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Published: April 8th 2007
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I love Montana. I must have been a Montanan in a previous life or something because there’s just something about the place that seeps into my soul. Montana actually deserves its own travel blog but this is not the time to do it. Unfortunately, on this trip, we’re just driving through Big Sky country and the Idaho panhandle to get back to Washington state. My first visit to Montana was in 1995 on a trip with friends to Flathead Lake and Glacier National Park. I was hooked. I’ve been back twice since then, both times traveling with Cathy throughout much of western Montana.
This time we head up north from Sheridan, Wyoming into the rolling hills of southeastern Montana. The brown hills are covered in fresh snow. Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument is right off I-90 so we stop there. This was the place of Custer’s Last Stand. The interpretative center isn’t very informative—there are artifacts and timelines and such but nothing that actually describes the events leading up to the battle or why it happened. We watch a short film which explains a lot but I have the attention span of a gnat when it comes to military
Road to Montana
Winter in April history, particularly regarding maneuvers and strategy.
Yawn. In a nutshell, Custer was arrogant and overly confident. He made some serious blunders which cost him and his entire regiment their lives. He got his ass kicked. And in 1946, the federal government created a national monument to honor him. It wasn’t until 1991 that the name was changed from Custer Battlefield to Little Bighorn Battlefield to recognize the Native American point of view.
The first sizeable city we encounter is Billings, so we pull off to look for some food. Find a nice little place called Log Cabin Bakery downtown and get decent sandwiches to go. The farther west we drive, I am reminded of the cities and places we previously visited—Bozeman, Red Lodge, Beartooth Highway (best scenic drive), Livingston, Chico Hot Springs, Butte, Helena, Kalispell, Great Falls, Missoula, and Glacier National Park. But the best part about driving in Montana is being awed by one stunning mountain range after another. Now these are mountains! The familiar landscape is a welcome sight.
The Last Supper We get into Missoula around 7 pm and stay at the Holiday Inn downtown. Missoula is a university town and of all the
Little Bighorn Battlefield
Indian Memorial "honoring Native American participation in the Battle of the Little Bighorn." I'm quoting the sign. Not my words. cities in the state, it has the most alternative and liberal vibe to it. It has a good sized downtown and we have the best chance of enjoying a good meal here. It’s the last dinner of the trip and we’re determined to eat well and to make up for the crappy food we had in Sheridan. The night before, my magic Google fingers found a restaurant that looked good. I make reservations so we are set for dinner at 8:30 pm. The dinner at the Red Bird Restaurant turns out to be the best meal from the entire trip. It actually ranks up there in terms of restaurants in general and not just compared to the road food we’ve been eating. Located in a historic Art Moderne style building, the Red Bird is just the antidote we need to purge ourselves of the horrible dinner at Perkins. Excellent service, nice wine selection, and great food. Cathy has the “grilled Missoula raised lamb” and I have the “grilled porcini dusted bison tenderloin.” Yes, bison. Buffy the Bison, our travel gnome, is not happy. But damn, is it good! And I finally get tasty, fresh, grilled vegetables. Of course, we have
Little Bighorn Battlefield
Monument marking mass gravesite of those killed in battle. dessert too. We chat with the waitress a little and find out her husband teaches architectural history at the University of Montana so she knows all about the cool Art Moderne building we are in. Our last supper is a satisfying one. A perfect end to another fantastic trip. Much better than driving off the Grand Canyon!
The next morning (Easter Sunday), I update the travel blog while Cathy attends mass at a nearby Catholic church. We each have our priorities. It’s a beautiful sunny day with bright blue skies. It’s a warm 60 degrees but feels like 70. Big diff from the freezing cold of South Dakota. We have Easter brunch at Catalyst, a café in the same building that Red Bird is in. It’s a cool place with locals enjoying Sunday brunch. They even serve coffee from Caffé Vita, a Seattle roaster. I’m happy. I actually don’t need coffee every day but when I drink it, then it’s gotta be good.
Time to head back to Seattle. We pop in Harry Potter and go west. More amazing mountains. The panhandle of Idaho is very beautiful too and the drive heading into Idaho from Montana is breathtaking
as we cross the Bitterroot Range. The bonus is that we gain an hour because we’re back in the Pacific time zone. We make it back to Seattle in about 6.5 hours from Missoula. I drop Cathy off at her house. I then drive toward my house. I’m about a mile away. I see another MINI. It’s 50 degrees and raining. I’m home.
Coming up:
Epilogue (Sad, but true, it’ll be my last entry. Boohoo.)
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Mountains?
You think these are big mountains? You have not been to Alaska yet on yor quest for 50 states. Notice how the more shi-shi the food get the closer to Seattle you get.