Vacation Time

Occasionally, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to travel great distances in fairly short periods of time.  When confronted with such situations, it is always wise to consider the practice of “flying.”  Flying is best achieved by visiting any of several “airports” in your neighborhood and boarding an appropriate “plane.”  Planes come in several sizes and colors and there is bound to be one just for you.  After you have chosen your personal plane, you should remember there are still pitfalls you might encounter on the way to your destination.  Sometimes, believe it or not, planes may depart or arrive late, mucking up your schedule.  Sometimes they might not depart at all due to “mechanical problems,” which is a phrase the airlines like to use instead of the more accurate “lack of sufficient passengers.”  Assuming all is in readiness, however, and you have boarded your flight and found your seat, you should be aware of The Three Irrevocable Rules Of Flying: 

The Three Irrevocable Rules Of Flying

1.    No passenger sitting in a window seat shall be allowed to enplane until all center and aisle seat passengers have been seated.  There will be NO exceptions.

2.     A sneezing, coughing, sniffing person shall be seated right next to or across from YOU.  This is an absolute requirement.

3.     An unruly infant possessed of great lungs and inexhaustible crying power will be entrenched as close as possible to YOUR seat.  WARNING: If you ask to be moved, you will be placed next to an 80-year-old lady who has stories of her great-grandchildren to tell.

On To Kalispell

Siobhan and I flew on Delta to Kalispell, Montana, gateway to Glacier National Park, on August 1 for an eight-day vacation.  Except for the Irrevocable Rules Of Flying, all went well.  We changed planes in Denver and made it to Montana a little early.  There were no luggage snafus despite the fact Siobhan was along and the rental car was sitting there waiting.  Who could ask for anything more?  Our hotel, the Hampton Inn, was perfect, possessed of a fine indoor swimming pool and a large very warm hot tub (which we used) adjacent.  The concierge was helpful, the computer room even more so and the maid left candy bars on the nightstand.  Is this a great campground or what?

Kalispell is the pragmatic central city of the area.  The downtown is a collection of mostly old but occupied buildings presided over by an iconic old courthouse.  The residences in the immediate downtown area are old and attractive one-family houses in tree-shaded neighborhoods.  Shockingly, people actually WALK AROUND here, reminding you of the place you grew up in.  Everybody is white and nice, even though they are all Romney voters and hoot over global warming.  The town extends out in two directions along Montana routes 2 and 93, with a liberal sprinkling of commercial businesses dotting the roadsides.  A lot of building supply places, outdoor-sports suppliers and what the proprietors call “casinos,” small and limited versions of the real thing.  The mountains are visible in the distance.  From Kalispell, it is a mere 35 miles to Glacier National Park, about 45 minutes driving time in attractive surroundings.  Early on the morning of August 2, we trundled out there.

The Red Bus Tour

The seventeen-seat tour buses are a well-recognized part and parcel of Glacier Park.  They embark on numberless tours of every description which extend from four hours to all day long.  The four-hour cost is $50 per person, plus tip.  Everybody tips.  Otherwise, they run over you with the bus.  We marched up to the counter in the Apgar region of the park at 8 a.m. and told them we wanted a couple of tickets.

“Which day?” the ticket person asked.

“Well, today, of course,” we said. 

The ticket agent looked at us like we made a funny joke.  But then she found a couple of seats for the 3:30 tour and we signed up.  Not having brought hiking gear in expectation of riding the bus all day, we decided to drive over to a little town called Whitefish, about half an hour away.

Whitefish

Nice place.  Very artsy-fartsy with interesting locally-owned non-mall shops of every description.  Siobhan found stone plates and other assorted bounty, including a raft of international coffees.  They like coffee in Montana.  You would, too, if it was freezing nine months a year where you live.  Whitefish has a little theater, a small beach and five massage therapists on the main street alone.  People are not poor in Whitefish.

