Into The Great Wide Open: Postscript
Our son and his son, our grandson, quarantined for ten days and are now back at work and in school. My granddaughter continually tested negative; I speculate she had it last Spring in a very mild case. My daughter-in-law remains well, stalwart, caring for her family, by the grace of God.
It took me a while to get this trip written up; we bought new computers in June. We laugh at a concept our daughter-in-law introduced to us, the Law of Unintended Consequences. It strikes all the time. AdventureMan discovered he has to keep his old computer running in order to play his favorite game. I discovered I had never uploaded any photos from my camera to my new computer, and didn’t have a card reader with an appropriate connector. It took me two orders from Amazon to find the card reader which would connect and upload photos. It is also beautiful, in rose gold, and it gives me pleasure to use it.
In answer to a question I often get, yes, I take notes. I don’t often nap in the afternoon because then I don’t sleep well at night, so while AdventureMan catches a little snooze, I write up our experiences while they are still fresh. As I waited to receive a working card reader, I wrote up the narrative, and then once I had my photos, inserted them where they would be most helpful.
AdventureMan was inspired in Bozeman, at the Italian Blacksmith, and yesterday he was busy gathering supplies and planning dinner. Here is his first success at a charcuterie plate. I cannot imagine how he can make this any better than it was; it was a glorious festival of taste treats. (He made the pickled red onions himself!)
I have included a link to the Blacksmith Italian website above; if you are visiting Bozeman, it is a guaranteed hit.
Into the Great Wide Open, Day 13, Bozeman and the Museum of the Rockies
We have space! I am up early, and I can brew a pot of coffee while AdventureMan sleeps in. We are not in a hurry, the Museum of the Rockies won’t even open until 9:00, so we can take our time. We like museums, and we really like the Museum of the Rockies. Last time we were there, they had a visiting exhibit on Genghis Khan; this time they have an exhibit called Vikings Begin, and I love all the new things we are learning about Viking culture and explorations. We have a quick breakfast downstairs, grab what we need and head out.
Usually when we get to a museum we are early and there are few people. This time, there is a bus load of people who look a lot like us. They seem to be Montanan, maybe not from Bozeman, but maybe a church group or an affiliated group of some kind, around our age, all of them. There are also a few families with children. Not a big crowd but a healthy number of people.
We go through the Viking exhibit, which is exquisite, but small. I watch a couple of the videos, blown away by how far the Viking trading ships went, from deep into current day Russia to the coastal areas of North America.
We go through the early western exhibits, then split off, AdventureMan to spend time with the dinosaurs, and me to see a planetarium presentation on the northern skies. I love this show; it focuses on what our early ancestors saw from different countries, they show us the differences between what people see in Bozeman, at 45° latitude, New Orleans, at 30° latitude, and Northern Europe and Alaska, at 60° latitude.
I had a little time after the show to visit the gift shop, which had many empty shelves, which they were busy replenishing. As I checked out, I asked “didn’t you used to stock more of just about everything?” and she told me that they were even pulling stock from old exhibits to display as the containers were not arriving with new stock. This is another recurrent theme, here, in Pensacola and just about anywhere we travel, problems with the supply chain. This COVID has put a huge kink in the old normal, and we are going to have to find new ways of dealing with changes brought about by both COVID and climate change.
Our lunch was hilarious. The Museum of the Rockies is close to down town Bozeman, so we found a parking place and walked around until we found something that looked like it would do. It was called the Main Street Over Easy, and you go through a door and down a hallway to find it. We arrived just at change-over time; the place was packed with breakfast eaters just finishing up, and we were shown to a table and given breakfast menus.
A lady at the next table said “At the risk of being intrusive, they have a lunch menu. Just ask for it.” She was right. We asked for the lunch menu and we got it. The server, who was a delight, said “Here’s the menu but today we don’t have any burgers.”
Not a problem. I ordered a French Dip and a salad, AdventureMan ordered Fried Fish sandwich with salad. I don’t know how long it took to get them; we were engaged in conversation with the lady who was from Whitehall, between Butte and Bozeman. We were as interested in her, and her views, as she was in ours. We both have governors who have forbidden schools to mandate masks. (Upon my return from Montana to Florida, both our son and his son tested positive for COVID and are currently still in quarantine.)
We headed back to our hotel to strip our bags, re-pack, and in my case, iron my little linen dress for the next day. We rested up, then headed out for dinner, again at the Blacksmith Italian.
We had a booth in a side room, more quiet until a large family arrived to celebrate a special occasion, and that was fun, too.
AdventureMan ordered the Caprese Salad and the Charcuterie board has his entree. The Caprese salad was wonderful, the tomatoes had taste and the cheese is house-made. I ordered squid ink noodles with shrimp and crab, very tasty, spicy, just the way I like it. Our last night in Montana, so we split the Tiramisu, which is really enough for four people, loaded with a rich whipped cream on top and a taste of liqueur moistening the ladyfingers. We shouldn’t have, but we enjoyed every bite.
