Sleeveless in Seattle

I dunno. Someone told me it rains there but they must have been mistaken. We spent four spectacular days bathed in sunshine and warm temperatures. No sleeves required. It was my first visit, so we worked hard to put the T in Tourist there – strayed not one inch off the beaten path.

We loved our room with a view.

And wasted no time discovering our new favorite brand of coffee. Move over, Starbucks, Fonté is sooo much better!

Yes, of course, we went straight to the Pike Place Market. The CE spent so much time over there I thought he might become a professional fish thrower.

Next order of business was the ferry to Bainbridge Island. Blue sky and sunshine all the way.

Didn’t get far, though. Attractive nuisance hazard almost as soon as we stepped off the ferry.  Just my luck to be married to a rug collector…

We went totally tourist for dining, too. First evening we walked over to Place Pigalle:

Next evening, the popular Matt’s in the Market:

Great meal, and an amazing crème brûlée for dessert. Those cherries! That sauterne!

My favorite dining experience was The Pink Door, where we sat on the terrace under an impossibly blue early evening sky. The restaurant is purposely a little hard to find. No sign, but if you pay attention you’ll find it:

Salad, pasta and a lovely pavlova. Perfect meal!

Inside the restaurant is a wonderful succession of dining rooms large and small. I loved the bar art:

When we weren’t eating, we worked hard to earn our Seattle tourist badge. We dutifully walked over to Nordstrom. And yes, of course we went to the Space Needle. We grumbled  a little about the long line but it was absolutely worth it! Great fun and yes, more blue skies.

But that’s not all – there’s more! Watch for Seattle, part two next week…

The Many Charms of Many Glacier.

Kind of hard to get back to the travelogue given the dog-goned sadness of this summer, but grateful to have our Montana memories to buoy us. Better there than here; let’s go back.

We last left off with fond memories of Babb. Next day, we found the road to Many Glacier open and the usual ridiculously spectacular scenery. Oh, to be a cow in Montana!

Wildflowers galore:

You don’t even have to get out of the car to enjoy the incredible views.

And speaking of accessibility, we found another splendid hike that almost anyone could enjoy. Not sure if it is wheelchair friendly, as I do recall a few unwieldy steps up and down to a bridge, but otherwise, the Swiftcurrent Lake Nature Trail was perfection for those of us who live life on the flat.

The view of Many Glacier Lodge from the trail:

We saw lots and lots of Indian Paintbrush:

It was breathtaking from start to finish, but never more so than when we encountered a very large and VERY fresh pile of bear scat on the path. Can’t say we weren’t warned:

Luckily, Gail was prepared. When we were texting about preparations on the front end of the trip, she casually mentioned that she would bring the bear spray.

BEAR SPRAY? I asked, with multiple horrified emojis trailing behind…

“This isn’t Disneyland,” she responded, sans any cute emojis. She’s lived in Montana a long time.

Gail hesitated for just an instant as she surveyed the scat, wondering aloud if we should turn back. The CE and I, of course, were hoping to see a bear – Disneyland-style, that is. We were less enthusiastic about the recommendation we’d seen advising that one should assume the fetal position during a bear encounter in hopes the bear would not find you worth mauling. “They mostly false-charge”, the literature cheerily suggested. “Mostly”.

Anyway, Gail had her trusty bear spray so we charged ahead.

The bear had apparently moved on, and so did we, ending up back at Many Glacier Lodge just in time for lunch overlooking the lake in the Ptarmigan Dining Room.

As we drove back toward our own lodge, we saw several vehicles stopped along a turnout. Something moved in the brush above us across the road and there it was – a bear! Just as we hit the brakes to watch it amble along, another vehicle arrived with lights flashing. A park ranger leaped out brandishing a GUN and began yelling at the bear in a most unfriendly tone. Maybe this was a known bear who had been getting too close to tourists but I gotta say, for those of us who had just arrived at the scene, our sympathies were definitely with the bear. The bear at a safe distance, that is, with no bear spray or fetal position required. As sightings go, I guess ours was the bear minimum – back at our lodge everyone was reporting bear encounters that day. If you go, remember the bear spray!

Visiting Glacier was a long-held hope of mine. I wondered if I would ever make it to that little dot just shy of the Canadian border. It was even better than I’d imagined. So nice to steal away to those memories in these dog-less days of summer…

Farewell to our party girl.

I always get a catch in my throat when I see an old person with an old dog. Always walking slowly, giving each other time, honoring long years together.

You know what’s sadder than old people with their old dogs? Old people without their dogs.

We lost Soho last week. And as much as we should have known it was coming – almost a year of congestive heart failure, hearing and vision deficits, confusion, weight loss, etc etc. – we were completely unready. She had stopped eating days before. Oh but the vet prescribed an appetite stimulant – maybe that will help. Every walk was a walk too far, so the CE was carrying her up and down the stairs. Oh but maybe next week will be better. Her little body finally gave out as we rushed her to the vet one last time. His eyes filled with tears as he told us it was time to let her go. We carried her home wrapped in a blanket and when we opened it we found that they had covered her with flowers. And oh how we cried.

