fill 'er up, eh?

wednesday. hump day. road trip! here's a link to a properly zoomed, focused area of our road trip. (highlighted map picture included on the left)

we decided to drive around to the other side of glacier national park today. since the going-to-the-sun road is closed, you have to drive all the way around the bottom of the park and back up the other side to get to the scenery there. apparently the western plate came up over the eastern plate to form these mountains in the big plate-crash a long long time ago, so the views (i think) are better on the eastern side.

goat lick: this idea was really interesting to me. i just wish there were actually goats there. we took some pictures of the rocks that the goats supposedly lick (for salt and other minerals), and even drove slowly to stop and take pictures if we saw any along the way, but alas, no goats licking. :( too bad. i like goats.

we stopped at a little town to go into the kwikimart. i later tried to find the name of the "town" but couldn't. seems it's just a train stop. there was an amtrak sign that said "east glacier park" on it, so i looked on the amtrak site, and sure enough, this "town" is not labeled. if you google map east glacier park, it just takes you to the wilderness. i bet it's cool to live in a town with no name:
where do you live?
montana.
what city?
no city.
well, what's the nearest city?
the train.
are you high?
no. now go away, or i shall taunt you a second time!

stay with me, much to go still... we passed on going into st. mary's part of the park and continued on to browning (in the blackfeet indian reservation)where there's an american plains indian museum. i've never really been into indian exhibits so when we got to the parking lot, i didn't feel like paying to go see something i wasn't into. i'm sure this made melissa frustrated. it made me frustrated too. i need to think about this some more when i get home. luckily, browning was "kind of" on our way to the other side of the park anyway, so we just kept going.

majel was acting weird and kept telling us we were off route. i think it must have been because we kept turning back and forth on the little 2-lane road (ahem - highway) that goes up the eastern side of the park. anyway, the map said we were on the right road, so we kept going.

eventually we made it to the "many glacier" (it's on the right) entrance to glacier national park. we stopped and took pictures at the "many glacier hotel" and the "swiftcurrent motor inn." these are really pretty places to stay. there was not nearly as much traffic here on the eastern side of the park, but i bet that changes when the road is open all the way through.

when we got done, i asked melissa if she wanted to go back down to the st. mary's entrance to see the stuff there or if she wanted to go to canada. we were not very far from the border - and the nice people at the alberta visitor's center on monday said that waterton was really nice. she wanted to go to canada - and i suppose i kind of did too even though i was feeling ambivolent about it. so, we hopped on the "chief mountain international highway" (another 2-lane road) and headed up.

i had heard on the news that just this week, the border patrol was cracking down on the canadian border because of newly discovered terrorist information, so we made sure we were not carrying anything illegal (like guns or bear spray). getting into canada was nice and easy. the lady asked some questions about what we were doing and when we were coming back over and if we were carrying any weapons and such. we answered all her tricky questions right and got in! in no time we were on our way to waterton lakes national park in alberta, canada. it was a nice drive, but we instantly noticed that the road signs were very different and we needed to take special care to follow the km/h speed limit. majel was helpful with this, because in the streets&trips software, it can tell how fast you're going in either mph or kph. the digital readout was much more accurate than my trying to follow the little kph bars on the speedometer.

we made our way to waterton village and drove around a bit to see the town. this town is really remote! it also seems to be a tourist trap. there were busses of elderly tourists walking around. in talking to one of the shop owners, he said that he winters in calgary and only comes to waterton in the summer (tourist season). he said that most things close up in the winter. i bet that makes for a quiet winter!

we ate dinner at zum's eatery. here's some chicken-obsessed lady's review of it. i asked the waiter what was good and he recommended their fish-n-chips equivalent. i don't usually eat fried fish except for catfish, but i tried it anyway. it was really good - and the veggies that came with it were good too. lots of food - but kind of pricey for my taste. they had 2 beers on tap from big rock brewery in calgary. i passed on the grasshopper wheat ale and opted for the "traditional ale" instead. it was excellent. i would definitely have this again.

we walked around a little more and spent some canadian dollars that we had acquired as change. when you pay for something with american, they're required to give change in canadian for some reason - and this money's no good at home, so we just bought stuff. easier than changing it back - and hey, i got a nice canada t-shirt. i mean, when am i ever going back to canada again, right? (checking into foreign-worker programs...) ;)

by far the biggest tourism draw for this village is the prince of wales hotel. the guy at the alberta visitor center said it's the biggest wooden structure in canada. i suppose i could believe that. it's really big from far off and it looks really expensive. i didn't get close to it. we took some shots across the lake but it was raining - so they're kind of dark.