Into the Great Wide Open: Day 12, Jackson Hole to Bozeman through Idaho
I have a Swedish sausage with my breakfast, because of Swedish descent as I am, I have never had a Swedish sausage. I like the taste, but not the consistency, which is kind of loose and crumbly. Great coffee, great muesli and love those berries.
Gas leaving Jackson Hole is $3.99 a gallon at the cheapest station.
I take a photo of the motel we stayed more than forty years ago, just outside Jackson Hole, when we were traveling across the USA in our Volkswagon Bus en route to Monterey, CA for grad school and language school and knew we couldn’t afford to stay inside Jackson Hole. We were right across from the Elk reserve, and once we got our little baby to sleep, we sat outside and watched the enormous herd of elk as they munched and wandered. It isn’t so far outside Jackson Hole, now, and I am glad it is still there.
This is the second day where we experience haze. We drive up over the mountains into Idaho, and spend a couple hours on very rural highways sharing the road with large combines, harvesters and all kinds of farm equipment.
The scenery starts to change when we near Big Sky and the Gallatin River. Lunch was apples with peanut butter alongside a road with trucks whizzing by.
Once again, our hotel room is not ready. As we wait, another man gets the same response and also that he will not be on his requested floor. He is very angry, says he reserved a month ago (!) and wants to be accommodated. Later I ask the desk clerk if they are having problems with finding people to work and she says yes, that it is a problem everywhere in Bozeman. I suspect that they have closed off the top floor and are also limiting the number of people they can serve until they can guarantee the ability to take care of them.
I am thinking that this has a lot to do with demographics, and problems with finding good, reliable, safe child care, and finding jobs which will protect their workers and also provide benefits. We can see that many of the hotels are now offering health insurance and educational benefits to the people they hire. I am thinking the labor market has a little leverage, and they are using it to better their conditions.
And yes, that may inconvenience business owners and managers, and inconvenience customers, like us, but for the greater good, perhaps we can find a balance where everyone wins?
Our room is lovely, and quiet, and spacious.
We have reservations for dinner at Blacksmith Italian, a restaurant we both found intriguing. Bossy Lady totally screwed up getting us there, sometimes she doesn’t really know everything, but she got us close enough and we figured out the rest.
The minute we walked in, we knew we were in the right place. It was full of local people. The plates coming out looked very fine. The smells were delicious.
We split a platter of meats and cheeses; it was full of delicate tidbits, duck and Italian sausage and tiny pickled peppers filled with ricotta, etc. This came with crispy tasty triangular bread, a little salty, very tasty. AdventureMan had mussels and a side of pasta as his main course, and I had calamari with a Putenesca sauce and a side of pasta. The sauce was fabulous; I didn’t even need the calamari, the sauce was so engaging. The wines were equally good; I had a Barbera and AdventureMan has a Lacryma Cristi white wine which was so good, I ordered it the next night.
Yes. It was so good we reserved for the next night, too. It would be our last night in Bozeman, might as well end on a high note.
Into The Great Wide Open, Day 10, Lamar Valley, Gardiner, Montana and Reflections
We are up at 6:30 without even setting the alarm, and head out to pick up coffee and go directly to Lamar Valley. Once again, no biscotti. AdventureMan buys a muffin, too sweet for me.
There was a heavy rain last night, the day is very clear, partly cloudy, with rays of sun beaming down. It is beautiful. Just past Roosevelt Lodge, and the turn to Lamar Valley, a truck in front of us slows down as a group of bison approach the road, maybe 20 of them, and start a trek across the bridge over the Yellowstone River. Cars start to pile up behind us, but they are all the kinds of early morning people who are respectful, there is no honking or people exiting their cars to take photos, and it is really a delightful experience.
On the other side of the bridge is a trail the bison are climbing to get wherever bison go. Why shouldn’t they take the easy route, rather than down into the basin, cross the river, struggle up the other side?
We saw lots of groups looking for wolves in Lamar Valley, and bear, but we saw no wolves or bear. Often they are just little dots, off in the distance. We see many anglers casting their lines in the Soda Butte River, having the time of their life. Maybe they are all catching and releasing; I never see any fish being taken back to the cars.
When we got to the Soda Butte the light was beautiful. It has been blocked off since the time we walked around it and attracted the attention of a very annoyed bison, probably because people like us were attracting too much negative attention of territorial bison.
We went into Gardiner for breakfast, eager to get back to Tumbleweeks, a combination book store and cafe we particularly like. I had hot cereal with fruits, and . . . a slice of coffee cake, full of huckleberries and raspberries. One bite and I knew I was in trouble – it was SO sweet. And I ate the whole thing, knowing I would pay the price. (I did. The next morning I had the worst blood sugar reading I’ve had all year. I am usually so careful. I still remember that slice of coffee cake with great fondness.Sometimes we can’t help what we love.)