The Red Bus Tour, Part II

We arrived early for our bus tour, chatting up the park rangers and the co-tourists.  When the bus arrived, Siobhan made sure to sit in the middle so she wouldn’t have to look over the edges of the notoriously steep cliffs on the narrow, winding road to 6600-plus-foot Logan’s Pass.  The buses are equipped with tarps to roll over the frames and create a roof in bad weather but these are left off most of the time, the better for amateur photographers to ply their trade.  The bus stops at various points to pick up people and at scenic spots for the passengers to debark and gawk at the views.  And the views are magnificent, snow-capped mountains yielding to beautiful deep valleys filled with spectacular lakes and rushing creeks, waterfalls everywhere.  Siobhan still likes Yosemite best but purely on scenery I’ll take Glacier.  The Going To The Sun Road trip, which extends from one side of the park (Apgar) to the other, at St. Mary’s, has got to be the most scenic drive in the country.  Eventually, we arrived at Logan’s Pass, the Continental Divide.  The temperatures, which had been warm at lower altitudes, took a decided dip up here.  It was cold and windy.  We had planned a hike here later in the week and decided warmer gear was in order.  On the way out of the parking lot, a sizeable longhorn sheep meandered by for a look.  There was an abundance of bikers in the area and we figured the noise would scare him off but he just pooh-poohed the activity and waltzed slowly to the other side, photobugs following his every step.  It’s tough to be famous, even for sheep.

On the trip back down the mountain, a merry session of picture-taking was quickly broken up by a sudden brief hailstorm, not unusual in the mountains.  The wary bus driver, having been earlier advised by the Glacier version of Weather Central, wisely had the roof back up.  The giddy passengers, laughing and stumbling, funneled their ways back inside, we retired to the final stop and the tour was over.  A good time was had by all.

Hiking Time

Having been hiking slackers for a couple of years, we decided to edge into it gradually with a 4.7 mile round trip hike through the Trail of the Cedars and on to Avalanche Lake, on the way to which you will find several enormous boulders along the trail.  The first part of the hike, past roaring Avalanche Creek, was colorful and the climb was insignificant.  Eventually, the trail opened onto a lakebed with a terrific view—four long waterfalls in the distance hurtling down the hillsides.  We sat down to enjoy the view and have lunch.  Cliff Bars, bananas and apples were served.  Gatorade was the beverage of choice.  All this hiking and eating prepared us for the next, more difficult hike to Hidden Lake from the Logan’s Pass Visitor Center the same afternoon.

To get to Logan’s Pass, we took the park shuttle, a wonderful invention which stops everywhere and doesn’t require much of a wait.  It’s also free.  A person on a tight budget might forego the Red Bus tour and merely travel around on the park shuttles which take the same routes, although without the narrative.  Once there, we traipsed up the incline—a much greater one than the previous trail offered—and through the slippery snowfields to Hidden Lake, a little gem worth visiting.  Siobhan has to be careful about these things because she has one knee which is subject to go out on occasion.  First, she took very small steps, then found a walking stick—more of a cudgel, actually—to brace herself with.  Neither of us had appropriate footwear, which we attended to that evening at a gigantic gear store in Kalispell.  I DID have hiking shoes, of course, before the horrible….

Night Of The Clown Shoes

After our Red Bus Tour, I noticed the bottoms of my hiking shoes, both of them, oddly enough, were beginning to release from the toe and sides as if the warranty had just expired and it was okay to immediately die now.  They were barely attached as we walked into a Subway to get some dinner.  As we sat down with our sandwiches, I began laughing.  Siobhan looked at me, quizzically.

“Siobhan,” I bemoaned my fate, “I have clown shoes.”  I couldn’t stop laughing.

Siobhan, who rarely laughs out loud, is, for some reason, enormously entertained by clown shoes.  She looked down and began laughing hysterically.  And fairly loudly, I might add.  This went on for awhile as we were rendered immobile and the staff and customers of the restaurant began casting curious glances in our direction.

“I hope,” I managed to gasp, “they don’t think we’re laughing at them.”  More tearful laughing from Siobhan and the party rolled along.  We finally ran out of gas and ate our dinner.  When we got to the hotel parking lot, the bottom of the left shoe came off completely, causing ongoing hilarity.  The Night Of The Clown Shoes stumbled on.

