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Published: September 24th 2012
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The day we left Yellowstone, we drove into Missoula (after going through West Yellowstone- adorable), which may be the coolest college town aside from Athens, GA. Because of the cold/wet/shivering/scary atmosphere in Yellowstone, we all thought it best to stay in a hotel (motel) once we arrived in Missoula. Actually, it seems as though Motel 6 is doing some redecorating because the cheap room was pretty nice. It was no Ritz, but the Ikea décor provided a warm welcome.
Almost immediately after arriving, I had to leave the gang to finish up some assignments. I found a Starbucks to continue my research while Abi and Rob strolled down by the river and watched some nice gentlemen fish. I finally finished my work, then walked around the downtown alone for a bit before going back to the hotel to change. It was the first time I wore real clothes probably since the trip began. Nothin’ like jeans and boots to put me in a good mood.
Abi and Rob were waiting for me on a bench when I drove to pick them up for dinner. I received a good recommendation of a brewpub downtown, and it was outstanding. The place
is called Tamarack, and Lordy if Rob didn’t eat one of the best burgers I’ve ever tried: beef patty, Andouille sausage, shrimps, and cheddar. Plus the bun was nice and soft but a little toasty. WIN. Additionally, their homebrews were just glorious. I tried a couple different kinds, plus they had some gluten free varieties, which was great for Abigail. We hung out at the restaurant for a bit, just shooting the shit with the cutest waitress in the world.
After we were sufficiently tipsy, we made the decision to stay in Missoula a second night so we could sleep in the next day. We also decided that we should probably hit up another casino before leaving Montana. Bad decision. Nothing like drunk gambling to put a slight damper on the evening. Whoopsies. On the good news front, we all slept amazingly. It was probably the combo of the dranks and a real live bed.
I woke up before everyone the next morning, so I found a little bagel shop with delish coffee downtown. I went and picked up an everything bagel with bacon scallion cream cheese and lox and onions and capers. I hadn’t eaten a bagel
with lox in wayyyy too long. Now I’ve had my fill for a bit. I got my food to go, and decided to eat my breakfast in bed, while watching
Tommy Boy on my laptop. Great start to my day!
When everyone was awake, we all finished the movie together, then watched
Clueless before driving around campus for a bit. I still need one of my textbooks and I thought a campus bookstore might have it. Actually, we wanted to walk around campus, but the parking sitch was not very convenient, so I am still sans textbook.
Instead of walking around campus, we parked downtown, and took a little stroll around. I just love college towns that have lots of cool little inexpensive shops. There were some cute tchochsky stores with childhood candies and home goods and whatnot. We found a little coffee shop/bookstore where we enjoyed some afternoon tea, and then found a second bookstore where we spent some more time browsing. That night, we just chilled in the hotel room and watched
Richie Rich.
We thought it best to eat a good breakfast before heading into Glacier on our last day in Missoula. Another great
Lake McDonald
Check the reflection thing about college towns: solid, local, quality, cheap restaurants. We sat outside for some great people watching (Missoula is quite the hippy town- great clothing options and tattoos everywhere) and drank tons of coffee. I ate this amazeballs egg thing with black beans and corn tortillas and green salsa. It took me like 3 days to finish. Actually though, I took about half of it home and had to finish it in Glacier. All for $8.
So part of our problem with heading to Glacier is that we had absolutely no idea where we were going to stay. We put a random address in Whitefish into the GPS and just hoped that we would find someplace to sleep before actually arriving. Wrong. It’s only about a 2 ½ hour drive, so the gang had to sit at a Starbucks desperately emailing people on VRBO to host us for that evening. Back at camp… actually, back at pre-camp (so May), Abi and I decided that we really wanted to stay in a cabin in Glacier. We thought it would be all cozy to sit by the fire or out on a porch looking at mountains and drinking chai and just
Side View Mirror
Pretty good view chillaxing. Great idea, but it’s hard to book lodging in advance when we’re on the road. We had no idea when we would actually be in Glacier until we were actually in Glacier.
Luckily, right after we reached our breaking point of searching for cabins online, someone called me up and said we could stay at their spot. Note, we hadn’t paid anything nor met these people, and they just gave us the code to their house and told us we could worry about everything else once they got home from work and could come by to greet us. It’s kind of refreshing meeting such nice, trusting humans. The cabin was actually a little apartment under the owners’ home. However, it had a full kitchen, fireplace, big screen TV, and great views.
When we arrived, the first thing we did was head to the grocery store to load up on actual food. All I wanted to do was cook for the three days we were there, and it happened! We made so many meals (roasted vegetables, guacamole, made to order omelets, pancakes, chili, you name it) during our stay, that we knew it would be tough to go
back to our little camp stove.
We spent some time in Glacier, which was absolutely magnificent (even though we tried to do a hike one day but there was bear poop along the trail so I made Rob go back to the car with me because I’m not trying to get attacked by a bear on vacation or ever), but we also just spent a ton of time in the house doing nothing. It was so so so nice to just sit in front of the fire and watch movies and eat real food without constantly packing up the car and making a fire and setting up a tent, etc. Dumbest move of the trip: we watched
The Grey one night, a movie about Liam Neeson and his gang being stalked by a pack of wolves. Not cool to watch near Canada on a camping trip. We also watched
The Goonies (which I had never seen),
Unknown, (another Liam flick), and
Hocus Pocus. Abi and I decided that we want to try to rewatch all of our favorite nineties kids movies in the next year or so, and Glacier seemed like a good place to start.
Other things
we did in the park: drove on the main highway from west to east within the park and stopped for many photo ops, explored Lake McDonald, cozied up in the Lake McDonald Lodge (so many animal heads but an oversized fireplace), hiked by St. Mary lake, ate some cheese, crossed a stream on a log, and appreciated the beautiful fall foliage about.
After spending three glorious, relaxing days out of the car, we decided it was time to head out of Montana and drive toward Seattle. On our way out, we had to stop and return all the videos we rented during our stay. Magically, right across the street was a bowling alley/casino. Probably one of the greatest combos of activities ever. It worked out perfectly because Rob and Abi had an ongoing bet of who was better at bowling (after Rob lost horribly in Fargo) and they bet $20 on one game of bowling to settle the score. We (shockingly) were the only people bowling at 11am, so we got movin’ on our game. Turns out, Abi is still better than Rob at bowling. It was actually one of the worst displays (from all 3 of us) of
bowling I’ve ever seen. Also, I lost $2 in a slot machine.
After Rob’s defeat, we drove into Coeur D’Alene, Idaho to camp for the night. It’s also totally gorgeous there, and our campsite was right by the lake. We just ate some soup on the fire and nestled in our sleeping bags for the evening. We got out of town early to try to make it to a real city (which we hadn’t seen since Chicago). Next stop, Seattle.
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