Rocky Mountain Way

Day 6: (Again?)

We had a nice steak dinner at the aptly named Wolf Lodge. It was a lone red building on a frontage road between I-90 and our freeway-side campground. Dinner was good and plentiful. The smallest cut, called the Little Cowboy was a 16oz top sirloin. They also had "steak fries" that were whole potatoes quartered the long way. Add to that the fact that my son's "child steak" was mistakenly replaced with a full 16oz cut and we had enough steak to keep us happy for several meals to come. One side that I'd never seen before was kreble, a light bread somewhere between an oven roll and a croisant. I took as many of those as I could.

Morning two of the stay at Coeur D'Alene dawned with the patten of rain on our tent. In that half-logic haze that comes with having just woken up, I managed to get myself dressed and my sleeping bag rolled up in record time only to realize that I wasn't going to get any further than that. My family was still blissfully sleeping through it. Luckily it was just a passing shower and we only got a few drops through the nylon.

Coeur D'Alene to Glacier National Park

There wasn't much to report about the journey beyond a 10 mile jaunt backwards for breakfast at the last Starbucks for 100 miles. It was the first time we travelled seperately and the first opportunity (missed in this case) we had to have a caravan of three.

This part of the trip was much more to my liking. Fast, no-nonsense, get-me-there-faster-than-possible driving with occasional stops for points of interest and bathrooms. Our big stop was at Flathead Lake in Montana. We pulled into the state park for a quick picnic lunch by the lake. No fast food, no drive-throughs, just the family hauling out the cooler with our soft drinks and left over steak from last night. Lay the table cloth on the picnic bench while the kids skipped rocks, break out some napkins for plates, lay some sandwich bread on it and we're in business. There's someting about this simple self-sufficiency that makes me feel at peace.

After lunch, we got down to the serious business of stone skipping. There was no lack of flat krugrand-sized stones on this shore line and I launched was must have been a 15-hopper (with pitter-pats at the end). I should have left well enough alone and been satisfied wiht that through because it got no better.
The drive up to and beyond Flathead lake, we marked by intermittent bursts of cell reception where we tried desperately to figure out everyone's location. It was a comical game of cell tag where we were never both in cell ranage at the same time. By the time we would pick up messages, it was too late to act on the info. Most of the calls were to voicemail - both to pick up or leave one.

Rocky Mountain Way

You know the old joke? There are three seasons in the Northwest: Summer, Winter and Road Construction. Guess which we hit? We were introduced to lose gravel and long waits for "Pilot Cars" that would lead us at an excrutiatingly slow pace through the recently applied white gravel. This seemed haunt us on and off for most of the way through Idaho and Montana.

Once beyond the lake we went through the gorgeous Flathead River Valley, a wide expanse sprinkled with lone farmsteads that evoked images of lone settler families and long wind-swept winters. I would look at these and wonder how their routine compared to mine: how far away was baseball practice? School? Where do take the family out for a nice evening after a long week at work?

We hooked up with the big trailer (30 foot 5th wheel) in the town of Kalispell, a surprisingly large town of around 30K. Kalispell is a half hour drive from the Glacier West entrance and our designaged place for supplies. It was also the new home of an old friend of the group who came up to visit our campsite.

After setting up camp in Glacier, it became clear that we wouldn't be repeating the Crater Lake version of the Donner Party. It was around 80 degrees at 6:30pm. The lows were only going to be in the 50s.

None of us rememebered that it was the first day of sumer and the longest day of the year. Where I come from, a long day means that it's not completely dark at 9pm. Here, on the western edge of the Mountain Time Zone, it was twilight until 10:30! Looking back, I wish I had taken this time to do some driving around Glacier. The light for photography is always best at dawn and dusk.