Big Fork And Beyond

Located near the northeastern shores of the vast Flathead Lake, 15 miles south of Kalispell, Big Fork is a quaint little town in a beautiful setting.  The Saturday we visited, an art festival reigned and it was easily the equivalent of Gainesville’s Spring Arts Festival.  We picked up gifts and more suitcase-stretching personal treasures, had a quick lunch and rolled southward along the lake toward Polson.  This area must be the Cherry Capital of the World.  Every piece of property had signs out advising of cherry availability—it went on for miles and miles.  After reaching Polson, just south of the tip of Flathead Lake, we headed for Hot Springs, where the local waters are alleged to have therapeutic qualities.  How do I describe Hot Springs—funky?  Dirt poor?  In the middle of nowhere?  Biker-filled?  All of these would suffice.  We drove around, looking for the ideal spot but not finding it.  Everyplace was either too smarmy, not private enough or lacking in some other requisite amenity.  We drove back along the entry road to a place called Wild Horse Hot Springs, a dubious spot several miles down a dirt road.  One thing about this place—it certainly was private enough.  I went inside the propped open screen door to a depressingly dark and dank corridor just off the main office where a middle-aged woman was swabbing the watery walkway with a large mop, a hopeless job considering the magnitude of the small lake she was battling.  I asked her about her services.  She led me to a dungeon-like room, one of several, made completely of stone with stairs descending into a dungeon-like 10x10 area filled to the waist with water.  A giant pipe hung in one corner.  The tub renter could turn a valve on the pipe to release very hot water into the basin until the temperature was to his liking.  There was an adjoining sauna at the top of the stairs and a bathroom.  The door of the tub room was lockable.  All this for $6 a person, $7 with a towel.  I went to the car to get Siobhan, who was searching for something to wear.

“Forget it,” I told her.  “You can’t get more private than this.”

Siobhan came in and got acquainted with the proprietress, Jamie, who, not being shy, immediately showed us an enormous bruise on the outside of her left butt cheek, derived from a fall off a trick horse she was attempting to stand up on as it pranced about.  Jamie seemed quite content to talk all day, but after a few minutes of this gregarious business I gave her a twenty and she marched off to get our towels.

The tub, itself, was tepid on entry but got warm awfully fast when the valve was turned.  We sat on a little bench so the water would come up to our necks but Siobhan soon found it a little tough to breathe.  She alternated between standing up and moving to the cooler area of the pool.  I would just like to mention here that Siobhan looks pretty damned good, especially being 59 years old.  She reminded me that we came for the healing waters and there were probably hidden cameras everywhere.  Then she really rained on my parade by pointing out that the Montana Health Bureau, if there even was such an agency, was probably not monitoring the Wild Horse Hot Springs facility too closely.  “There’s probably five thousand different diseases you could catch here,” was how she gently put it.  What a buzzkill.  Nonetheless, our legs felt a lot better as we emerged.  We let Jamie keep the balance of the twenty, took a few pictures and left.  It’s been several days now and no diseases yet.  We’ll keep you posted.

Florida Couple Massacred In Montana Wilds By Deviant Bikers

Eventually, all good things must come to an end and thus, after four days and nights, did our stay at the Hampton Inn.  We were moving to a different side of the park and the drive back from the Many Glacier area to Kalispell was long so we decided to stay elsewhere for two nights.  We didn’t have reservations but we can usually rustle up something.  Indeed.

First, we travelled to the Two Medicine area on the southeast side of the park, the least populated section.  We dropped in on Running Eagle Falls, then made our way through the Blackfeet Indian Reservation at Browning and on north to St. Mary’s, the other end of the Going To The Sun Road.  Not many hotels in the area, so we headed up the road to an exciting townlet called Babb, the site of the road to the famous old Many Glacier Hotel, where we would later dine.

There is not much in Babb but there is the Thronson Hotel and the Thronson Hotel had a room.  The office to the place—well, there IS no office, but there is a seven-eleven type store adjacent—was manned by a twentyish kid (“used to live in Sarasota”) who collected his $94 and advised that the store would be closed at nine but back open again at seven a.m.  We would be welcome to drop by, he said, for “complimentary coffee.” He said this while holding both thumbs up in a celebratory pose.  I couldn’t wait.

I went up to the room with my shiny new key to check it out.  I was surprised to see that it was a sizeable room with two queen-sized beds.  There was no air-conditioning but there was a box fan.  The bathroom was adequate.  I had a tough time with the key but attributed it to old age.  It could more accurately have been attributed to the fact that I was opening Room 28 when I had the key to Room 27.  Satisfied if not exultant with our new digs, we motored off to the Many Glacier Hotel for dinner.

When the magnificent, rambling, five-story Many Glacier Hotel opened to the public on July 4, 1915, the Great Northern Railway was already promoting it as “one of the most noteworthy tourist hotels that has been erected in America.”  It looks pretty much the same today as it did then when tourists were brought out on horseback the several miles from the railroad station.  The dining room is enormous, with giant windows opening onto the spectacular Swiftcurrent Lake.  We enjoyed a couple of drinks in the bar, sat for awhile on the tiny beach, eventually retiring to the dining room for a first-class meal.  A great day, capped with an even better night.  Not so fast, my friend.