Tumbleweeds is doing gang-buster business, of course. You have a good product, it attracts business. They also are located next to Flying Pig adventure rafting business, and they have a sign that says “You do not get fast tracked because your rafting trip is about to leave.” I can only imagine the situations that have led to the posting of that sign. We heard one of the guides say to the cashier that they were closing down; “once the rains came the season is over.” People are closing up outside the park, also, clearly, inside. Yesterday, in the coffee line at the Mammoth Springs Hotel, we learned that there is noplace in Mammoth Springs serving breakfast; they tell people to go into Gardiner.
En route back into the park from Gardiner, there is not even a person at the gate to check our pass. Back in Mammoth Springs, we walk around the village, visit the old Mail Carriers House, and head back to A23, our cabin. We ask the housekeeper about all the empty cabins, and she says “Yes, many cabins have been blocked because we don’t have people to care for them.”
I have a friend, a little younger, who asked me how aging is impacting the way we travel. I remember telling her first, that it hadn’t. Then, as I thought about my answer, I had to go back to her and tell her that we have changed, and because AdventureMan would get sick and tired from so much driving, we had devised a strategy of “shorter days, longer stays.”
On this trip, we discovered we still have the energy, we can do more than 10,000 steps per day, but we have to do it earlier, and later, and we have to have a rest or a nap in the middle of the day. Our transition days are the hardest, when we have driven further and we really need a nap and our room isn’t ready yet.
In spite of rests we are sleeping very well, mainly due to quiet locales and cooler nights, also good mattresses. We also need our reading glasses more often, for maps, for menus, for directions, for bills and receipts, for fine print in guide books.
So we are packing, tomorrow is another transition day, Mammoth Springs to Teton Village, just outside Jackson Hole, WY.
I like my small suitcase; it is easy to manage, and I have enough clothing because I wear the same things over and over. I only brought the one sweatshirt; sweatshirts take up a lot of room. I brought too many short sleeve shirts. I brought one very casual dress and one dress that works for dinner, and one linen dress I use for travel and for transition days. All three of those items did heavy duty in the two weeks. One skirt got baggy because I wore it so often, it was pure cotton; the skirt that had some spandex in it kept its shape better.
As we sit outside on our porch, we talk with some people we have talked with before; we were talking with them when I spotted the elk walking by behind our cabins, so they also got some shots. They were up this morning at 3:30 to go out with a Wolf spotting team and they saw lots and lots of wolves in Lamar Valley, and watched two packs of wolves meet up with each other.
We have never seen wolves in Lamar Valley. We go there a lot, but I guess not early enough and/or not with the right people.
Tonight, we have our last dinner at Wonderland, but this is a valuable and hilarious evening. We know they open at five, so we make it a point to be there at 4:30.
The word is out. Wonderland already has a line about twenty-five people long when we arrive. We are behind a group that is talking about having been out this morning watching for wolves, and they saw two packs of wolves meeting up, something no-one has seen before.
We can’t even look at each other. We have heard this phrase often, on safari in Africa. The wildlife spotters work together, they contact one another, they do their best to make sure their clients spot the game they want to see.
So we’ve been looking for wolves and never saw a one.
Next time, we might have to bite the bullet and hire a game spotter. We kind of prefer being on our own, not being in a group with other people, not being subject to someone else’s agenda, not being a part of those big groups along the side of the road. But this is our last night in Yellowstone, and we are thinking we might need to bend a little if we want to see wolves.
Dinner at Wonderland is delicious, as always. I have the squash soup and a grilled chicken Caesar, and AdventureMan has the Caldera Burger, which he loves. We love to watch the Wonderland team work together; they are a great team.
Into The Great Wide Open, Day 9, Lamar Valley, Yellowstone, and Cooke City, Montana
Up early, head to the main hotel for coffee but the biscotti are already sold out, even though the shop just opened. The Tauck bus or the Le Bus group must have bought everything available. No matter, we grab our coffee, we have tangerines and AdventureMan still has a brownie left from yesterday.
It is cloudy and sunny. AdventureMan hikes to Wraith Falls, a place we hiked last year and reports back that the falls are not so full as they were in the Spring, no great surprise. Together we take a nature hike highlighting the volcanic and geologic nature of the Yellowstone Crater; we have it entirely to ourselves.
It is still early, barely sunrise, when we take a turn off the main road onto Black Tail Butte Road, a six mile, one way dirt road closed to campers and large vehicles. It goes high into a mountain, and the vistas are stunning.
Then, all of a sudden, an old bull bison is strolling down the road towards us. He doesn’t look particularly concerned, but AdventureMan slows to a stop out of respect. Occasionally, he gives us a glance. He seems benign, but with wild animals, you never know, anything can happen.
AdventureMan doesn’t say it until well after the bull has passed, but he is thinking about how isolated this road is, how few people take this route and what if the bull charged us and damaged the rental car. None of this happened.
The road rejoins the main route just before Tower Junction and the Roosevelt Inn, a great rest stop for coffee drinkers and also a place with sturdy trash receptacles. We’ve learned to keep an alert eye for both.
