Day #64 - 5/15/2011 - Browning, Montana to Gardiner, MT - 475 miles

We drove a ridiculously long 475 miles from Browning to Gardiner, MT.  Crazy...and I hate to drive.


BTW, there are some cool scenics here...be sure to click on them.
 

The night in the Browning Western Motel was punctuated by the snoring of the man in the adjacent room...like a chain saw in 5-second burst mode.  The motel offered a free breakfast, but, as usual, we were up too early.  We cooked our oatmeal in the room and headed towards the Canadian border.

The 30 mile trip from Browning to the Eastern Glacier National Park entrance meandered through the Blackfeet Reservation territory.  The Blackfeet Reservation covers 3000 square miles (larger than the state of Delaware) and extends to Canada.  It was stunning landscape; stark, isolated, pastoral and majestic, punctuated by spare dwellings.  

As Kalispell marks the Western entrance to Glacier National Park, the Eastern entrance is guarded by St. Mary, MT, an unincorporated community with less than 50 full-time residents.  St. Mary is home to a few lodges and restaurants (closed when we passed through) and cafés (also closed), a small grocery store (also closed), two gas stations (one was open) and campgrounds.  We passed through the village in a few seconds and entered the park.

The Eastern entrance to Glacier National Park - only 20 miles from the Canada border - was desolate with the sign indicating that the Going to the Sun Road was closed at the 5 mile mark.  We'd go as far as we could.

While I walked through the brush to the water's edge,  Lani made her way to an historic
 marker explaining the geology of the Lewis Overthrust.

We saw deer along the way as we drove along St. Mary Lake.  The park receives over 2 million visitors annually...but nothing like that today.  In the hour we were in the park, we saw two other cars.  

St. Mary Lake marks the end of the great plains end and the beginning of the  Rocky Mountains with an abrupt 5,000 feet altitude change.  Little Chief Mountain marks the southern flank of the west end of the lake. Looks cold...doesn't it?  It rarely exceeds 50ºF and, in the winter, the lake is covered with 4' of ice.  Good trout fishing.

We continued on the east side of the park and the eastern portion Going-to-the-Sun Road which paralleled St. Mary Lake along its north shore until it was barricaded.  There was a marina nearby and we pulled in.

Breathtaking?  You betcha.  The marina was still shut down for the winter.  You can see the roadway cut a line against the gray mountainside on the right portion of the picture.  This 3-image panorama, at full size, is 6' x 13', in case you're wondering.   Yes...that's 6 feet by 13 feet.  You know you want one.

Even though we had seen the western portion and eastern portion of Glacier National Park, the snow closure on the Going to the Sun Road had kept us away from the most spectacular sites in the park.  We'll have to return.

We savored the beauty of the ice-crusted lake reflecting the sky and snow-dusted mountains.  I taught Lani how to skip stones.  Good times.

Stones skipped on St. Mary Lake, we returned to the winding road and headed South, passing through North Browning.

The Starr Baptist Church, even though it looked like pre-fab construction,  stuck out against the bleak rural townscape of North Browning.

Something I had not expected from the cycling portion of the trip was the perspective it gave of America...up close and intimate, seeing details as well as the big picture in a fashion that is usually lost at 60+mph or from the interstate.  It was like developing an extra sense of observation.  Now, even in the car, Lani and I observed with that extra sense.  Driving through the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and observing the lay of the land, it was impossible to not notice how desolate the landscape looked and wonder...wonder about the fate of the indigenous peoples of America.

If the landscape was austere, the view to the west towards Glacier National Park was epic...when  karma confronts irony.

For the next 70 miles, the snow-capped Rocky Mountains were over our right shoulder to the West.   We passed through Bynum, an unincorporated area famed for the Two Medicine Dinosaur Center, and slowed down as we entered Choteau.

Population 1781, Choteau is the Teton County seat and was  named after French fur-trapper and explorer Pierre Chouteau, Jr. 

 It turns out that Montana is one of the most dinosaur-rich places on the planet.  Choteau, along with Bynum, is part of  Montana's dinosaur trail.

Choteau Schools is a K-12 district with just under 400 students.  400?  In 13 grades? Seriously?
But, then again, in a town of 1700 with nothing for 60 miles in any direction, why not?

The Dinosaur Trail opened in May 2005 and drew more than 196,000 visitors its first year.  Since its opening, the trail facilities have hosted between 236,000 and 302,000 visitors each year.

The Old Trail Museum's Dinosaur Antechamber showcases discoveries from the Two Medicine Formation: Maiasaura and Einosaurus skulls, nestling, hatchling and adult Maiasaura skeletons and bones, and a Sauronitholestes skeleton casting.  Oh my.

 It turns out that the Two Medicine Dinosaur Center in Bynum is where you really want to go.  It sports two Ph.D staff paleontologists.

The Choteau Class of 2011 makes a discrete statement on a hillside overlooking the highway.

Montana ranks fourth in area, but 44th in population resulting in the third-lowest population density in the United States.  We covered hundreds of beautiful Montana miles, all the while reminding ourselves that the winter was long and brutal.

Montana has no official state motto, but Big Sky Country worked for us.

An hour past Choteau, I was ready to fall asleep at the wheel.  So, for no other reason than the exit came along at an opportune moment, we pulled off of the interstate and into Wolf Creek, MT.

Wolf Creek was ridiculously small...barely ½-mile of service road along either side of I-15.    Fortunately , there was one place to eat.