we got ready to head back for kalispell and pulled up majel to check the trip time. during dinner i pulled out the alberta map and checked to see if it would be a similar distance/time going up over the top of the park and then back down through a different port. it looked similar to me, but when we put compared it on the computer, it was like 1.5 hours difference. i couldn't really tell by the map because the canadian map was in kilometers and the us map was in miles. after we got a few miles down the road, i looked over at the computer screen and noticed that it had us going on the going-to-the-sun road through glacier national park. great. majel didn't know that that road is closed. we fixed the directions by adding another town to the route and recalculated. it was going to take about 3 hours and 50 minutes to go back the way we came. it was going to take 4 hours and 10 minutes to go up and over. having driven the former once already, i decided to take the extra time and chance getting a better road in canada.

it doesn't get dark here until late. sunset is at 8:30 or so right now, but it doesn't get "dark" until around 10pm, so we got to see some of the sights as we drove along. we didn't stop, but saw some cool stuff. this would definitely be on my list of things to do if i came back. a few days in canada would be neat. a couple of the things we drove by:
frank slide
several elk valley coal operations
world's largest tandem-axle dump truck (scroll down to see it)
lots of trees and small villages
all in all, the quick tour of southern alberta and british columbia was nice. i definitely like bc better because it was further up in the mountains. alberta reminded us of the rolling hills of texas. i also didn't realize they had so much coal mining in canada. one interesting fact about this: most of the coal they process gets exported to Japan, Europe, Korea and South America. the local area gets most of its electricity from hydro power. we did see some windmill farms and that was cool, but i suppose they don't generate near as much electricity as a hydro system.

we got to the US border late - maybe 11 or so? melissa had trouble finding her wallet with her drivers license and i think it made the guard lady suspicious. she had us shut down the car and she looked through the back seat briefly to see if we were carrying anything we shouldn't be and then let us on through (after looking at our licenses and birth certificates).

that's it. i'm glad we got unlimited miles on our rental car. it was nice to just drive and see stuff. i still don't know how many miles it was, but it's a pretty big circle on the map.

monday pics finally

i finally got the 8 pics i wanted from monday's hike uploaded. scroll down to see...

you always knew i was all wet...

tuesday, we stopped by the store to get a few things and then headed back to glacier national park. i had called to make a reservation for the afternoon rafting trip at Glacier Raft Company. melissa didn't think she would be able to do it because of the hiking from monday. her back was hurting pretty badly, so we just chilled at the park's apgar village for the morning. we walked through the shops there (no i didn't buy you anything), and ate a packed lunch on the benches by lake mcdonald. by then, it was time to go to the raft co. to suit up.

of course you have to sign a waiver saying that if you die or a bear eats your arm off, you won't hold them responsible. at least i suppose that's what it said. i overcame my obsessive-compulsive tendency to read everything completely before i sign it by telling myself that it didn't matter what it said - if i didn't sign it, i wasn't going rafting. "a nice man in a boat wants to take us down the river. now i'm signing, you're signing, we're all signing." we put our wet suits and neoprene booties on and got on the bus. we rode 8 miles up to the put-in point and strapped on the lifejackets.

our guide's name was dillon/dylan/dylon? and we were in boat number 2. if you've been rafting before or know about the rafting rating system, he told us that we would be going through parts of the river that rated up to level 3. that really didn't mean anything to me because i had no idea what he was talking about. i went rafting in colorado with the scouts one time and all i remember is how much fun it was (and how cold it was). melissa had never been. the wet suits were new for both of us. they keep you warm, so of course, they made me hot.

i took a waterproof camera to shoot some pictures. funny thing - when you're paddling a boat through whitewater rapids, it's not likely that you'll get to take many pictures of stuff that you would want to take a picture of. alot of the time, i ended up shooting the boat in front or behind us. anyway, it's not a digital camera, so i'm not sure when we'll get those pics.

i jumped in the water when the guide said it was ok and floated for a bit. i know the water was cold, but with the wet suit on, you really couldn't tell it was 35 degrees. i give the company we went with a thumbs up. they were all very nice and the whole operation was very professional. if you go, take a towel. they don't give you one at the end. that's the only complaint i had. otherwise, it was super!

we both had fun and melissa said she would do it again - and in more difficult waters. i'm not sure we'll get to go again this trip, but it's definitely an activity we'll plan for next time.

