Montana Revisited

For some reason I always have a hard time getting the posts up with pictures. We just bought a card reader so hopefully that will help. Anyways here's a much belated recap of our awesome trip to Montana last weekend.

We went to visit a friend who lives in Missoula. He lives just outside town and we rolled in late so didn't see the view out his window until the next day...It's very Montana, eh? I'm not sure if you can really see it in the picture but it was quite hazy due to forest fires going on all around us (my eyes were watering!). We took off straight away Saturday morning for Glacier National Park, which is only 100-some miles away but took hours because everyone and their mom is vacationing in Montana in July. Fortunately we took our friend's sweet new car and he drove.This was a lake we hiked to, which was in the middle of the park and at about 6,000 feet. Although the two boys I was with did not seem to mind the altitude and difficulty of the hike (of course it was cited as an "easy" hike in our hike book), I was dying and was tempted to drink all the water out of the lake once we got down there.

Glacier National Park is not only beautiful but it has two other features I really liked: 1) it has a 50-mile road snaking right through it so you can easily cruise through and check everything out and 2) there are abundant wild animals all over the park, some even hang out in the parking lots. We saw mostly mountain goats and rams, very close up. We even saw some babies!

After we drove through the park we went out for dinner at a local diner called the Park Cafe. You would think out there that everyplace would be a tourist trap but in fact it was excellent (although the building itself is a bit of a hole-in-the-wall). They had really unique, yummy meals, I had the Gypsy Burrito, and they have homemade pie to die for.

This is definitely a place to go. Hopefully we'll get another chance to go back. I feel like we barely scratched the surface and was really motivated to bring my tent next time so we can really wander around (with a map of course).