Sep 16, 2012 - Kalispell, MT

Day Sixteen: Destination - Going-to-the-Sun Road Soundtrack - Garbage, Fleetwood Mac, and Red Hot Chili Peppers After our delicious pudgy pie egg sandwiches, we cleaned up camp and made our way to Going-to-the-Sun Road. The drive was beautiful as promised. Roughly half way through our drive we stopped to eat lunch and chatted with a Vanagon owner. He told us about an apparently fantastic hike to iceburg lake. It sounded insanely awesome, but it was already 1:00 and a 15 mile hike wasn't going to happen if we wanted to drive along...

Aug 11, 2012 - Great Bear Adventure

Whitefish, MT Following a suggestion made by friends in Delaware, we headed to Great Bear Adventure in Coram, Montana. We got there too early so indulged ourselves with a round of mini golf. Strange course. The cups are so shallow that the ball bounces back out of them pretty regularly. This makes for very inflated scores and colorful language. We finished and headed for the Great Bear Adventure. The bears here are "at large" on the property and the car is the people cage. This is the bears' environment so they totally ignore the cars. We...

Aug 10, 2012 - Wheeeee!

Whitefish, MT The 23rd annual Huckleberry Days Arts Festival in Whitefish is this weekend. With over 100 vendors, of course we went. We are constantly amazed at what they make with huckleberries. Besides the things that usually come to mind like jam and syrup, we saw popcorn, candles, honey, bark, tea, coffee, wine, beer, lemonade, licorice, cocoa mix, vinaigrette, BBQ Sauce, brownie mix, and flap jacks. We have heard that some people actually eat them as berries, too. Lunch today was at Piggyback BBQ, wonderful food in a made-over house....

Aug 9, 2012 - No escape

Kalispell, MT One of our goals on this trip was to avoid summer. Unfortunately, since we left the coast, the temperature has been steadily climbing. We are now in Kalispell where, oh joy, oh joy, the newspaper headlines are full of woe. They are setting new heat records – just in time for us to share with them. It hit 86° here today and the locals are unhappy. They are not accustomed to temperatures in the high 80's and there are even rumors that it might hit 90°. When considering the temps around other parts of the country, maybe it really...

Aug 8, 2012 - Attack!

Kalispell, MT We know we will have to deal with them eventually but so far we had not had to battle mosquitoes. Today changed that. We went to Kootenai Wildlife Preserve. The trail to Myrtle Falls was one of the fastest we have ever done - because we were practically running to escape the kamikaze mosquito hordes. And they were huge mosquitoes, too, not a fledgling class of tormentors but experienced ones that knew how to extract maximum payment. We did not exactly admire the falls since it was such a quick peek but the Ranger assured us...

Jul 25, 2012 - Kalispell

We left this morning from LoLo (SW of Missoula) to travel about 135 miles up to Kallispell, MT. It was a very scenic drive, through Flathead Reservation land, and all along the Flathead Lake which is almost 30 miles long and fifteen miles across at it's widest point. Flathead Lake is the largest natural freshwater lake in western U.S. created by Ice Age glaciers. The views of the lake, shoreline and Rocky Mountains (bordering to the east) were breathtaking all along our drive. Since this was Flathead country, there were many signs with both...

Jul 24, 2012 - Rocky Mountain Hi RV park-Kalispell, MT

We booked a week here at Rocky Mountain Hi RV Park in Kalispell, MT. It is a nice park with both trees and open sites. We stayed here a week, there are lots of things to do in the area. We drove the Road to the Sun in Glacier National Park. (We thought of you here a lot, Dr. B) Temperatures were great, 50’s at night and low 80’s in the daytime.

Jul 23, 2012 - Kalispell, MT

The day started out cold and windy but the sun soon warmed things up. Our plans were to go to the east entrance of Glacier National Park. Since we had already been there before and since it was too far out of our way, we went to Kalispell instead. At the border between Idaho and Montana is the lowest point in Montana, 1820 feet. On the way we stopped at the Kootenai River and Falls outlook. The falls were a distance from the road but it was well worth the time and effort to get there. It is so beautiful! The river is named for the Kootenai...

Jul 13, 2012 - Dining on the Flathead

One of the reasons for coming up this far into Montana was to meet up with Ron and Debbie from Surprise and their family, including Jilly the dog. They were visiting Ron’s mom, Tabby, in Big Fork. We met Tabby and Bob when we all went out to dinner in Surprise. They were wintering in Scottsdale at the time. Big Fork is just down the road a piece from our Kalispell location. Armed with our trusty, Emily GPS, we headed south towards Flathead Lake in the late afternoon to meet up with all of them for some food and drink aboard their patio...

Jul 13, 2012 - Horsing Around

Today we went to an equestrian event at Rebecca Farms just outside of Kalispell. There were over 500 riders taking part in at least three events. Dressage, show jumping, and cross country events were sprawled out across rolling hills covered in green grasses or brilliant yellow canola. There is a tall hill in the middle of the ‘farm’ called Spectator Hill. From up there you can keep decent track of the cross country races. We went over to one of the arenas when we first arrived and watched one of the dressage events for a while. Then we...

Jul 12, 2012 - Lazy Days in Montana

We are currently living in the ‘crown of the continent’ as this area of Montana is called. We are next to Glacier National Park with the backbone of the Rocky Mountains and continental divide running right through the park. The mountains can be seen from every location in the Flathead Valley and for sure out on Flathead Lake. The lake is the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi. On one of our excursions we drove to a section of the Stillwater River where years ago I had encountered a moose while fishing the river. The river...

Jul 8, 2012 - Glacier National Park

To beat the heat in Kalispell, we drove up to Glacier National Park on US 2 along the Flathead River, entered the park from the east and exited the park on the west side. It was about 10 degrees cooler than Kalispell, but still warm for Glacier. Even though it was 84 degrees at Logan Pass, the Highline Trail was still covered with snow and closed. The weeping wall on Going to the Sun Road was more than weeping and Nancy was half out the window trying to catch a shower to cool down. We had lunch at Johnson’s Campground in St. Marys. We knew...