after the rafting, we headed up camas road to north fork road and took it down to columbia falls. melissa wanted to go to whitefish to see about eating at a place that some nice ladies on the airplane had suggested. camas road is paved but north fork road is not paved most of the way. the weird thing about this road is that flathead national forest is spread out all over the area here and it borders glacier national park. i haven't taken the time to figure out who's running what or what the difference is between the two, but i do know that you don't have to pay to day-visit the forest - only the park. (but the park is much nicer) anyway, if you know about such things, feel free to send it to me - because it's way down on my list of things to look up.

once we got back on the beaten path, we went west to whitefish. whitefish reminds me of breckenridge, colorado before all the condos/apartments were built up. they're developing the heck out of the whitefish area and it will eventually be like breckenridge only bigger. the brochures they have for these "luxury communities" have prices that start at around $400,000. this makes me sad. sure the facilities are nice - but what happened to just enjoying the scenery as it is? do you really need a "grand room" to throw a swanky party at where you and your friends can all schmooze each other? why not just sit around the campfire and lie to each other there? it's the same thing - and, at least this way, afterward, you can claim it was just a "campfire story." ick. too bad the fbi dragged the unabomber's cabin away. sometimes i think i'd rather be out there - especially when i see these big sections of land being developed like this.

there were 3 redeeming factors for whitefish:
1. someone at the whitefish chamber of commerce used his/her brain and actually taped up several of the brochures/announcments to the inside of their office windows so that after-5pm visitors could still learn what to see. kudos to them. they also had a box on the wall with an "attractions map" and it was full. i can't count the number of times this would have been useful for other locations. cities that rely on tourism in any way should take a lesson from this. i hate trying to read through those tourism magazines full of 1page and 1/2page ads for this or that. at least if the chamber puts something out, you're more likely to find a more complete listing (since being a member of the local chamber of commerce is not usually very expensive).

2. the "downtown farmers' market" just happened to be going on from 5pm-7:30pm on tuesday. this was a neat little market to walk through. we passed up several bar/casino restaurants and decided to checkout the market to find something to eat. we walked once through the market and stopped at a crepe wagon to eat. this was an old "small school bus" (you know - the kind you used to ride? ;) ) that had been converted into a portable crepe stand. i got the turkey/roasted red pepper/sprouts on blue corn crepe and melissa had the pesto with basil on traditional crepe. they were both good, but she said hers needed turkey and i said mine needed cheese. seems that they could have included more for the money - but i'm picky. for dessert, we got a traditional crepe with cinnamon and sugar. it was ok - but it could be better too. i walked back to one of the vendors and got 2 bottled sodas. i had a huckleberry soda and melissa had a local root beer. i liked both. she said the root beer had some sort of spice in it. i thought it was extra good because it used real cane sugar (a la dublin dr. pepper). the huckleberry was ok but the funny thing was, it was bottled in new jersey "by license" from some local company. seems odd to me.

3. right across from the farmer's market was the great northern brewing company. woo hoo! i had been wanting to visit them for years now. they are/were the makers of black star beer. i haven't figured out what happened, but it seems they might have sold the rights to black star beer to another company. anyway, now they make lots of other brews - several of which i had to try (don't worry - the sample glasses are small). snow ghost is by far the best one i tried - and since it's a winter seasonal brew, they were trying to empty their stock. it was on sale for $19/case. if you know anything about good beer, you know that's a good price. so i got one. i might go back to get another one - but i have to figure out how to get it home. not sure about taking it on the plane. i could ship it back home maybe - but packing it might prove difficult. anyway - we're going back before we leave. i couldn't decide on a tshirt or hat. (besides - it's never bad to "have to go back" to a good brewery" :) i couldn't find anything bad about their place except they were verrry busy (maybe because of the farmers' market?) and the bathroom is upstairs. that's weird. who wants to walk upstairs when they have to pee?