We spend some time once again in the Slough Creek area, meet a delightful guide named Rachel who is with an adventure/eco tour and helps us spot white sheep up on a distant hillside. Skipped the photos; even with my large telephoto, they were just white dots on the distant hill. Rachel had a glorious standing telescope that helped her spot wildlife.
Today we head outside the park past Lamar Valley (lots of groups stopped looking for wolves) and out to Cooke City, where we have trout at The Bistro. We look around a little, then head back, timing what it takes us to drive different segments:
Lamar to where the Osprey nests: 20 minutes
Osprey nest to Roosevelt: 10 minutes
Roosevelt to Mammoth Springs: 30 minutes.
Of course, when we stop to watch or to photograph, it takes a lot longer.
Today we see one of the crazy people, out of their car, trying to get close to bison who are well aware they are there, and a lot faster than they look.
We head on for Cooke City, where we find the Bistro. We don’t even have to look at the menu; we have eaten here before and we are eager for trout!
Tonight we find sandwiches at the Mammoth Springs Trading Post, and we eat on our front porch, watching the colors change on the terraces as the sun goes down. We drink the last of our cherry juice, treasuring every drop. It looks like we are drinking red wine, but we are not.
We keep hoping that bull elk will come by once again. If he does, we don’t see him.
Into the Great Wide Open: Day 6, Helena to Livingston and Chico Hot Springs
Breakfast was lovely. There were beautiful hot scones waiting on the table for us, light and fluffy scones, not the crusty tough kind. The hostess, Pat, baked them herself, as well as the breakfast frittata, served with sausages and hot pots of coffee and cream. It was a great way to start the day.
At breakfast we met Dave and Carol, from Everett, WA, who were married five years ago at The Carolina and who come back every year to celebrate their anniversary there, they love it so much.
We drive towards our next stop, Chico Hot Springs, but we stop once again in Townsend. We have been looking for a car wash, our time in Glacier National Park has left us mud-stained and mud splashed; we have dead bugs on our windshield and every time I lean on the car to take a photo, I end up with mud on my legs.
We really like Townsend. We love the sign in the car wash. I love that while I am reading some Montana mysteries, Townsend is mentioned here and there, and I have a photo of the Commercial Bar, notorious among alcoholic cops and people who start drinking early in the morning.
It is a beautiful day.
On every trip, I try to schedule a wild card. A wild card means I don’t really know if we are going to like this or not, it might be out of our comfort zone, but we might also stretch and find we enjoy it. I had found Chico Hot Springs in Paradise Valley, another place frequently mentioned in Montana detective series, and had reserved a rustic cabin, which happened to be all they had left that looked like what we might like. I was making reservations early in December, so I thought it odd that so much was already reserved.
So on our drive, I experience a few little anxieties, like did I make sure this “rustic cabin” has it’s own bathroom? What if it has a musty smell? What if this is some kind of tawdry experience that we might find distasteful?
We stop in Livingston en route; we want to visit the Railroad Museum and to have lunch at the Murray Hotel, where we had reservations last year we had to cancel when COVID overturned everyone’s lives.
The railroad museum was fabulous. AdventureMan loves history and loves railroads. I found some really cool movies, one in particular, Invisible Boundaries which tracks Yellowstone’s Great Animal Migrations. The film was gorgeous. Some of was filmed from helicopters, some by an independent filmmaker who trekked with wildlife specialists and a wildlife artist. The film is lush with color and action; the still shots and the artwork are breathtaking. This was one of the highlights of the trip for me.
We had thought we would eat at the Murray, but saw Fiesta de Jalisco and had a craving for Mexican food, so we ate there. It was another restaurant which was careful – seating was separated, people were masked (not while eating). Best of all, the food was really good. I had a chicken mole’ and AdventureMan had a tamale and taco.
(We were greatly surprised that in all the tourist spots, prices were so reasonable. We think Pensacola has a reasonable cost-of-living; the places we found in Montana and Wyoming – OUTSIDE the national parks – were not more expensive than Pensacola.)
We walked after lunch, and found a cute gift shop where I asked if they had any cherry juice from the Flathead valley, and the woman running the shop looked at me and said “We don’t have it here, but I think I know someone who does” and called a friend. “Yes! She has it!” she told me, so we walked to the Copper Moose where we found the cherry juice and all kinds of wonderful Montana specialties, and some great conversation. We love bringing back local treasures to our family when we travel, and we found some really great treasures at the Copper Moose. We bough the large bottle of cherry juice; we should have bought two bottles, we love it so much. It is tasty, without being too sweet. It mixes well with water or with gin or tonic or seltzer. We were looking for a liqueur to pour over ice cream, like Chambord, but we never found it.
Chico Hot Springs was just a short drive down Paradise Valley from Livingston. Chico Hot Springs was really fun. Our cabin was not ready, but they checked us in, gave us wrist bands to use for the hot springs, and towels and said they would call when the cabin was ready. Just as we had parked, our cabin was ready, so we quickly drove up the hill to our cabin, dropped our gear, (checked to make sure there was a bathroom, and there was) and headed back to the springs.
