dare2go

Montana: Big Sky


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We spent the night at Crossroads Inn - not one of our favourite things to do and exacerbated by the fact that they only had smoking rooms left at that time of the evening, and all other motels were full. We did have a very pleasant dinner at the Dixie Inn next door, where the staff was friendly and we had a chat with some other dinner guests, who were on their way down from Anchorage.
On Friday morning we had to walk to the repair shop by 8.00 to hand the keys over. It was a good mile and it was raining. Not pleasant weather here at all! The diagnosis was glow plugs and the mechanic could replace them that afternoon. We considered this good news as it could certainly have been something worse, and considerably more expensive. It could also have meant spending the weekend in Shelby waiting for parts to arrive from elsewhere! The motel was nice enough to extend our check-out time to 12.00 and then we had to ask someone from Van Motors to pick us and our stuff up from there as Shelby has no taxi service. Later I discovered that they also had no rental cars (we had planned to hire a car and drive back to Glacier NP over the weekend if we had to wait for parts until Monday).
So we sat the afternoon out at Van Motors. I took a walk down the main street of Shelby and was thankful again that we weren't staying for the weekend! We did get to go shopping at Albertson's, which was right next door - those of you who follow us closely will remember that this is one of our preferred supermarkets in the States. They usually have some good Australian wines at a reasonable price on their shelves, and even though this one didn't have a wide range, we found a couple of bottles to tide us over until we reach a larger centre. Wine in Canada was generally quite expensive and it is sold in bottle shops, like in Australia. In the US almost all supermarkets we have come across sell wine and often have great specials.
At about 4.00 we were on our way again. We were heading back to Glacier NP because I/we (some disagreement about whose responsibility it actually was!) had inadvertently left Juergen's reading glasses at the Ranger Station on Thursday when the tow truck had arrived. Some 8 miles past Cut Bank, Juergen suddenly noticed that the battery wasn't charging. Since it was quite flat after trying to start the truck on Thursday morning and also running the hazard lights for the entire journey behind the tow truck, this was a major concern. I tried to call Van Motors and got an answering machine - it was almost 5.30. We raced back to Cut Bank (fortunately the wind was behind us!) to try to find someone who could fix a cable connector to the generator - the mechanic must have broken it without noticing during his repairs. We found a light on at Glacier repair shop and one of the mechanics was nice enough to come and fix it for us, even though by now it was almost 6.00, and a Friday evening as well, when everyone wants to be finished work for the week. Feeling very lucky indeed, we turned around and headed toward Glacier NP again.
It was a cold and intermittently rainy journey and towards the end some snow fell. We only ran the heater and windshield wipers as often as we absolutely had to in order to let the battery charge as much as possible. We are not totally confident that we are going to get the truck to start this morning, but we'll keep our fingers crossed! We arrived at St Mary at about 7.30 and drove into Johnson's campground. It was barely 1° outside. We plugged into the power and turned our furnace on full - the inside of the camper wasn't much warmer than outside!
This morning it was no longer raining but it was definitely snowing. Not much of it was lying on the ground, but the flakes were coming down. At least it is drier than walking around in the rain! Visibility seems to be increasing as I sit and look out the window across a rather pretty lake. We will have to drive a bit today to really make sure the battery is charged, but what else can one do in such weather - hike along a trail in the National Park? I don't think so...

Monday, 18 September 2006, Kalispell, MT
Truck started perfectly first time so it's back in our good books! We drove up to Many Glacier first to pick up the reading glasses. The snow had stopped and the cloud had lifted up to the mountain tops, so we had a nice view of the mountains on the drive into Many Glacier. However, we discovered from the ranger that the Going to the Sun Road, which goes through the middle of the park, is closed due to heavy snowfall. This was a bit of a disappointment as we had hoped to drive that route (waiting for the weather to clear was no option either since the road was scheduled to be closed from Monday onwards for repairs). Now we will have to drive south and west along the park's edge.
After picking up the glasses, we stopped at the Many Glacier Hotel to have lunch. The hotel was built between 1914 and 1917, and in 1915 it started to receive guests. It was one among many built by the Great Northern Railway to increase its number of passengers travelling to Glacier, which was becoming a tourist destination at that time. The building is now on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's list of "America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places". The harsh winters have taken their toll, but the building's rehabilitation is underway. The dining room has a lovely view across Swiftcurrent Lake to the mountains. Walking toward the hotel we saw another 3 bears on the same piece of hillside as on Wednesday when we first drove into the park, but I assume they were the same mother and two cubs, so have decided not to add them to our count!
On leaving Many Glacier we drove south, back through St Mary's where we had spent the night (and where one would normally enter the park to drive the Going to the Sun Road), and back along the road toward Browning that we had driven on Friday evening. We drove again through a forest that had recently suffered a ferocious fire. The area had received enough snow that it was still on the ground and tree skeletons, and the whole place looked really eerie! About 12 miles from Browning we turned onto the 49, which would take us to East Glacier. It was a winding road and the surface was not great, but it had some really great views.
Once we hit the Highway 2 we found the drive around the edge of the park from East to West Glacier really enjoyable. Juergen particularly liked it because it was a good road, with not a lot of traffic, and he could look around more easily than usual. The scenery changed often, from driving along river flats to driving through deep canyons. The highest point, Maria's Pass at just over 5000 feet, caught us by surprise because we hadn't really been aware of climbing and the immediate area was quite flat, with tall Rocky Mountains either side. But from there we really noticed that we were mostly going downhill. We stopped at one point to check out what looked like beaver dams along the roadside. Neither of us know much about beavers, but this certainly looked like what we'd seen on television. Some internet research after the fact confirmed our suspicions and we also found out that one of the reasons researchers think beavers build these dams is to stop the noise of rushing water - I guess they want peace and quiet to sleep like everyone else!
When we reached West Glacier, where the Going to the Sun Road comes out of the park, we turned south to Kalispell and left the border of the park. This area is not a pleasant drive anymore as there are many tourist facilities along this particular stretch to cater for people who stay outside the park and take the various trips offered to sightsee.
We found a great Campground in Kalispell - the Rocky Mountain Hi RV Park & Campground - and liked the ambience and peacefulness of it so much that on Sunday morning we decided to spend another night here and just relax. Sunday dawned in fog but when it lifted it gave us a predominantly blue sky and much needed sunshine. We both spent a considerable part of the day sitting outside soaking up as much sun as we could.