Wolf Creek made its movie debut in A River Runs Through It and is home to some first-class Montana fly fishing.  You can get a cabin on the river courtesy of Montana River Outfitters - as well as book a fly-fishing excursion-for $60-$110 a night.

The crowd at the bar had already settled in by noon on this sunny Sunday morning.  I think they could tell that we weren't from around these parts.

We took a seat outside and the kindly woman behind the bar (owner?  manager?) took our order and made sure we were fine.  At a nearby table, a young woman of...say...30...was recounting the events of the preceding Saturday night....she had clearly had a wild evening.

Fine dining in Wolf Creek, Montana

Listening to her regale the prior evening's details, it was as if Janis Joplin had come to Wolf Creek and was determined to become a legend overnight.  Her saga of drinking, debauchery in the bedroom and in the bathtub (where she awoke on Sunday), followed by more drinking was as outrageous as it was hilarious.  More than one man was involved.  Lani and I were impressed and thoroughly entertained....a trip highlight.

Lunch at the Oasis Bar and Cafe on this beautiful Sunday morning with local color provide by Janis made for a memorable time in Wolf Creek.

Leaving Wolf Creek, it was barely a half-hour through scenic Montana before we found ourselves approaching the state's capitol, Helena.  Did we have to stop?  I was good to continue, but Lani, having detected the presence of a used book store, was insistent.

Approaching any population center, Lani would search for book  stores on my iPhone.  Sure...why not...it wasn't as if we could come back at a more convenient time.

Helena, population 28180, was founded in 1864 after the discovery of gold nearby.  The city's main street is named Last Chance Gulch and lies close to the winding path of the original gulch through the historic downtown district.  By 1888, about 50 millionaires lived in Helena, more per capita than any city in the world. About $3.6 billion (in today's dollars) of gold was taken from Last Chance Gulch over a 20-year period. 

The book store was crammed with piles of unsorted books...even Lani quickly appreciated the futility and we moved on.

The 230 remaining miles was, like all of Montana, sparsely populated, which you'd expect for the 3rd least densely populated state

So, it came as a surprise to see, in the middle of nowhere (and Montana had a lot of nowhere), this immaculate church.

All I could find out about the church is that it was founded in 1880 by the settlers of the Boulder Valley...just like the sign says.

Another view of the church, clearly outstanding in its field...with a little perspective to show how a church might look if it were in the middle of nowhere.

On our first entrance into Idaho, we were zipping along the interstate and there was no clear border-crossing photo-op.  Fortunately, Idaho's funky shape gave us another opportunity.

The Continental Divide separates the watersheds that drain into the Pacific Ocean from those river systems that drain into the Atlantic Ocean (including those that drain into the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea).  We had crossed it yesterday as we passed through Glacier National Park.

We had also missed our entry from Idaho into Montana, so we took advantage of the fact that when you leave one state, you enter another.  We skipped across the highway.

Just for the record, Lani thought I was being screamingly immature for insisting we walk across the highway to get this picture.  Three words for you, Lani: pot, kettle, black.

And then, after 400+ miles, we pulled into Yellowstone National Park, the planet's first National Park and a gem in America's national park system.   Yellowstone National Park spans nearly 3500 square miles of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, comprising lakes, canyons, rivers and mountain ranges.  Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-altitude lakes in North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano on the continent.  It is a park of superlatives.  Our primary objective: Tatanka!

American Bison, or, if you recall any of your Lakota from "Dances with Wolves", Tatanka, once numbered in the millions, perhaps 25-60 million by some estimates.  They were possibly the most numerous large land animal on earth. By the late 1880s, they had been hunted to near extinction.  The Yellowstone Park Bison Herd numbers 3700.

Aware of the bison's famed ability to leap 6' vertically, achieve speeds of 30mph and stop for pretty much nothing, Lani and I marveled at a safe distance before moving on.  

Since male bison play no role in raising the young, this is definitely a female in the company of her calf.

Yellowstone National Park may be the only location in the United States where free ranging bison were never extirpated, since they continued to exist in the wild and were not re-introduced as has been done in most other bison herd areas. 

Amazing creatures, it was cool to see them so close.  I shot this from the driver's car window while texting.

Yellowstone is considered to have one of the finest habitats for large animals (>100 pounds) in the continental U.S.  There are almost 60 species of mammals in the park, including the gray wolf, the threatened lynx, and grizzly bears.  Other large mammals include the bison, black bear, elk, moose, mule deer, white-tailed deer, mountain goat, pronghorn, bighorn sheep and mountain lion. 

Traffic stops to marvel at this bear (Grizzly?  Black?) cross the road.  It entered the adjacent forest to do whatever bears do in the woods.

It turns out that I made a wrong turn on our way to Gardiner, Montana that added an extra 55 miles to the day's travel.  Instead, we had gone out of our way to enter Yellowstone from the western entrance rather than head directly to Gardiner.  But, in doing so, we got to see a part of the park we never would have toured as well as a black/grizzly bear, a casual group of Tatanka and a Bison mom and her calf.  So, it was a great thing.

We passed another collection of bison before reaching the north exit of the park.  Bison have powerful shoulders from using them to dig into the winter snow in order to find grass. 

And, with that, we exited the park into Gardiner, MT and found our way to the Super 8.  We had covered over 400 miles of Montana and were surprised to find it so beautiful.  We had to remind ourselves that winter lasted 7 months here.  But, all-in-all, the day had been as great as it was long.