It’s the size of a normal small cabin minus the part which is our balcony, which we really wanted so we could sit out on it while we cruise up the rivers.
I have a thing about space. I feel like I can’t breathe well if the ceilings are not high enough, I don’t like being cramped. I know, I KNOW how lucky I am to have so much room and I can’t help it, I feel what I feel.
Our only other trips with Viking have all been on Ocean boats. Our cabins on the bigger ships had a lot of space, and a double closet, and lots of cupboards for putting folded clothing, underwear, shoes. etc. As I said, this feeling cramped on a river boat is not a worthy problem, and after bumping around a little while, we adjusted and did just fine. It was, however, a shock at the beginning.
There was champagne waiting for us, two glasses, and a flower. It’s a lovely thought.
You can see our bedroom through the door of the sitting room.
This is the bedroom from the door. On the right is a French balcony, i.e. sliding doors open but you can’t go out on it, as you can go out onto a balcony outside the door of the sitting room.
Inside the bedroom, this is the closet and all the drawer space. Two drawers. There is space under the bed for suitcases.
As you look to the right, entering the bathroom from the bedroom. The floors are heated.
Watching the safety video is a requirement. So we watch it, and check to make sure our life vests are stowed where we can get to them. There will be a drill the next day in Cadillac.
We are tired, and the sky has darkened again. It has started to rain. We decide to nap for a little while and then go to the welcome aboard briefing at 5:30.
View of Bordeaux from the ship.
People begin to gather in the lounge for the briefing.
By the time we finish dinner it is no longer raining, and Bordeaux looks inviting. I know I should go walking, and we are signed up for the walking tour of Bordeaux that leaves at 9:30 pm, but . . . I need to sleep. I need a nice shower. It is only 8:30 now, and I can’t face staying awake another minute. Before my head hits the pillow, I am asleep.
Departing Pensacola for Bordeax and Nothing Goes Smoothly
OK. I am NOT a control freak. I roll with whatever comes along, well, sort of.
I am a planner. I strategize. I research. I seek alternatives. I check with my husband, to insure that the trip will please him, too. I choose the exact flights, and then I choose the seats. Hmm. When I say it like this, I sound like I am a control-freak, but . . . as a strategist, I realize I am not in control of all the variables. I plan, and then so often, I have to be flexible.
The night before we are to leave Pensacola for the Bordeaux, a wildly windy tropical storm in forecast to blow in right around the time our flight is due to take off. I talk to my husband, I call the airlines. They COULD change our flights, but they can’t, they aren’t allowed to, the flights were booked by Viking, our cruise line, and they are not allowed to change anything. My husband knows me well. He drives me to the airport (nearby) and I try to sweet-talk the desk agent to change us to an earlier flight. I am close to success, I can feel it, but as she tries and tries, without success, my hopes fade. She makes a call, and gives me the same information – that she can’t change the flights because they were booked by Viking. But, she says, if we show up the next day for the earlier flight, we are likely to get on.
My husband is a good sport. The next day, we go to the airport early. Actually, it worked out well, our son was able to drive us and we got to have a good chat with him before he dropped us off. We went up to the desk and the clerk said she couldn’t change our flights. Aarrgh.
It wasn’t that bad. We checked in, got rid of our bags, went through security. We had lunch at the airport and it wasn’t bad. I can’t remember what we had, but I remember having a conversation about how it wasn’t bad for airport food.
Our flight boarded quickly, thanks to a flight attendant with a hilarious sense of humor who patiently, endlessly directed passengers entering the plane to put their large bags overhead, wheels in first, and their smaller bags tucked under the seat in front, and please, please, take what you might need out of your bag before stowing it so that other passengers might not be delayed in boarding. The delivery was perfect, utterly hilarious, and the passengers did what he said.
As we were departing, the storm was moving in, and we were warned that there would be about 15 minutes of turbulence as we avoided the clouds. It was bumpy but not bad.
When we got to Atlanta, we headed for our Paris flight, and it looked like 600 people waiting to get on in different lines – all on the same flight. We found the right line, which was moving slowly. It took us about 40 minutes to actually get on the flight and get to our seats. This was a plane with an upstairs and a downstairs; we were on the upper deck. We turned to the left, and there was business class.
It was the biggest business class section I have ever seen. It was also a little chaotic. There was one thing I really liked, and that is that toward the front, where the toilets were, there was a little lounge kind of place where you could stretch and walk around and not have to worry about being in anyone’s way. You could look out windows and take your time, which was really nice.