AdventureMan had told me he would just sit in the sun; not me! Hot Springs are natural! They have minerals! We used to live in Wiesbaden where people came from miles away and paid a lot to “take the waters.” I hadn’t been in ten minutes when AdventureMan came and joined me. I was delighted. It’s out of his comfort zone. We need experiences out of our comfort zone, we are still capable of growth and new experiences.
After a short while, we headed back to the room for a short nap before dinner. I caught up on my trip notes while AdventureMan went deep into sleep. By dinnertime, we were both relaxed, refreshed and ready.
Reservations were a must. The Hotel had contacted me a couple months before and notified me that because of COVID, and employee shortages, and a requirement to socially distance, and the high volume of people wanting to eat in their dining room, if we wanted to eat there, we really needed to make a reservation, which I had made.
We had an isolated table. Everyone there did. We had a delightful server, Purity, who really knew the menu and the wines. I discovered they had a very large wine tasting room just off the nearby bar, with a lovely selection of amazing wines.
Everything I ordered was off the evening specials menu – they had me at Butternut squash soup and Alaskan halibut. AdventureMan had Prince Edward Island Mussels and the Alaskan halibut, we both had white Bordeaux to drink and ended the meal by sharing a creme brûlée. The meal was magnificent, one of the best on our trip, probably because the wine was so perfect with the meals.
It was nearing sunset. We decided to take a drive along an unpaved road leading out of the hot springs area down into a valley area. We saw a mother deer with two fawns, and we watched the sun set behind a mountain. When we got back to the cabin, there was a fowl – a grouse (?) without fear, waiting to greet us. AdventureMan said he heard coyotes yipping nearby during the night; I slept through it. Our cabin was isolated from the main part of the hot springs complex, and very quiet. We had a wonderful sleep in this rustic cabin.
One of the things AdventureMan says he loved about these rustic cabins was that they had great lights for reading. We don’t understand why hotels and inns have beautiful nightstands, and even maybe beautiful lights, but the bulbs are puny and they don’t put out enough light by which to read. Chico Hot Springs rustic cabins had good lighting to read by, and lots of hooks to hang up our clothes. We also had all the privacy in the world; the rustic cabins were relatively remote.
Into the Great Wide Open: Day 5 East Glacier to Helena
AdventureMan and I have different perspectives on this day. He thinks it wasn’t so bad. I think it was the worst day of our trip.
It started off great. We slept in – well, until 0730, which for my body time is 0830. We ate breakfast, packed out, thoroughly appreciating our three nights at Traveler’s Rest and the spaciousness and convenience of our beautiful cabin there.
AdventureMan suggested one last drive to Two Medicine, and it was beautiful, a totally different day from our first drive.
On the way back, we stopped at the glorious Glacier Park Lodge, and then for our last time at the Glacier Trading Post and picked up two pieces of huckleberry pie for the road. The crust on these pies is as delicious as their fillings!
As we head out of Browning, AdventureMan says “We can turn off the Bossy Lady now; we have been on this road so often we know the way without her, and you can turn her back on when we get near Helena.”
Long story short, an hour or so down the road, AdventureMan says “None of this looks familiar!” I say sure it does, because it’s all rural stuff, grain and storage for grain, railroad tracks, but it nags at me that AdventureMan might be right.
When I check, we are on A road but not the road we had intended. This road takes us to Great Falls and the interstate. We near Great Falls around lunch, find the Bear Diner and have what we agree is the most forgettable meal of our entire trip.
AdventureMan is right, it wasn’t a bad place, the service was good, I was just grumpy to be in Great Falls and eating calories that didn’t thrill me.
It is August, and nearly 80°F and this is at the entrance of the Bear Diner. It gave me a chill knowing winter can arrive suddenly, and it is best to be prepared.
This is also a day when there is a lot of haze, and I am a little nervous about breathing the particulate matter from the burning wildfires.
We get back on the road and arrive in Helena at 2:00, early for our B & B reservation. Fortunately for us, the room at The Carolina B&B is ready, and the hostess is very gracious, welcomes us, shows us to our room, The Anisette, and shows us around the beautiful mansion, full of beautiful furniture, carefully gathered, curated with care, and china, and exotic curios, full of artistic works and models and framed art. Everywhere you look is something of interest.
Tonight AdventureMan chooses a place for dinner, and we head downtown to one of the trendiest restaurants in town, Hokkaido, where we feast on Japanese cuisine. They specialize in Ramen and sushi, so I order some broth and a poke’ salad and a sushi roll, AdventureMan orders a seaweed salad and a couple rolls, and we share a large pot of green tea. Every table around us is filled with happy customers, old and young. It was the most varied demographic I have experienced, old and young, foreign and domestic, all economic levels, and the food was delicious, the service efficient and also friendly and helpful.
