Surprise Endings

We are now in Gardiner, MT after spended the day driving through Yellowstone National Park, and yes the Van is fixed and back on the road now! Yesterday Adam, Andrew and I split up with the plan for me to go to Bozeman with the van and Adam and Andrew would hang back to camp until i was able to drive the van back through Ennis to pick them up. Then a whole work day later the guys at Auto Stop, the mechanic shop that worked on my vehicle, were able to drop my transmission and replace the clutch and throw everything back together before the end of the day. So one way or another the gang had reunited and we were bound by the sweat of our brows to make it out of the state of Montana by the end of the night, we made it 20 miles from Wyoming before we camped for the night. None of us expected to be camping where we were yesterday night because the mechanic had us believing it couldn't happen in a day but happily the stars aligned in our favor and they finished it for us! I planned on pitching a tent behind the mechanic shop and Andrew and Adam were going to camp along the Madison river back in Ennis. But gladly we woke up in the van this morning, we quickly hit the road for Yellowstone and once we got in, I got licensed to fish, we snapped some photos of Ol' Faithful and hit the road for some fishing spots and unfortunately have not done much fishing on the account of everybody else and their mothers was fishing on most of the off the road areas of the river! So we are planning to hike in to some remote areas and creeks in the north eastern parts of the park on Sunday. But we did enough driving through scenic Yellowstone that we got to see some massive herds of bison as well as the occasional elk, and lots of scenic views as i mentioned! We also got stopped by park police because apparently the horns on the van resemble horns that can be found in Yellowstone off of a bison, so the park had to verify their origin by going through pictures that were taken from the trip of the van in different states! Then we need to get a permit so we aren't harassed every time we go into a national park. Its against the law to possess, without a permit, horns from any within the park. Fun stuff we learn every day! But for us, we are off to find a shady campsite in some National Forest Land or Bureau of Land Management Land just outside of Yellowstone, Good evening Gardiner!  

New Pressure Plate

Old Remains of Pressure Plate

Ennis Hunger Games

So we are on the second night of this broken down adventure in Ennis, MT and we find ourselves spending most of our time watching movies from the local grocery store and we are only semi-stranded because we corral around town on our two bikes while the third man sticks with the van! At least once a day, out of our gratefulness for being able to park on their lawn for free, we eat at the restaurant we are next to. During Breakfast this morning our waitress, Kelly offered us her phone number and a spare key to her house so we could do laundry and shower...she is so awesome!

Ennis

But before we found ourselves here we stopped at a nice town, Deer Lodge, MT, on our way toward Ennis. We found the Montana State Prison Museum which had five different museums inside of it, our favorite part next to the prison portion was the automobile museum! Adam stumbled upon his dream car the 1967 Shelby GT 500 Mustang as seen in the movie Gone In Sixty Seconds if your interested in seeing it not parked. They also had other sweet cars going way back to the horse and buggy and the Ford Model-T all the way to VW Vanagons! We journeyed on through the museums and onto the prison sections where we learned histories of past inmates who caused major riots, how prisoners sculpted shanks and pipes and even guns! They would crack the tips off of match heads and save up enough match head powder to fill the tube of a metal pen, then cram a bunch of lead shards at the end of the tube, how successful it was i do not know but pretty scary to think how easy a gun can be devised! The prison closed off many of the anticipated parts of any prison, the cells, but naturally we found are way up to the cells pretty easily! At one point I reached my hand up over a crevice next to one of the holding cells just to see if I could find treasure and pulled out a pipe stem! The stem looked just like the ones that we saw in the historical contraband display cases early on in the museum 