This was the Airbus 380, “the biggest airplane in the world.” There was a compartment next to my seat where I could stow all my gear, as well as in the luggage section overhead. Having all that space was nice.
The meal service was not smooth. It felt like maybe there had been some last minute changes and people were trying to deal with some changes. Finally, however, all that was past, and the lights dimmed and most people went to sleep. The seats went flat, and the mechanisms were very quiet. You could get a good night’s sleep.
Overall, given my choice, I will never fly a plane that big again. Even in business class, you feel like cattle. The cabin crew did their best, but they had a lot to do, a lot of people to look after, and they seemed stressed and overworked.
We dreaded Charles de Gaulle; transiting CDG is always a nightmare, but for some reason, early this Saturday morning, it went smoothly. We headed for our gate and tried to pick out which of our fellow passengers waiting for the flight were Americans, and who might be on our ship, the Viking Forseti, with us. We were right about a few, and wrong about others.
Across the aisle from me, on the flight to Bordeaux, was an American going on a bike trip, chatting with a man who lives just outside Bordeaux. The man who lives in Bordeaux was groaning that since Bordeaux has been modernized, with great public transportation and public spaces, other French people are retiring and moving to the Bordeaux area, “snapping up properties at ridiculous prices,” causing taxes and prices to rise. “The newcomers are ruining Bordeaux,” he added, “Bordeaux is being gentrified! We can’t afford to live there anymore! Every thing is changing!”
Bordeaux is not a large airport, our landing went smoothly, soon we had our baggage and were loading up onto a Viking bus. I am guessing that Viking may be a part of the gentrification, paying for expensive, accessible mooring positions, buying and maintaining their own bus fleet rather than chartering, and supplying their ships in bulk with all the advantages that bulk purchasing might bring. As we were leaving the airport, I saw something very strange;
It was at a different hall from the one we came into, and we think it might be one of the budget airlines. The line stretched out several hundred meters, and only inched along. We hoped that we would not face a similar fate upon departure. (As it turned out, our departure had its own, radically different anomalies.)
Bordeaux/Dordogne Trip – We Owe it All to Martin Walker and Bruno, Chief of Police
Several years ago, I ordered a book recommended by Amazon. I do that from time to time, and I will tell you honestly, some of them are real stinkers.
This book, Bruno, Chief of Police, by Martin Walker, was delightful. So delightful I started looking for more of the series, some of which I was able to find used. So delightful, I shared the Bruno, Chief of Police with my husband, and he, too, was hooked.
If there is a genre I like, it is detective novels set in foreign locations, dealing with crimes that have to do with social issues current in the locale. The first I can remember is the Eliot Pattison series about Inspector Shan, a Chinese detective who falls on the wrong side of Chinese political correctness and ends up in a Tibetan jail, where he begins a series long association with Tibetan monks and the threat to Tibetan civilization that the Chinese pose. It is eye-opening reading.
The next series I discovered were the Barbara Nadel series set in Turkey with Inspector Cetin Ikhmen. Then the fabulous and prolific Donna Leon and Commisario Guido Brunette, set in Venice.
And actually, I don’t read all this books in sequence. I watch for books by these authors, and read them when they come out, not unlike my addiction to James Lee Burke and Dave Robicheaux, set in New Iberia, Louisiana and Montana.
That was a very long introduction to the idea that it makes travel in foreign lands much more user-friendly to have read books that put you on the ground, seeing what the people who live there might see. When we went to Venice, we went off the beaten track to eat at a restaurant that Commissario Brunetti recommends to a touring couple who witnessed a crime and made a report to him. It was a great adventure just finding this restaurant, Rossa Rosa (“Guido Brunetti Sent Us”) and it had delicious local food, no tourists. In Venice. Imagine. Now, too, when we read the newest Brunetti novel, or watch the German production of the Brunetti series, we feel a closer connection with Venice, a familiarity, because we have a “friend” on the inside. Or so we feel.
Bruno Correze, the Chief of Police in the fictional French village of St. Denise, along the Vezere river close to where it links with the Dordogne, loves his small town. In the very first volume, we meet his friends, we visit his home, we are with him when he prepares meals and entertains his friends (he uses a lot of duck fat) and we get to visit the markets and cafes with him. Every book, like the best of this genre, introduces us to at least one issue, social and/or criminal, past or present, which is manifesting itself as a problem in the Dordogne. The actual crime may or may not be the point of the novel, and the solutions are often very French.