we headed out for kalispell again and stopped to take a few pictures melissa wanted (the old house in front of the mountains) and i got a huckleberry shake. it was ok. i think i might have liked it better if they had put the berries in it. i slept 8 hours tuesday night - that's abnormal for me. i think i might be relaxing. yikes! maybe when i check on shipping the beer, i can see how much they charge to ship kids up here. :)

think we might go around to the other side of glacier national park on wednesday. there's a stopoff point along the way called goat lick. apparently the goats lick the rocks because they have salt in them. that would be funny. some definite photo-chopping possibilities there :)

new summer blockbuster: killing melissa

we got up and at em pretty early by our vacation standards monday. this mini-breakfast is starting to grow on me. raisin english muffins are tasty. if you like english muffins. and raisins. one other random note. we get the spokane, wa local tv stations here. on sunday, i noticed that the news program we were watching on kxly had a news show where two of the anchors had the same last name because they are married. funny how we often don't think about things until it's presented to you for the first time. kind of reminds me of a story john stocil did on critical thinking. i can't find the link to that story right now, but good news: here's the link to rick lukens bio and his wife teresa lukens bio also. it just struck me as odd when i saw both of their names printed on the tv screen.

on to the fun...

we went straight to glacier national park and did not pass go (or spend $200). ;) stopped at the alberta, canada visitor center just inside the entrance to the park. not much to see there but the staff are very friendly - and we had to pee, eh? i'd like to go over the border just to do it, but i'm not sure if we'll get to. it's kind of far, but would be a good rainy day trip (which is supposed to be wed-fri), so we'll see.

stopped at the park's official visitor center too and got some guidance and and another map. the old guy at the counter recommended 2 hiking trails since the middle of the "going-to-the-sun-road" is still closed due to heavy winter snow and ice. it won't be open this week :( but we're going to make the most of the park. (the bad part is, you have to drive all the way around the park just to see the other side.)

we decided to go as far as we could up the road and hike from there up to avalanche lake. the hike is not as easy as they make it out to be. the trail was muddy and slippery much of the time. i would hate to go there in july or august after all the tourists have used it all summer long. regardless, the scenery was awesome and the view of the lake and waterfalls was definitely worth it - at least from my perspective...

melissa keeps telling me we can do whatever i want to do since it's my vacation... so we went hiking. luckily we both have our hiking boots, but i think mine work better for me than hers do for her. she says they're heavy. i dunno. they're rockports and mine are some knockoff brand that i've had for several years. anyway, the trail is 2-3 miles long, but when we got to the lake we walked halfway around the lake and took some more pictures. that had to add at least another half mile - but this was a "secondary trail" so it was much more difficult terrain (jumping streams and rock-hopping). so we probably walked 6 miles monday. we both got short-winded but melissa said her asthma was not a problem. i think that's because God starts the "fresh air" up here. ;) we saw a few deer, a rabbit, and some chipmunks, but no bears. maybe better luck next time. anyway, words do not do justice to the hike, so check the pictures.

melissa managed to drive us home without falling asleep while i studied the maps to try to plan our next hike. got some food from the "authentic mexican food" restaurant down the street, los caporales. it was not authentic and i did not see any mexicans. i tried to be safe and got the super nachos and quesadillas - but they were not that great. the meat was ok, but the cheese seemed off. the hot sauce was not hot and tasted like tomato sauce with onions. i would rate it on the same level as pancho's... but i don't like pancho's.

anyway, i was too tired to blog it monday night, so fell asleep before 10. it was the most tired i had been in a long time. the end. or something. (til next time)

p.s. pictures aren't uploading right now for some reason. will post them later.

majel, which way do we go? nevermind, this looks good.

we're using Microsoft Streets and Trips 2006 software to GPS ourselves around up here. it's acutally quite nice, but i have to make myself close the computer when we don't need it because i catch myself staring at the screen instead of the scenery - and that's just not right.

melissa mandated that we give a name to the voice that tells you where to go. i named her Majel. yes, i am a geek. no, it doesn't bother me. no, it's not sad. yes, it is clever - and so am i. now go buy the latest american idol cd and leave me alone. :)

i couldn't really decide what to do first - and since it was Sunday, the tourist information / chamber of commerce place was closed. so, we drove around flathead lake a little and then decided to head for Glacier National Park. we took the scenic route and saw some nice land and houses and some interesting roadside attractions. melissa veered off the road and said, "this looked good." so, we visited hungry horse dam located in flathead national forest.

after walking through the visitor center (somewhat weak on cool displays, but knowledgeable staff), i walked across the dam and took some pictures. we continued on the road for awhile, stopping often for pictures and sightseeing. we ate a packed lunch by one of the many river/creek forks. i think we might have to go rafting. the water was super cold and looked refreshing.

next, we came to a place where we wanted to hike a bit and try to see some wildlife, excluding grizzly bears - up close, anyway. the lady at the visitor center suggested talking loudly, using bear spray, or a pistol for keeping the bears away. i think she was serious. anyway, it started raining harder, so we postponed the hike and went back to town. this is a definite re-visit. i do not think i have seen a more beautiful piece of earth - colorado included.