Once that portion was finished we left as it was going on three hours that we had been going through this place, we stopped at the local A&W and grabbed lunch. We then jumped back on the highway toward Ennis, a town we picked from a recommendation from Suzanne Goulet because of the town's simple beauty, and go figure we break down right in the heart of it! But just 50 or 60 miles back we past through a few ghost towns which were filled with shops that had cowboy clothing and old-timey type things and people to animate the towns! It was fun, i had to resist the purchase of an old style top hat, it was one of the curvy ones that bows in the middle and then comes out at the top.... reeeeal fancy!  So after the ghost towns and such, we came through Ennis and this was purely to get gas at this point because we were set on a wal-mart for the evening. We drove 60 miles away from Ennis to Bozeman where we camped! Took off from Ennis once again because it is regarded as world class fly fishing country with the Madison River flowing right through the middle of it. Our plan was to do some fishing on the way to Yellowstone. We also needed to do some business at the Ennis post office so we stopped and i went in to mail some post cards and once i mailed my things the mail woman looked at me and said, "Goodluck."Now i paused in my head and wondered, "what a weird thing to say to a stanger?" Go outside and wouldn't you know it the transmission starts acting us and i go one block down the road and break down completely! That re-affirms for me the third eye we have and sometimes freakishly prove with predictions and little comments that couldn't have been foreseen! Very cool! So we rest on the second night of Ennis town living, where will will kill another day until we are towed to a mechanic we are scheduled to see on Thursday morning who is going to fix us up hopefully so we may be back on the road by friday!

 Goodnight Ennis!

Adam's dream car

Tunnel

View from solitary confinement

Off Limits

At least they had a view

Ennis

Bearclaws

Well, we are back in civilization for a bit. We spent the last 3 days in the West Glacier area traveling the dirt roads. We must have seen 100 deer and another grizzly, this one a bit bigger than the last. 

We drove Wednesday night up the North Fork Road which is right outside of West Glacier N.P and conveniently within National Forest Land. We found a place to camp for the night on the side of the road. When Thursday morning came we all awoke to temperatures near 40 and the pitter patter of rain on the roof…none of us were in a hurry to get out of our sleeping bags… When we finally did start to stir Andrew started to make coffee…then the propane ran out. We took out our backpacking stove and waited about 20 foggy minutes before the sounds of the percolator started erupting and then we all enjoyed one of the most anticipated cups of coffee ever. 

By the time we cleaned up the van and got ready to go it was noon, and we had all decided to just go into Kalispell and drift through antique shops on this cold rainy day. In town we did just that, found a few antique shops and then an army navy store…we all did the best we could to not spend much money. After getting some propane and shopping around we found our way back to the North Fork Road and went almost to the entrance of Glacier N.P. where we found our campsite. We did some fishing along the way but came up empty handed. The campsite was at a boat launch, still technically part of the National Forest but we could literally see the entrance to the park, perfect spot! Our fire was going for only a few minters before another truck pulled into the campsite. After a while they came over to visit with us, a trio of native Montanan's. We chatted with them for an hour or so, they told us we had stumbled upon a nice remote and beautiful part of Montana. The 3 guys soon left and we went to bed, us still the only ones in the campsite. 

Friday Morning we awoke to the hustle of people moving all around the van…we looked out the window to find about 5-6 other parties had moved in and set up camps. Apparently this secret site wasn't so secret. In front of us a man popped out of the back of his camper truck (Bob was his name) and told us about a party just down the road in Polebridge that was happening that night. We told him we would stop by. 

For about an hour we drove up to Kintla lake in Glacier N.P. We passed a border patrol truck parked as we approached the lake since we were about 5 miles from the Canadian border. When we got the the lake we pulled into the campground and met 3 park rangers who we conversed with briefly. They explained which trails were un-passable due to recent snowfall and then we talked about our vanagons (one of the rangers had one too!) Before we started to hike the edge of the lake we scoped out another vanagon at the campground, this one was 4WD (a gem in the vanagon community!). We packed up our gear and hit the trail and fished along the way. The trail offered us beautiful views of a pristine aqua blue lake with snowy mountains overhead and the lake offered Jon two lake trout! While fishing we heard the call of an owl. Jon called back and within 10 minutes the owl was in plain sight staring right at us, a bard owl as far as we can tell. It was amazing. Andrew got some awesome video of it, which is good because i didn't even bring my camera. Soon after the owl, a couple walked by us and stopped to share what they had found: a picture of a mountain lion track, and a grizzly bear claw that they picked up off the ground. After chatting with them we found out that they were the people who owned the 4WD vanagon that we were admiring.

We hiked for about 3 hours and then went back to the van around 7 p.m. We drove back to our original campsite just outside the park where even more people were now parked, gearing up for the party, and cooked the fish over the fire. Then we went to the party down the road.