After dinner we explored Helena in the glowing late evening sunlight. We found a “mosque” which turned out to be the civic center, and AdventureMan found a statue of Theodore Roosevelt which turned out to be a statue of someone else in front of the Capitol building. We were staying in a very old neighborhood full of spectacular houses and a gorgeous old Catholic church, so we were able to spend some time walking before we turned in.
We were so glad to have chosen a room with its own bathroom. All through the night we could hear doors opening and closing, people using the bathrooms next door to our room. You could hear couples whispering to each other, which warned us to be careful because if we could hear them, they could also hear us.
Into the Great Wide Open: Day 7, Mammoth Hot Springs and Yellowstone National Park
Chico Hot Springs is a mere 40 minutes from Gardiner, our favorite town just north of Mammoth Hot Springs where we will be spending the next four nights. We head straight for Tumbleweeds, a bookstore that also is semi-bakery and has breakfasts and lunch. But, as it turns out, only Thursday – Friday – Saturday these days, so we have to find someplace else. There is a long line outside the Antler Grill and there is something of a line at the Cowboy Bar and Grill, where we have never eaten but would like to give it a try.
There is a sign on the door saying help wanted, and several people seated outside. We missed those clues. We got inside, and the only person we could see who looked like she worked there totally ignored us. The sign said “please wait to be seated” so we waited. And waited. And waited a little more. It could have been annoying, but we had seen this same situation in Glacier and had a good idea what was going on.
Eventually, the waitress – who was also cashier, and hostess, asked if we wanted to be on the wait list, and we said yes. She called the names of the people outside, and then, at the end, called our name, too, so we only had to wait about 40 minutes.
For me, it was worth it. I ordered something called the sausage scramble, and one of the choices for sides was “greens.” I am wired to have a hunger for greens, so I ordered greens and I also ordered a side of jalapeño huckleberry sauce to go with my egg scramble.
Breakfast actually came fairly quickly, even though everyone else in front of us got served first. The cook was quick and the server was also quick. My “greens” turned out to be a nice big bowl of mixed greens, covered with sunflower seeds, which I love, and dressed with an orange vinaigrette that was out of this world. It might have been that I was really hungry by then, but I remembered that bowl of salad as one of the best taste-treats of the trip. I also really loved the jalapeño huckleberry sauce.
AventureMan had the bacon scramble and focaccia bread, and the bread was also delicious. Things had slowed down and we had a chance to talk with the cashier/waitress/hostess and discovered she is Jamaican, a business student, and in a couple weeks she will be back at university. She is doing this as a summer job, and has worked very hard all summer, short-handed the entire time.
The hardest working people we found as we travelled were foreign workers and people as old as we are.
By this time it is maybe ten-thirty, we drive into Mammoth Springs and we don’t even stop because there is no way our cabin will be ready. We head straight out to one of our happy places, Lamar Valley. Near Tower junction there is a group of bison blocking traffic, just tarrying along, and people are going wild taking photos. We are patient, and head first for Roosevelt Lodge, which has never been open when we have visited Yellowstone previously.
Nice clean restrooms. Roosevelt Lodge has the reputation of being a good place to stop for lunch, but they are not serving meals. They have a Grab n Go sign, and then entire lobby area is EMPTY. We headed on to Slough Creek, one of our favorite spots to tarry, and Lamar Valley.
There are restrooms at the entrance to Slough Creek, but we pass them by. We know there is also a restroom at the end of the road, but today we get a thrill – at the end of the road is a gate. The gate is open. There is no sign saying Do Not Enter, so that means you can enter, right?
The truth is, probably 90% of the people who visit Lamar Valley never go down this bumpy unpaved road to Slough Creek. Even fewer know that through the gate is the entrance to the Slough Creek Campground, one of the sweetest, most private camping areas in Yellowstone, right on the bank of Slough Creek.
There is a hiking trail which goes beyond the campground. We hike out for a while, and we spot otter! Off in the distance, we spot a couple men riding out on horses, maybe they are rangers, although there is also a horse rental operation back at the area where we went through the gate.
The are is so beautiful, so quiet and so peaceful that we settle for a while and watch the otter play, and the water ripple by in the large creek. We talk a little with people coming to camp there. There is also a nice clean restroom there, actually several in different parts of the campground. It is a serene and awe-inspiring place to just be.
As we headed back into Mammoth Springs to sign into our room, we passed a large group of cars parked desperately along both sides of the highway, watching a tiny bear walk along a path on a nearby hill. We understand this might be the only bear these people ever see, and we also wish they would be more respectful. Stay in your cars! Don’t whistle or call to the bear trying to attract his attention! Let the bear just do his bear thing. We drove by as quickly as we could, we just wanted to get away.
AdventureMan is edgy, he wants more walking. I assure him tomorrow will be full of walking. We check into our cabin, and AdventureMan insists it is bigger than the last cabin we had. I don’t think so. I think they moved some of the furniture out and it seemed more spacious, but it looks the same size to me. All these cabins were built about the same time, probably a WPA project. We have a bathroom; some of the cabins don’t. They use the group toilet and shower facilities in the cabin area.