Tuesday, 19 September 2006, Yellowstone NP, WY
Today we left Montana to enter Wyoming briefly, so I'll close this description with our journey via Butte (one of the largest National Historic Landmark Districts in the USA) to Yellowstone National Park (the world's first National Park).
We left Kalispell and drove south past Flathead Lake, named for the local native people who have a reservation which surrounds the southern portion of the lake. We were pleasantly surprised to notice that this particular lake had not been turned into one big tourist destination. There was some accommodation and a few State Park campgrounds, but the lakeshore is largely populated by ordinary people with ordinary lives. The predominant farming in the area appears to be fruit orchards, with many roadside stalls advertising cherries. Unfortunately too late in the year for them to be open and selling their wares! Some of the road also ran directly along the edge of this calm and very large lake. It made us wish we had a boat.
On our way from Flathead Lake to Missoula, we encountered the longest and seemingly most disorganised road works we have to date. It was not really possible to even ascertain what they were trying to do - but I think they were making a 4-lane out of a 2-lane road. The temporary rough dirt road must have continued for a minimum of 15 miles. At least when we drove the Dempster Highway, there seemed to be a reason for driving such a dusty, pot-holed road!
Just before Missoula we joined the Interstate 90. Missoula is a fairly typical university town, for which we left the highway and drove through, stopping long enough for a coffee. We rejoined the I-90 until we reached the 'Pintler Scenic Route', which also goes to Butte but travels via Phillipsburg, and Anaconda. We chose this route only to leave the interstate, but were rewarded with a visit to Phillipsburg, an historic mining town whose town centre is tastefully restored and has the most amazing candy store that I have ever set foot in! It is still renowned for mining sapphires, and has been known for over 100 years for its exotic, colourful and rare mineral specimens. We drove straight through Anaconda, which originated as a town surrounding a smelter built there in 1882, to process the vast amounts of copper being mined at nearby Butte. Since the smelter closed down in 1980 it is reinventing itself as a tourist destination. We did wonder if it got its name from the fact that it is so long and narrow, rather like the snake it is named for!
We picked Butte from the map as a smallish town on the way from Glacier to Yellowstone that we could use as a post office address to receive our new car registration. But in the meantime Juergen discovered in the Lonely Planet that it was a major historic mining site. We arrived just in time to pick up the mail and then drove into the uptown area, which is full of historic buildings. Unlike Bodie in California and Barkerville in British Columbia, which were rather "frontier like" with mostly wooden buildings, Butte is full of late 19th and early 20th century buildings, that are not only of solid structure, but mostly architecturally designed. We realised that we had lucked out by picking a place from a map!
Butte began as a gold mining camp but by the 1870s the gold had petered out and only the determined stayed on to mine silver. At the end of this decade, a number of things occurred which changed the fortunes of Butte almost overnight. The first was the discovery of the richest copper deposit ever found. The second was the advancement in smelting technology which made it much more profitable to extract metals. The railroads also reached Butte which made transportation cheaper and easier. And copper was suddenly in great demand by the electrical and telecommunications industries which were just starting out. Butte didn't develop as a little frontier mining town, but became a 'mini New York' with theatres, hotels and restaurants and the town's millionaires and businessmen began to build lavish houses for their families and buildings for their businesses. Hundreds of these buildings are still part of the Butte skyline and provided us with several hours of interesting walking, both yesterday evening and this morning.
We spent the night out of town somewhat at Fairmont Campground. After more exploring of Uptown Butte this morning, we shopped for food and left around midday to drive to Yellowstone. As usual we sought an alternative to the highway and drove through a variety of landscapes including vast farming areas and some of the Gallatin National Forest, where the road followed the edges of first Earthquake Lake and then Hebgen Dam. Earthquake Lake was formed by a strong earthquake in the 1959. We arrived at West Glacier, a very tourist oriented town and turned into Yellowstone National Park late this afternoon. But Yellowstone must wait for the next report.
Montana number plates bear the phrase "The Big Sky", and the sense of space here has been one of the things we have particularly noticed and enjoyed. Most of the landscape here in the west of the state has been in or near the Rocky Mountains. A lot of the roads pass through wide valleys, with the often snow-capped mountains always in view - except when covered with cloud. These valleys are used mostly for farming which is generally related to cattle or horses. We read that stock outnumber humans in this state 12 to 1 and this is obvious by the fact that every paddock of cows has at least a hundred in the herd. We saw several thousand cattle just driving 'Pintler Scenic Route'. I have to admit that I hadn't expected to enjoy driving through Montana as much as I have.