Polebridge is a historic little town…I do mean little. Ok, so it's not actually a town. In the middle of the "town" is Polebridge Mercantile where you can buy anything if you've brought your checkbook, and a saloon right next door. There's also cabins that i'm assuming people rent, but don't really know. The town has no electricity other than what the solar panels and generators provide, and if you need a gallon of gas you better be prepared to pay $6.50 a gallon. 

It was about 10 p.m when we arrived at the party and people were playing frisbee in the street, drinking everywhere and everyone was calling each other by nicknames…we realized quickly everyone was a local but us. We at least looked the part of the locals with our shaggy beards, shaggy hair (well Jonathan anyway) and VW Van. We got out and played some frisbee then went to mingle. There were people talking, people dancing, a campfire, a glow in the dark volley ball game, and dogs running loose everywhere. Once inside the bar we listened to some live bluegrass music and wouldn't you know it Bob was the accordion player! Before long the 15x15 bar was packed and people were wooting and hollering, dancing and slapping their knees. Jon even tried the "yeeeehaww!" that everyone else was doing. We said hello to Bob and he told us where we could fill our water bottles at the spicket around the corner of the store. After filling the bottles we headed back to our campsite around midnight. We had a small fire and then went to bed. Around 1:30 the rest of the party showed up at the campsite and we let their "yeehaws" in the distance lull us back to sleep.

This morning we woke up, made some coffee and then conversed with a fellow camper "Stevo". Stevo also let us know that we had stumbled into a rare local niche, a very remote part of Montana but was very welcoming towards us into the local culture. Stevo happened to be the 3rd person to recommend getting a pastry at the Polebridge Mercantile, so we had to stop in; we shopped with and were waited on by the same people we saw at the party the night before…We got some delicious chicken sandwiches with chicken, bacon, swiss and ranch baked into a french loaf crust like a calzone and followed them up with some huckleberry bearclaws…wow is all I can say. I also got a couple more huckleberry beers which I tried last night!

Now we are on our way south towards Yellowstone, but plan to take our time stopping to camp and fish along the way and hopefully hit up some ghost towns. We just stopped in Kalispell to walk through some stores and see anything that we just need to have. Jon got an awesome cheap pair of sunglasses and Andrew got some Gators for hiking. We stopped into a little diner and grabbed a couple of buffalo  burgers and some fries followed up by free samples of fudge…which were enormous for samples…and unbelievably good. 

Hope to end up near Missoula for the night.

-Adam

Taking the time to smell the flowers

Laketrout

Rainbow

Rain rain go away, come again another....summer....

Hello from Glacier N.P.

Last night we got into Glacier N.P. after a hectic day of changing flats, plugging flats, buying tires and all that jazz, so we decided to splurge and spend the $10 on a campsite in Glacier. We found the Cutbank campground which is a primitive campground, meaning no running water and such. It seemed to suit our needs with the views. The only thing was the weather was pretty wet and loud. One local we talked to at a gas station told us its the worst weather she's seen here in years! The hail certainly caught us by surprise yesterday (videos on fb). So we stayed in the van for the night, keeping warm and dry and made ourselves some pancakes…again…we all decided no more pancakes for a while. We fell asleep to a movie, Touching The Void, which Andrew hadn't seen but is a must watch! It's a movie that proves we can do things we never believed we could if we just have the will.

This morning we ate some cereal for breakfast and then headed off into the park to drive The Going to The Sun Road. It's the main road through Glacier N.P. and is a marvel of engineering; the road cuts right along the sides of mountains with hairpin turns and serious inclines. It actually takes the park months to clear the road of snow, having to plow over 18 feet of snow off the roadway, consequently the road was not open completely yet so we could only drive 18 of the 50 miles, but they expect to have it open completely in 3 days. The views are absolutely unbeatable. It's similar to the grand canyon in that you can see pictures but they never do it justice. The road overlooks huge peaks with dozens of icy waterfalls, all the while driving along huge snowbanks…even in summer. We even got to see Jackson Glacier, one of the 26 remaining glaciers not expected to be around much past 2030.