As we walk around the cabin area, we see that many of the cabins are empty, which is puzzling, because when I reserved, back in December, the cabins were mostly sold out. We speculated that it was again, a demographics problem, too few people willing to take a chance of remote working conditions during COVID. People our age are retiring and, like us, traveling. Younger people may not want to expose themselves, or don’t have child care so that they can work. As we got to know the housekeepers, they confirmed our suspicious. This was the hardest they have ever worked, too much work to do, cleaning, laundry, maintenance of cabins, and too few people to do the work.
We drove to the upper terrace road near sunset, and walked to Canary Springs. It was a beautiful time of day to be there for some dramatic photos, but not so dramatic as the cold mornings, when the steam would billow out of the hot springs.
Dinner was on our front porch, with a view of the Mammoth Springs terraces. We had picked it up in Gardiner at Gardiner groceries, where they had wonderful sandwiches, wraps and all kinds of condiments. I had my chicken wrap with Salsa Verde, and it was delicious.
Into the Great Wide Open: Day 4 Many Glacier
Many Glacier
Today we head for Many Glacier, another reason we love staying on the East Side of Glacier National Park. It is a beautiful drive, sunshine and shadows, rays and clouds, at the same time.
The drive was a symphony of blues and greens, mountain, valley, lakes and sky. As a quilter, I am color-sensitive, especially to greens and blues, so this drive was thrilling to me, just experiencing all the varieties of blues and greens, and mixtures of blues and greens accented with blacks and greys.
We find a really good parking place and head for the lodge; I separate from AdventureMan to find the ladies room, which is down one of two intertwining staircases.
Many Glacier Lodge is beautiful. I have a real weakness for the old, sturdy, long built lodges, but many times the rooms small and the spaces crowded. Many Glacier Lodge had a couple tour groups waiting to catch the excursion boat, and many die-hard hikers, headed for the beautiful hikes available. It turned cold, and an icy rain began to fall heavily. Even though I was raised hiking in rain, I don’t much like it, especially when I end up cold and wet. I have turned into a total wuss.
We took our time driving back and began to look for a place to have brunch. We had thought the Lodge, but it did not offer breakfast to people who were not guests. In Babb, nothing was open. In St. Mary’s, nothing was open. In Browning, nothing was open, I had an idea in East Glacier, but it was also closed.
Nearby was the Whistle Stop restaurant, and this is not untypical of our entire trip, when we stepped up to the counter to be seated, the lady told us it would be a wait, they could only serve so many people at a time with their limited staff and breakfast was just finishing and lunch was about to begin.
And, again, it was a demographic. The cook staff seemed to be mainly men in their thirties and forties; the waitstaff seemed to be women in their sixties and seventies. The young people are non-existent. We wait, first in line, as couples and groups come in behind us and get on the list. “Why wait?” you may ask. We scoped out the options, from Saint Mary’s to Browning to East Glacier – everything we found was closed this Sunday morning; The Whistle Stop is open. It’s the only open restaurant we found.
In spite of being on the Blackfeet reservation, in spite of the sign on the door, the staff is not wearing masks.
After half an hour, we were seated.
Now the good news. The food we ordered turned out to be really good, and even better, they had wonderful pies.
I had a zucchini soup that knocked my socks off. I ordered the salmon dinner (you can take the girl out of Alaska, but you can’t take the Alaska out of the girl) which turned out to have a LOT of food – corn on the cob, rice, and a baked potato. After the soup, which was really really good, I could only eat a little of the salmon, so I took the rest with me in a box to warm up for dinner. AdventureMan had a salad and chili, and he ordered a stuffed baked potato to-go which he could warm up for dinner. Their stuffed baked potatoes had a whole menu of items to choose from; AdventureMan choose chili, cheese and sour cream and couldn’t finish it at dinner.
Next to us in the restaurant sat Paul and Bonnie, from upstate New York, continuing their quest to visit every capitol in every state of the United States. They had just come from Helena, to which we are headed the next day, so we had a great conversation. They had not yet visited Alaska or Washington, so we were able to give them some hints, too, mainly about the Alaska Maritime Highway System, which is our secret to visiting the real Alaska.
We take the afternoon off. AdventureMan is coughing, and the one thing we really do not want to do is to get sick. We have books with us, we have our cozy cabin, we are happy to catch up on rest and relaxation. We have dinner ready to warm up. It’s a great day.
Into the Great Wide Open (Montana and Wyoming) Day 3
Going to the Sun Road
We’ve been in Glacier National Park before, but I have never been here when Going-to-the-Sun road has been open. We tend to travel in Spring, before school gets out and we want to be available over the summer to help with care of our grandchildren. The last time we were here, it was early June, and Going-to-the-Sun road wasn’t open, would not be open until June 20th. Some bicyclists has been caught in a Spring avalanche, and disaster crews were busy trying to find them, and rescue them before they perished. These mountains are nothing to fool with.