Returning to the hotel, we encountered a couple of tourist-bikers in the parking lot.  Glacier is a long way to motor so many bikers fly out and rent motorcycles once there.  The talky one of the pair seemed a little too eager to engage in conversation, which Siobhan is only too happy to oblige.  The quiet member of the ensemble had strange eyes and a weird, continuous leer.  These guys sent off a very uncomfortable vibe.  Even if these two were fine, however, the hotel was full of dubious looking characters.  And, as you’ll remember, one key opens all rooms.  To make things even MORE fun, there are no deadbolts, no other locks of any kind on the doors.  I was less than thrilled.  It’s one thing to take a risk if you’re alone, another if you’re responsible for someone else.

Siobhan and I had encountered a comparable but better Motel 6 in Fort Lauderdale a few years ago.  When registering, I noticed the glass in front of the cashier was a foot thick.  You passed your credit card through a slot under the glass and received your room key the same way.  We shoved our bed against the door there and nothing untoward happened.  But this place was worse.  Nonetheless, we took showers, moved our fan into position, tried the TV (there was no reception on any station) and sat down.

“It looks like another Motel 6 deal,” I said.

“We’re moving the bed?" Siobhan asked.  And we did.  I was still wary.

“You know, even with the bed in front of the door, you can only hold off somebody determined about a half-hour.  In Fort Lauderdale, you can call the cops.  Out here, there ARE no cops.”

“Even if there were,” Siobhan said, “there’s no cell phone capacity.  You can’t even call your friends to tell them how you died.”

I looked at her.  She looked at me.  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said.

“Wheels up in five,” she replied.  Siobhan is a Criminal Minds fan, can you tell?

We hauled our stuff downstairs and slung it in the car.  The tourist-bikers were surprised and perhaps disappointed.

“A little late for hiking,” said the talkative one.

“It sure is,” I replied, slamming the door and peeling off.  Call me crazy and call me $94 broker if you wish, but you can also call me alive, in one piece and not much, much broker.

Have You Ever Been To Cut Bank?

We didn’t think so.  And we would never have been there either if it wasn’t the nearest site of a room that wasn’t on an Indian reservation.  We dropped into the St. Mary Lodge after leaving Babb and the concierge was nice enough to hook us up with the manager of the Glacier Gateway Plaza in faraway Cut Bank, over an hour’s drive away.  We made all the room arrangements over the phone, got back in our well-travelled Subaru Forester and tootled on off to Cut Bank.  The Glacier Gateway Plaza, I’ll have you know, is top-rated by AAA.  It’s a wonderful spot.  We highly recommend it the next time you’re in Cut Bank.  You don’t even have to move the bed.

Onward To The Grinnell Glacier

We saved the best for last, at least in terms of hiking.  The Grinnell Glacier trail is 11.4 miles long and sidles up to, then overlooks Swiftcurrent Lake, then climbs 1600 feet, passes under a significant (and soaking) waterfall to the glacier.  Lovely Grinnell Lake sits at the bottom of the valley.

We were sort of joined in this endeavor by the father-and-son team of George and Stephen, 14, whose companions abandoned them after a brief effort and returned to the hotel.  The group had taken a boat the first two miles of the trip, then climbed up to the trail.  They were clearly not anticipating the rigors of the trip and would probably have turned back were it not for the quick friendship they struck up with the affable Siobhan.  We told them when they reached the top they could take photographs, bring them home, enlarge them and have CHAMPIONS! printed on the bottom, then flaunt them in front of their weak-sister ex-companions.  They seemed to like this idea and fell in with us for the trip.  We’d get a little ahead, then wait.  They’d catch up and pass, then wait for us.  Eventually, we travelled to the top together.  Stephen said it would be “lonely” without us.  He also advised us of the finer points of laser tag and “highly recommended” just about everything on the menu of TGIF, his favorite restaurant in the world.

Brothers in hiking, we finally reached and stood on the Grinnell Glacier, one of the few glaciers you can stand on in the “lower 48.”  They give it til 2030 before it’s out of business but I think it will be lucky to make it ten more years.  Descending once more through Siobhan’s dreaded waterfall, we said goodbye to our new pals as they forked off to the boat trail, and slogged the remaining miles to our car.  We had a day left, but the fun part of the trip was done.  We had seen Glacier National Park, we had hiked its trails and viewed its lakes and creeks and marveled at its waterfalls.  We had visited its bedroom communities, soaked in hot springs, shopped in surrounding towns.  We had escaped for a week to the wilderness, fled the everyday life for a few days of beautiful frolic, recharged our batteries and left the deviant bikers of Montana in our dust.

 

That’s all, folks.  And that’s enough….