Kalispell and Cables

North America » United States » Montana » Kalispell
September 15th 2006

Published: September 16th 2006

Today was to be the start of our “Glacier National Park Adventure!” Our thought was that the weather would be least intrusive early in the morning (Maria had encountered this phenomenon while climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro) so we should start early and see how far we could get. The other consideration was that part of the “going to the sun road” will be closed on September 18th - talk about cutting it close to the wire!! Unfortunately, it was not to be…

Statistics

Starting Destination: West Glacier, Montana
Ending Destination: Kalispell, Montana
Ending Destination GPS: N: 48° 10.989 W: 114° 18.408’ Elev: 2961’
Miles Driven: Not enough… (-40.7)
Seen: Lots of bike paths and the most bikes Carl has ever seen at a school…

Going Backwards…

Everything was going according to plan… We got up early, had breakfast, dressed in our "hiking" gear, packed the truck and got started… Unfortunately, we only made it as far as the campground office to drop off the key! On our way to the office we passed this red “bus” (left), although it was not like any bus we had ever seen… Low slung, with big windows and a removable roof it was a sight to behold - probably exactly what is needed to traverse the roads “and” view the scenery!... When we got back in the truck, Carl turned to key to start the engine and “nothing…” To Maria it sounded like the battery was bad, but Carl was convinced it had something to do with the battery cables. It turned out, the Carl was correct… after spending 40 minutes cleaning the corroded battery connections he finally had to jump-start the truck—connecting not to the battery, but to the battery cables… This was not good… We were planning to go north and into more isolated country—not a good situation when you don’t have 100%!c(MISSING)onfidence in your equipment. So… The best course of action was to go back to a major town, find a dealership and get the cables replaced… So we turned back toward the way we came, knowing that we couldn’t turn off the truck until we got it fixed…

The bad news was that we couldn’t get the truck fixed until 3 pm, the good news was that we could do some food shopping and not feel that we were jeopardizing “sightseeing time!”… We broke down and found a hotel room - Maria rested and relaxed while Carl got the truck fixed—thankfully, the truck didn’t need new battery cables… He came back to the hotel room and we both crashed!! Only to be woken up by…

The Rambo Upstairs…

Do you ever encounter someone along the way and wonder what their story is? Well we have and in one case actually found out the Story! Rambo is the kid that is staying in the room above us—he appeared to be doing laps of the room and jumping over the beds—in short making a hell of a noise!… Had be been cooped up in a car all day and couldn’t play outside due to the rain? Who knows… But, we agreed that for a 10 year old (Carl’s estimation of his age) this is unacceptable behavior and something that our parents would never have tolerated! Some other people we encountered included…. Superbiker, at the Devil’s Tower Camp Ground… We had stopped at the office to check out and to our surprise there was a recumbent bicycle with trailer parked outside - complete with 8 inch speakers attached to the handlebars and some motivational (head-banging) music blaring. It looked like the whole set up was powered by the solar panel attached to the trailer! To our surprise the owner came out and asked us how many miles per day we were doing—Carl said about 300, but in the truck!! It turned out that the guy had never owned a car/truck or other type of vehicle and he was traveling around from place to place spending time. We had to admit that we preferred the truck as our primary mode of transportation—his stats of 2 miles per hour going up a 6%!g(MISSING)rade were just a little too mentally daunting! We also wondered about the story behind the lady who camped next to us one night—it looked like she had all her worldly possessions stored in Garbage Bags in the back of her truck, covered by a silver tarp attached with bungee cords… We passed her later on the road with the silver tarp puffed up like a balloon going at least 10 mph slower than the speed limit. But our imagination ran wild with respect to our “Cowboy” neighbors the other night… When we pulled up to our cabin, there was lots of equipment parked in front of the cabin next door—2 trucks, a mountain bike, assorted camping/cooking equipment and a saddle on a stand… Upon looking closer we saw one of the owners of this equipment working on the saddle—complete with spurs, bread plate sized belt buckle, cowboy hat, shirt and wrangler jeans... But no horse! Was he an “urban cowboy” or not? We will never know… But, we did notice the side arms when they were packing up the next morning!

A few photo’s from previous days…

Scenery from the “Fog” day…

Painted Buffalo from Custer, Wyoming.

Interesting sign - Maria noticed the back side of this sign on the way to The Badlands which says “Why Die?” The sign indicates the location of an Auto-fatality site. There were similar signs in Wyoming and Montana (especially on the road from Missoula to Kalispell).

Carl’s Travel Trivia

Yesterday’s Answer: The State of Montana
Today’s Question: How many GM Dealers are there in Kalispell Montana?