It’s a cloudy day, and AdventureMan is grumping at me about getting up so early. I want to be there for the morning light, and we are about 30 miles away from the entrance. We take a twisty-turny road, have a lovely sunrise, then get to the entrance. I had gone to a lot of trouble to get a reservation; Going-to-the-Sun road went reservation only for the summer, but when we get to the gate, there is no one there to look at our pass, so we drive along. There is no rain, but there are dramatic clouds. The scenery is spectacular. We have the road to ourselves, for the most part, up to Logan Pass.
We intended to hike some of the trails at Logan Pass, but at 0753 at Logan Pass, every parking lot is full, there isn’t a parking spot to be had. Just after the pass, which was the only crowded place we found on the entire drive, we stopped at a lookout on the other side. It was very cold, snow was in pockets where little sun reaches and the air had the sharp clean smell of pine trees. We did a short hike starting on a frosty, slick boardwalk to overlook a valley, then headed back. The smell of the fresh clean pine was intoxicating.
We head down toward Lake MacDonald, stopping where we can to walk and to take photos of scenery and waterfalls. It is a spectacular, memorable morning altogether, but we are freezing cold. Clothing that was adequate for the high elevation at the entrance is pathetically not suitable for the high elevation and the bone-chilling winds. We walk anyway. There is snow. It is beautiful.
When we finally get back down to the Lake MacDonald Road, once again, all the parking spots are taken. We love the lodge at Lake MacDonald and had thought to stop there for breakfast on our way to Kalispell, but we could see that would not be possible.
We love Kalispell, Montana, and one of our major plans was to hit the Kalispell Farmer’s Market and pick up some Flathead Cherry Juice, which we love drinking. We had also thought we would see if anyone brews a Flathead Cherry Juice liqueur, so we headed on towards Kalispell with the help of the Bossy Lady.
AdventureMan gets short tempered with me when I am navigating. Sometimes I don’t communicate clearly, sometimes not quickly enough. So for several years now, ever since I discovered Google Maps, I have been getting directions, and putting them on speaker phone. It works like a charm. AdventureMan gets SO annoyed, but not with me, with the Bossy Lady! She doesn’t take any of his annoyance seriously, she just carries on with aplomb. We can laugh about it.
The closer we get to the market, the quieter we get. It started sprinkling on the way to Kalispell, but as we enter Kalispell, it is pouring rain. We carry on to the market, and there are about ten hard-core vendors there, none of which are the Flathead Cherry Juice vendors.
We visit a couple sports stores in the area, looking for a long sleeved “performance layer” or “basic layer” because AdventureMan just brought one, and it is COLD. We don’t find what he needs.
We head into Kalispell to dry off and warm up, and find the Ceres Bakery, on Main Street, and it is just what we need. We have gorgeous, tasty pastries; I have a Mocha cafe and a brioche like ball that has cinnamon sugar on the top and a croissant like interior. AdventureMan has a Pain au Chocolat and a cup of hot chocolate. It is delightful, with a mouthwatering display of breads available in addition to the pastries.
The Bossy Lady takes us on some back roads to get us back to Highway 2, which will take us back to the East Glacier Park side. It is very rural, but also avoids all the traffic of the major roads.
East Glacier Park has a glorious big timber lodge, Glacier Park Lodge, which unfortunately, is not serving meals but doing take out only. Meal options in East Glacier are limited, even the Mexican restaurant is closed until dinner. On our way in, AdventureMan sees a sign for the Isaak Walton Inn and asks me what it is. I tell him I am not entirely sure, but I know it has a good reputation and has something to do with railroads. We decide if they have a restaurant open, we will stop there for lunch.
The Izaak Walton Inn was an old railroad stop for visitors to the Glacier National Park, famous for it’s atmosphere and food. In this time of COVID, they were still serving meals, although the menu is more limited.
We are happy to have a booth in an unpopulated part of the restaurant. Our meals are good, above average, not great. No photos, can’t even remember what we ate. As we finish, a large group with a guide comes in to take a large table right next to our booth, so we put our masks back on and exit as quickly and graciously as possible.
We are tired and still wet and cold when we get back to our cabin, but AdventureMan makes a wonderful discovery – the gas fireplace we have not been able to figure out how to turn on is operated by the thermostat on an opposite wall. Now we have a beautiful gas fire and a toasty cabin to warm up in.
For dinner, we go into Browning, on the Blackfeet Reservation, where there are two grocery stores and I find Ramen and AdventureMan finds Campbells Vegetable Soup, which suits us both just fine. The grocery store is clean and well organized, and there is a man at the door, masked, who takes our temperatures as we enter. The Blackfeet Nation is taking COVID very seriously. Did you know of all the ethnic groups, the First Nation peoples have the highest rate of vaccination in the country? We feel very safe staying in East Glacier Park. We have a microwave and refrigerator in the cabin, hot soup is the perfect ending to a chilly day.
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