Bozeman, Montana and the Museum of the Rockies
The Museum of the Rockies not only has fabulous exhibits, they also have a wonderful gift store with unique and reasonably priced things to take back for grandchildren. Many locally made items are available.
How many places have to space to recreate an entire dinosaur skeleton outside?
Don’t you love this sign? During our two visits, we saw buses of school children arriving to tour the museum.
I was fascinated by the sheer number of relatively complete dinosaur fossils they have, and especially the teeth. There is something about these teeth that gets into my head. I can’t let myself think about them too much.
These teeth in particular creep me out.
The problem I have with the Museum of the Rockies is that there are diverse exhibits, and it is a lot to take in. There is an entire pre-history section, with great documentation and contextualization to help you understand what you are seeing. There is also a local history section of settlement and pioneering.
This is a horrible photo exhibit. It talks about the Indians and what they thought of the invaders and that pile on the right is buffalo skulls. One of the dominant ideas was that if the pioneers could kill off the buffalo, the First Nation peoples living there would move on; their major form of protein was the buffalo. To that pile on the right is thousands of buffalo skulls. The bodies were just left to rot.
This is a photo of the early Hamilton Camp Store in Yellowstone NP at Old Faithful. This building is still standing and is used now as a General Store and gift shop. I love preservation of well constructed old buildings.
The Museum of the Rockies had a knockout visiting exhibition on Genghis Khan. It was very thorough, and lush with fabrics, and textiles, and objects we have inherited from the time of the rule of the Khans. Things like passports, playing cards, charcoal. We found this exhibit fascinating.
The items of daily life
Mongolian warriors
Ritual dancing masks. No, the masks don’t dance, people wearing the masks dance.
Dinner our first night in Bozeman is at the South 9th Bistro, one of the few restaurants I have ever found on Trip Advisor with a full 5 stars. Every contributor had happy, wonderful things to say about the food there. We have heard the food in the park is poor, so we are willing to spend a little more for a memorable meal our last night outside the park for a while. For us, eating well is part of our travels.
We were welcomed warmly, and seated. We had reservations. There are other people in the restaurant, and they all seem to be having a great time, but subdued, rumbling conversations, not boisterous or loud. We get recommendations on wines, and love the wine we get. We order the seafood ravioli, the heirloom beet salad, the steak au poivre, and “The Beast,” a very chocolate-y dessert. I forget to take photos, we are so into the food, except for the beet salad.
At the risk of sounding effusive, everything was wonderful. It was a great evening. The steak was divine; the sauce creamy and peppery and the meat so tender I didn’t even need the steak knife. At the end of the trip, we went back and ordered almost exactly the same dinner, it was so good.
Our hotel is the Best Western Plus Gran Tree Inn. When you enter to check in, it seems all woods and stone floors and beautiful finishes. When you go to your rooms, it is like there is this beautiful entry but the rooms are all kind of tired, not at all what would go with the nice entry. I don’t think we would stay there again.
Multnomah Falls and the Multnomah Falls Lodge
The theme of this trip was Mountains, Sea and Lodges, and, too, I guess Museums and restaurant meals, but mostly the lodges. Multnomah Lodge is another lodge from my childhood, visiting Oregon with my mother, an Oregonian, and Multnomah Falls was often a day trip on our agenda.
It’s fun going back as an adult. A lot has changed, and because a fire took out a bridge, we were unable to walk up to the closer view point for the falls. We still had a great time, and enjoyed our lunch at Multnomah Falls Lodge.
Albacore Tuna Salad sandwich – tuna taken to the top!
Salmon broccolini, fabulous!
Clocktower Ales, The Dalles, Oregon
OK, OK, here is the truth. Sometimes I am just wrong. Sometimes I have a prejudice, and I am proven wrong. This was the case in The Dalles, Oregon.
I have a prejudice against brew-pub food. I have the sense that it is meaty, burger and fries or fish and chip kind of food, heavy on fat and calories and low on anything fresh. We looked around The Dalles for something, but kept coming back to the Clocktower Ales.
The building is a lot of fun. It is a big old building, an old County Courthouse, where decades ago hangings regularly took place.
So yes, AdventureMan had a burger and onion rings, which he claimed were awesome, but it might have been the beer talking, it was a really good beer.
I had Thai Noodles. It was light, and full of vegetables, and VERY spicy, in fact, the waitress warned me that many people find it too spicy. It did pack a wallop, and I loved it. So I was really wrong, I never would have thought I would have a dish this truly delicious and memorable in a brew pub.