more to come... but first, some sleep...

language lesson: murano in montana means "compact" and super(duper)8 = 10(%) !

after waiting for the chatty stoner guy to stop hogging the car rental attendant, we finally got our rental car. melissa said she had reserved the economy car, so we were expecting a ford escort "or similar." when the guy said he had our maroon murano ready to go, i almost choked. i instantly knew that something was odd because these vehicles are not compact - and are definitely not economy class cars. if you don't believe me, go ahead and check the prices next time you go by a nissan dealership. when we walked out to the lot to take posession before they came running after us, i didn't see an economy car in their lot. the lesson here is:
if you go to kalispell and rent a car at the glacier park international airport, make sure you reserve a car beforehand at the National car rental and remember to use your entertainment passbook discount!

after the 15 minute drive from the airport, we went to our hotel to check in. any worries about the accomodations disappeared as soon as we arrived. we're staying at the super 8 in kalispell. i'm not saying it's a fancy place with a phone in the bathroom or anything, but it's definitely better than many of the places i've stayed. the people are all very friendly and everything is so clean. i just keep being amazed at how everything smells so great and most places look very clean and well-kept. make sure you mention the discount AD at the bottom of their home page for a 10% discount if you don't have another one already. i would call their "free breakfast" continental, but then again, i think breakfast requires eggs. the coffee is decent and the wifi is free. ;)

dismantle the transporter, scotty. there's no intelligent life here... and i'm staying

melissa snapped me looking out the window at the airport terminal when we arrived at "Glacier Park International Airport". firstly, the only thing "international" about this airport is the fact that you could probably throw an empty molson bottle back to canada from the control tower (with a good tailwind, of course). secondly, see all the folks there in the terminal? that's about how many people seemed to be in the entire airport. we flew in on a SkyWest flight on a CRJ200 Delta Connection flight. our plane, full, would have 50 passengers. when we landed, the airport population went to about 55. i felt bad for the luggage guy. he looked to be about 55 and loaded up all the checked baggage from the plane onto the luggage trams. i was thinking, "man, i bet he hates doing this in the winter." so, that's me in the picture there - watching the luggage guy and still not believing that 1) i was in montana 2) the airport was so empty (all 3 gates) and 3) the airport was so super nice. if the rest of the trip ends up being as nice as this airport, we're in for a great time.

woo - hoo ! can you say "vacation" ? for real, though!

as a general rule, we don't take enough vacation. me, specifically, yes, but also my family, most people i know, and Americans in general. i'm convinced this is true - and since everyone knows i'm right most of the time, it must be true. (did i use too many commas in that sentence?)

my wife knows the above is true also (as i think most wives do) - and not because i told her. ;) so, she's decided to take me on my "dream vacation" as my early 10th wedding anniversary present. for months, i knew i was going on vacation, but didn't know where. i'm pretty sure everyone else that knows her knew where we were going (because she gets too excited to keep absolute secrets - it's cute) but she was able to keep it from me. so, in case you were in the dark too, here's our trip...

early this morning, we went to breakfast at melissa's parents' house. after we ate, she surprised me with an envelope that informed me that we were going to the Flathead Valley area of Montana !!! how cool is that ?!? so cool, that, in fact, it's kewl even. eh?

here's me thinking about a million things at once - but mostly thinking, "wow, we're going on vacation. in montana. for real!"

so, again, if you care, come on back and check our pics and posts. we'll leave the light on for ya. :)

obligatory first post

so i had been meaning to start a blog for a long time now, but kept putting it off. i know myself better than to think that i would actually use it for anything regularly. my OCD/ADD and eternal procrastination get the best of me usually and i lose interest in stuff after i figure it out. i suppose that's why my ideal URL was already taken on blogger. normally, thanks to my parents' creative naming and my obsession with technology i get in on stuff early enough to get "jeromey" anything - but not this time. if you're going to type in my blog URL, make sure you put a zero (0) where my o goes. ;)

believe me, i don't really think that my life is so interesting that you really feel the need to read all about it - but this is for family and friends - and a little for me. it's nice to look back and see where i was, and where i am, and muse about where i think i'm going. not that you care about that, but you might like my pictures.

the main reason i finally started this is because i'm on vacation. i know that's silly, but i want to capture it here - and be able to show everybody what we're doing. here goes...