We have devoured this series. We felt like we had been there. So we decided we needed to go there.
We visited the Dordogne – it seems like a short time ago – the last time, 35 years ago, when our son, now grown, was around 9. We made a special effort to make this a trip which was relevant to him, too. We visited Castelnaud, and spent hours with the trebuchets and mangonels, old weapons once the ne-plus-ultra of fighting off the enemy. We visited the old caves with early paintings, when they were still open to visitors.
We love France, we love traveling in France and we have never had a negative experience in France. While I once spoke French fluently – we lived in French speaking Tunisia – but language skills get rusty when they don’t get exercised. Oh, really, any excuse will do. Martin Walker’s books made us hungry, hungry for French foods and hungry just to be in France.
We booked a cruise out of Bordeaux, eight days of cruising on the Gironde, Dordogne and other rivers, visiting villages older than our entire nation, learning about major appellations, eating some fine food and drinking some very fine wine.
And then we picked up a rental car in Bordeaux and headed to the Dordogne. I’m going to tell you all about it, but first I want to share Martin Walker’s books with you. He, and Bruno, have a wonderful website where he tells you all his favorite places. As we read the Bruno books, we also take notes – which wine he chose to serve with the duck course, where he and his friends gathered for the wedding feast, etc. It was like having a friend who says “Oh, I am desolate I won’t be there, but here are all the places you need to go, restaurants you will like and oh, be sure to try this wine!” Hotel and restaurant recommendations are on the website under “Bruno’s Perigord”
Martin Walker’s Bruno, Chief of Police website
Here are the Bruno, Chief of Police books, in order, from a resource called How to Read Me, which puts the books in order. http://www.howtoread.me/bruno-chief-of-police-books-in-order/
1 Bruno, Chief of Police – Meet Benoît Courrèges, aka Bruno, a policeman in a small village in the South of France who has embraced the pleasures and slow rhythms of country life. But then the murder of an elderly North African who fought in the French army changes all that. Now, Bruno is paired with a young policewoman from Paris and the two suspect anti-immigrant militants. As they learn more about the dead man’s past, Bruno’s suspicions turn toward a more complex motive.
2 The Dark Vineyard – When a bevy of winemakers descend on Saint-Denis, competing for its land and spurring resentment among the villagers, the idyllic town finds itself the center of an intense drama. Events grow ever darker, culminating in two suspicious deaths, and Bruno finds that the problems of the present are never far from those of the past.
3 Black Diamond – Something dangerous is afoot in St. Denis. In the space of a few weeks, the normally sleepy village sees attacks on Vietnamese vendors, arson at a local Asian restaurant, subpar truffles from China smuggled into outgoing shipments at a nearby market—all of it threatening the Dordogne’s truffle trade and all of it spelling trouble for Benoît “Bruno” Courrèges, master chef, devoted oenophile, and, most important, beloved chief of police.
4 The Crowded Grave – It’s spring in the idyllic village of St. Denis, and for Chief of Police Bruno Courrèges that means lamb stews, bottles of his beloved Pomerol, morning walks with his hound, Gigi, and a new string of regional crimes and international capers. When a local archaeological team searching for Neanderthal remains turns up a corpse with a watch on its wrist and a bullet in its head, it’s up to Bruno to solve the case.
5 The Devil’s Cave – It’s spring in St. Denis. The village choir is preparing for its Easter concert, the wildflowers are blooming, and among the lazy whorls of the river a dead woman is found floating in a boat. This means another case for Bruno, the town’s cherished chief of police.
6 Bruno and the Carol Singers (short story) – Bruno is occupied with his Christmastime duties. From organizing carolers to playing Father Christmas for the local schoolchildren, Bruno has his hands full . . . at least until some funds raised for charity go missing.
7 The Resistance Man – First, there’s the evidence that a veteran of the French Resistance is connected to a notorious train robbery; then, the burglary of a former British spymaster’s estate; and, finally, the murder of an antiques dealer whose lover is conveniently on the lam. As Bruno investigates, it becomes clear that they are connected.
8 The Children Return (also known as Children of War) – Bruno’s village of St. Denis has been called many things, but a hotbed of international intrigue has never been one of them . . . until now. When an undercover agent is found murdered just as a prodigal son is set to retun from a grim tour in the Middle East, the small town suddenly finds itself host to a determined global tribunal, threatening the usual cheer brought by St. Denis’s annual wine festival.