Driving up the road we saw a couple other vanagons who of course gave us the "vanagon wave", it's like the jeep wave except usually it's done with more excitement and often a peace sign and even honking of the horn :) We stopped at a view point along the road to take some pics and breath it all in. To our surprise a bald eagle graced us with his presence, it was gliding maybe 40 or 50 feet about us! We also saw some bighorn sheep on some steep cliffs above us.

On the way back down the road we noticed some cars pulled off and we pulled over too and got a glimpse of our first GRIZZLY on the trip. It was just a yearling, not a small cub but definitely not full grown, so mamma was somewhere nearby for sure. Didn't seem to deter the other people in front of us from getting out of their car 30 yards from the bear and snapping pictures…

After we got off the road we went back through the small town of Kiowa on our way to West Glacier where we plan to sleep for the night. We stopped at a laundry mat and spent a few hoursdoing laundry. While the laundry was cookin we meandered into a wooden spoon shop,(thesprialspoon.com), with all hand carved spoons, absolutely gorgeous work. We chatted with the owner for a bit, grabbed a coffee next door and a brownie and waited for the laundry to get done. Now we are on our way to West Glacier, where we will find a campsite and probably stay inside to keep dry. We just saw an elk on the side of the road while I was typing this and managed to throw the computer down, grab the camera and get a few shots. 

Anyway, cross your fingers for good weather so we can do some fishing, we are supposed to get snow and sleet and thunder for the next two days sooooo….but we can't complain, we are kinda living the dream!

-Adam

Eagle is in center of photograph if you enlarge

Rocky Mountains and Flat Plains....and Tires

Well we drove all day Sunday and made it right outside of Glacier N.P. Sunday Evening. Along the way we had scenic views of the snow covered Rocky Mountains that met rolling green plains. About 40 miles south east of the park we turned down a dirt road that Jon had picked out on the map. The road led to a dam at the southern tip of Glacier N.P. but still outside the park. The dam is also located on National Forest land which means free camping. Right next to the dam is a beautiful volunteer maintained campground which was just perfect.

On the way to our camping spot

Our Campsite

We pulled into the dam area around 8 p.m. but since the sun doesn't go down till about 10 we still had some time to cast a line. No bites. Looking at the campground it was obvious we could have our pick of just about any site. While looking for a site we met Cliff who was part of the only other family camping at the campground. Cliff maintains the sites and gave us plenty of advice on which site to pick and where the best spots to hike and fish are! We set up camp and made some dinner and a fire and called it a night.

Mac and cheese and cheesy
potatoes for dinner

On Monday we got up around 8:30 a.m. and Jonathan made us some pancakes and coffee...mmmm. Afterwards the twins started up, and I do mean up, above the dam to the fishing spot Cliff suggested. I stayed back and did some laundry, but we were able to stay in touch using the walkie talkies. I soon joined them and we hiked for about two miles with scenic views the whole way. Sidenote: ironically the boys have been looking for a snake to play with the whole trip...on the way to meet them I came close to stepping on two...just gardner snakes I believe. We also saw a fox many times mingling with other campers, and we were told it even played with a ball some children left out at one point.

At the top of our hike we saw some thunderstorms moving in so I headed back to camp to try and save the drying laundry, but weather changes quick in the mountains and we all got caught in the storm. After we got back from the long hike we made some much needed food and then went back out to fish...and bathe. The water was cold, takes your breath away and your heart starts beating really fast....With the laundry still wet and the views beautiful we decided to stay one more day at this remote little site. Monday night we were treated to a thunderstorm off in the distance circling around us. Since it was off in the distance I was able to get some lightening shots.

That leaves us with today; we left the site this morning hoping to make it to Glacier N.P. by afternoon, however we had to plug a tire that had a hole in it first. After plugging the tire we started driving on the 18 mile freshly grated gravel road back to pavement where we picked up another flat tire, this time with two holes. We changed it out for the spare since the plug wouldn't hold and ventured on. We found a tire place about 12 miles out of the way and they were able to get one of the tires patched properly but Jon had to buy a new tire for the one with two holes because we just didn't trust it. Now we are on our way to Glacier...Unfortunately we hear the Going to the Sun Road is not passable because they are still plowing it but we can still drive on part of it which will be nice. Will update again soon.

-Adam

Laundry

Changing a tire with a view