Solstice Pizza in Hood River, Oregon
Gotta thank Trip Advisor for this one; told us it was a great choice and warned us to get there early. As a bonus for me, they had ginger beer, which I adore. Yummm! We had a fabulous waitress, sat at a group table outside near the wood pile for the wood-burning pizza oven, overlooking the Columbia River, it was a fabulous evening and the food was remarkable.
We split a Kale salad, which I forgot to photograph because we were really hungry, LOL.
AdventureMan’s Pizza (we are suckers for wood-fired ovens and thin crust pizzas)
My Dungeness Pasta (if it says Dungeness, I will order it!)
Little things make all the difference . . . it was a friendly crowd, we heard some fascinating conversations and just before we left, the waitress came up to me with a complimentary to-go cup full of ginger beer. I was utterly charmed. I wish we had Solstice Pizza in Pensacola.
Simon’s Cliff House in the Columbia Gorge Hotel
Not only was the Columbia Gorge Hotel gorgeous and nurturing and fabulous, it also had a really good restaurant, Simon’s Cliff House, where we had several meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Sadly, the very best meal we ate there, where I had Venison and AdventureMan had Steelhead Trout, I was so blown away by the food that we don’t even have any photos. I apologize.
Lunch with cream of broccoli soup and a Ceasar salad 🙂
We also had desserts! This WAS Creme Brûlée and Profiteroles!
The High Desert Museum in Bend, OR
Today is a piece of cake. It is a very short driving day, we get up late, only to discover that the normally generous breakfast at the Best Western has been set-upon by all the martial arts participants and the gun show enthusiasts, and the crew is working valiantly but is unable to keep up with the hoards of folk interested in breakfast. We find enough – some hard boiled eggs, some milk, enough. We are on the road by 9:30 only to stop just outside of Bend at one of the most beautiful museums we have ever visited, the High Desert Museum.
Look at that gorgeous elk statue, look at the definition. Look at his relaxed posture. Isn’t he gorgeous?
That is not a real salmon jumping up a river to spawn, but another gorgeous piece of art work at the entrance to this museum. I am loving this place already. They’ve put some big bucks into making this a high end product.
I suppose I should be embarrassed waxing so enthusiastic over the materials and craftsmanship that have gone into the structure, but I’m not. It’s my blog; I get to be as enthusiastic as I want. I loved this museum before I even got in the front door.
This is the entrance. Look at that natural light invited in! Look at the stone walls, the wooden ceiling and the textured panels on the walls! It seems most of the people we encounter working in the museum are volunteers, and they love their work and take great pride in serving their museum.
I know you’ve been wondering (as I did) exactly what the High Desert is:
The entire states of Idaho and Utah? Most of Nevada? Extensive parts of Washington, Oregon and Wyoming, as well as segments of California and Montana? I had no idea!
There is SO much to see. There is a lot of history along with the natural sciences, and it is all beautifully displayed, with a lot of human context.
I learned a lot about ritual root digging, which I had never heard of, but since seeing this exhibit, it has come up in two books I’ve read by Louise Erdrich, The Future Home of the Living God and LaRose, so I’ve been able to integrate what I learned with more information. If we ever have a monumental natural disaster, or zombie apocalypse, we will need these survival skills.
A tule mat tee pee. The women also wove baskets so fine and so tight you could cook in them. They used fire heated round stones to bring food temperatures up even to a boil.
This wild cat sculpture is next to the real wild cat, resident at the museum for many years due to an injury that made it impossible to return her to the wild.
Panoramas from the historical displays.
The museum also has a really nice gift shop, lots of original art work, good cards, great children’s gifts. They also had a very nice cafe, with an outdoor terrace where you can sit, drink some excellent coffee, and listen to the birds.
We spent two or three hours here, and it was worth every minute. The volunteer guides do tours of the outdoor animal displays, including some very cute and cuddly otter, and all kinds of other themed 30 minute or so walks. Well worth a visit.
LaPine, Oregon and the Cinco de Mayo
The road from the turn off to Crater Lake to LaPine, Oregon is probably the most boring road we were on the entire trip. It was flat. It was forest, but not the thick natural forest like in Alaska, but the planted and harvested kind of forest. We were glad to get to LaPine, where they had a surprisingly comfortable Best Western, with a pool.
First, had I realized Bend was just such a short drive, I probably would have put us there, but somehow, I didn’t see Bend when I was planning the trip. Bend is one of those WAY cool places that west coast people head to if they are artistic, or want to live ecologically, or close to the earth. Bend is just WAY cool.