9 A Market Tale (short story) – As summer blooms, the newest talk of the town is the rapport between Kati, a Swiss tourist, and Marcel, a popular stall owner whom Kati meets over his choice strawberries. None are happier than police chief Bruno to see Marcel interested in love again, but as his friend’s romance deepens, Bruno senses trouble in the form of Marcel’s meddlesome sister Nadette.
10 The Patriarch (also known as The Dying Season) – Bruno Courrèges is thrilled when he receives an invitation to the lavish birthday celebration of his childhood hero, World War II flying ace Marco “the Patriarch” Desaix. But when the party ends in the death of one of Marco’s longtime friends, Gilbert, it turns into another day on the job for St. Denis’s chief of police.
11 Fatal Pursuit – It’s the start of summer, and Bruno’s found himself the last-minute replacement navigator in a car rally race. The event has attracted a spate of outsiders with deep pockets, big egos and, in the case of one young Englishman, an intriguing story about a lost Bugatti Type 57C. When a local scholar turns up dead, Bruno suspects unnatural causes.
12 The Templars’ Last Secret – When a woman’s body is found at the foot of a cliff near the idyllic French town of St. Denis, chief of police Bruno Courrèges suspects a connection to the great ruin that stands above: a long-ago Knights Templar stronghold. With the help of Amélie, a young newcomer to the Dordogne, Bruno learns that the dead woman was an archaeologist searching for a religious artifact of incredible importance.
13 A Taste for Vengeance – When a British tourist fails to turn up for a luxurious cooking vacation in the idyllic village in the south of France that Bruno Courrèges calls home, the chief of police is quickly on the case. Monika Felder is nowhere to be found, and her husband, a retired British general, is unreachable.
14 The Chocolate War (short story) – Police chief Bruno enjoys wandering the stalls of the weekly market in the village of St. Denis as they are being loaded with wares. But when Bruno’s old friend Léopold from Senegal start selling African coffee and chocolate more cheaply than Bruno’s old friend Fauquet at his café across the square, a competition erupts between the vendors.
15 The Body in the Castle Well – When Claudia, a young American, turns up dead in the courtyard of an ancient castle in Bruno’s jurisdiction, her death is assumed to be an accident related to opioid use. But her doctor persuades Bruno that things may not be so simple. Thus begins an investigation that leads Bruno to Monsieur de Bourdeille, the scholar with whom the girl had been studying, and then through that man’s past.
How to read me: Bruno, Chief of Police
http://www.howtoread.me/bruno-chief-of-police-books-in-order/
I owe a big thanks to Martin Walker for giving us so much inside information which enhanced our trip so much. I will try to remember to give him credit along the way as I take you along with us on our trip.
Happy Thirteen Years of Blogging to Me! Have Some Cake!
I found some incredibly elaborate cakes to serve you this year to celebrate becoming a teen-age blogger (which is to say, I’ve been doing this for thirteen years.)
For several years, I considered closing down this blog. I’m so glad I never acted on it. I still get so much joy on my trips taking photos of our hotels, sights, adventures and sharing maps and travel ideas with you.
There are actually trips I’ve forgotten I’ve taken. When my husband reads my travel tales, he says “Oh! You have so much fun, you and that guy you travel with. I wish it were me!”
It IS him. He just forgets. He loves reading about our trips as much as I do.
I’m not very good at being settled down. Part of growing up – I guess – is learning to accept the inevitable. I still yearn for unexpected challenges of living in foreign locations, other ways of thinking, and the smells and sights and sounds of places I have never been before.
We have a great trip coming up. We’ve been reading Martin Walker’s Bruno: Chief of Police series. We are going to Bordeaux for a week of exploring some of our favorite wines, and then drive to the Dordogne and Auvergne for some great Autumn eats. My husband wants to explore some defenses for castles along the Dordogne and Vezere, I want to explore the land of Eleanor of Aquitaine (an amazing woman) and we both want to visit and honor the sites where some of the bravest men and women of the Resistance in WWII took great personal risks to expel the Germans and secure France for the French many died for France in their efforts.
Thus the elaborate cakes, to celebrate thirteen years, and to celebrate life and all we have yet to experience.
If you’ll hold out your glass, we will pour you something special 🙂
Thank you for hanging in there all these years.
More to follow 🙂
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.
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