There is a children’s birthday party going on, and it looks like they are going to be in the pool, and we are hungry, so we go to find someplace to eat. The top rated places in town are Mexican, there seem to be a goodly number of Mexicans working in the area and we love authentic Mexican food, so we go to the nearest one, Cinco de Mayo, and as soon as we walk in, we are happy!
It’s an odd time, not lunch, not dinner, maybe around 4 in the afternoon, so we have our choice of where to sit, but almost as soon as we have ordered, a huge crowd starts to arrive. There is not only a gun show in town, but there is also a large martial arts competition, and this is one popular restaurant.
I took the interior shots before the food arrived, and once the food arrived, I forgot to take any photos at all. The chips were thin and crispy, with three different salsas, two of them lethal. I had carne asada, which came with a weird sauce. I asked the waitress and she said “oh lots of people don’t like that sauce, but it is the sauce Mexicans eat with Carne Asada” so I felt humbled and unworldly, because I am normally an adventurous eater, and I didn’t like the sauce. The meat was very good. AdventureMan had a big platter of tacos, and he could barely walk out of the restaurant. “I’m normally so self-disciplined,” he moaned, “But these were so good and I couldn’t stop!” All in all, this was one of the best restaurants on our trip, and one of the most authentically ethnic.
The hotel was packed. We had to share the pool with kids, which we normally don’t mind, but we mind when the parents aren’t paying attention – pools can be dangerous places. Parents need to pay attention. We left quickly, and had some fears about how well we would sleep; there were parties going on all over the hotel. Around ten o’clock, however, it all stopped, the hotel was quiet, really quiet, and we got a great night’s sleep.
McCloud and the McCloud Mercantile, and the White Mountain Cafe
As we checked into our beautiful hotel, we asked if there were somewhere we could eat. It was a quarter of 2:00 and breakfast was wearing thin.
“You can eat at the White Mountain Cafe,” our hotelier replied, “but go now! They close at 2:00!”
We hurried down the street, where the waitress graciously welcomed us and told us we had plenty of time to eat, so not to hurry.
This is the White Mountain Cafe Bacon, Lettuce, Avocado and Tomato. AdventureMan says it is one of the best BLT’s he has ever had; the bacon was especially tasty.
This is my grilled chicken salad, which also contained some of the fabulous bacon. This led to a long discussion with an equally enthusiastic waitress, and we all three agreed that life is too short to eat bad bacon, and that really really good bacon is one of the sweetest of life’s joys. She told us that anyone who doesn’t like bacon has never tasted really good bacon. As she works so closely with food every single day, I am inclined to give her a lot of credibility.
I also found myself thinking deeply about how difficult it would be for me to be a good Jew or a good Muslim if I could never eat good bacon or an occasional slice of Smithfield ham.
The White Mountain Cafe (walk out the door and you see a huge Mt. Shasta) is connected to the McCloud Mercantile, a winding old-timey store with all kinds of goodies, and a lot of original old store furnishings. McCloud is a historical timber town.
Beulah’s Kitchen for Breakfast
There was no breakfast included at the spa, which was fine, we got up and hit the road, knowing we would come across something. As we leave Calistoga, we are in the thick of wine country; it is Spring and the vines are still just waking up, but the world is lush and green and beautiful. We are on a small winding road, through hills and vineyards, inching towards Interstate 5 when we come across Middleton and Beulah’s Kitchen.
Beulah’s Kitchen is the exact kind of place we hope to find when we want to have breakfast. It isn’t a chain, real people are cooking real food, and it is not cookie cutter food, either.
This is AdventureMan’s Biscuits and Gravy – so much food! He did his manly best and finished some of it!
I had the breakfast burrito – again, a lot of food, and I was able to eat about half, but I enjoyed every bite. The coffee at Beulah’s Kitchen was exceptionally good.
This food was so filling that we were fine until about 2 in the afternoon, when we finally had lunch.
Ft. Bragg; Our Old Friend, Cucina Verona
We have such great memories of Cucina Verona. We had a wonderful meal there the last time we were here, we couldn’t wait to eat here again. Some meals are just memorable; we wanted another meal that memorable, that good.
We started with a broccoli soup which was rich and thick and tasty. We were hungry; I didn’t even think to pull out my camera.
But once the soup was finished, I remembered 🙂
I had Pasta Puttanesca, again, rich, delicious, and full of taste.
AdventureMan had Salade Nicoise, or Salad Nicosia, as it appeared on the menu. It was all wonderful, so wonderful that when we couldn’t eat it all, and there was so much left, we had them pack it all up and shared salad and pasta again for dinner that night back in our wonderful hotel room.
Cannot wait to get back to Cucina Verona!
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