Fourteen years ago we brought her home. Cute as the proverbial button.

She was adorable. She was feisty and stubborn and yappy and hilarious. She did “zoomies”, racing around in zany circles.

When Chloe joined us a year later, Soho showed her who was boss and that never really changed. Did I mention she was feisty and stubborn?

They were Mutt and Jeff, the unlikeliest of best friends.

Soho also loved her humans, family and friends, especially the ones like Dave and Karen and Lori (who took most of the better photos here) and Pamela and Kirk and Christi and Kim and Tammy and Tom who carried her around like the royalty she knew she was.

She loved Kirstie, who kept her dazzling white and festooned with a new bow every week of her life.

She especially loved her overnights with Granny.

And oh, how she loved the CE, who chauffeured her to all the best restaurants in town and who valiantly kept her going with four or five medications a day for the past year.

And then there were the parties.

I’m not sure when or how they began. The first one might have been back in 2005 with a handful of friends goofily celebrating Soho’s birthday.

Somehow the idea caught on and it became an every-other-year event. The guest list grew. And Tammy, caterer extraordinaire and confidante of Soho, made sure each party was more memorable than the last.

I had already started thinking about the next party. It would have been a quinceanera for Soho’s fifteenth. But her little heart gave out and now she lies under the oaks, right next to her beloved sister, Chloe.

It has been the saddest season. Cody, Chloe and now our little pop tart party girl, Soho. The end of an era. Someday perhaps there will be another dog. But for now, at least, the party’s over. We are just old people, without a dog.

Detour to Babb.

Honestly, it sounded almost biblical. “And on the second day, we wandered the wilderness until we came to Babb.”

Our plan was to explore Many Glacier, but the road was temporarily closed for repairs. We waited and waited and waited, alternately giving plaintive looks to the road crew and scanning the landscape for wildflowers and bears, but our morning was unspooling and finally, we reluctantly turned back. And that took us back to Babb. Population: 174.

Gail and I combed through the little vintage shop and Thronson’s General Store in search of souvenirs – Glacier-themed caps and tees are less expensive here than inside the park, so that right there was a reason to be in Babb.

Another reason is Two Sisters Café where there was a line outside the door twenty minutes before opening time. Where you can order “Trout and Waffles” (we didn’t) or a Huckleberry Shake (we did). Where one of the owners stopped by our booth to chat and told us about the time a bear wandered in the back door. She said she threw an avocado at the bear, which the bear picked up and took along with him as he ambled away.

It’s not fancy but it’s fun, and judging from the way the place filled up, it might be the best (or only) bet near Babb. And if you’re looking for huckleberries, you’ve come to the right place.

After lunch, we turned back toward St. Mary and headed for the boat launch. We had a reservation with Glacier Park Boat Company for a tour of St. Mary Lake. If you’re staying in East Glacier, this is a must-do!

We got a coveted up-close view of Wild Goose Island,

If it looks familiar, it’s because you may remember it from Stanley Kubrick’s opening scene in “The Shining”:

Our experience was far more placid than Jack Nicholson’s. Our guide gave us a historical and geological primer and explained the concept of “glacial flour”  that gives the lake its aquamarine hue.

We moored up the lake a ways and took a brief hike in to see a lovely waterfall.

Then it was time to head back to our little boat.

The CE struck up a conversation with the boat concession operator about the maintenance of the boats, some of which date back to the 1920’s! (Glad we didn’t know that before we boarded…) He explained that they work on the boats all winter “back in town”. Town, I wondered? “You mean in Babb?” I asked, trying to imagine spending the winter in Babb. He shook his head. “Kalispell”, he explained. “Oh no, he said, definitively, “Not Babb.” And then, because he couldn’t resist “as we say here, from Babb to worse.” Maybe he doesn’t know about Two Sisters Café and all those huckleberry desserts.

I don’t know if we’ll ever make it back to Babb and I do kind of regret not having a taste of “trout and waffles” – served, by the way, with bacon and – wait for it – house-made huckleberry syrup. But our consolation prize was this bison stroganoff back at The Snowgoose Grille. No Babb to worse for us!

 

Getting to Glacier.

I’ve been lucky. I’ve been to Yellowstone. I’ve been to Yosemite. But, like all the northwest, Glacier National Park had eluded me. From time to time I would trace it on a map but always it seemed too far off our beaten path.  So when we began planning the family visits to Sun Valley and Missoula  it came into clear focus – we would be in striking distance!

We headed north from Missoula, driving through the Flathead Indian Reservation and skirting the west edge of magnificent Flathead Lake. Passed through Kalispell, then stopped for lunch at the Buffalo Café in Whitefish, but couldn’t persuade my fellow travelers to dally in the cute shops there. Maybe next time…

I started planning our visit back in November, but it wasn’t soon enough. No lodging available in West Glacier, which seemed the most popular place to stay. So we would arrive on the park’s west side but would then drive across its expanse along the famed Going-to-the-Sun Road to reach our lodgings in St. Mary on Glacier’s eastern edge.

It was a thrill to see this sign! We were there!

I’d been told that Glacier is surprisingly accessible – much of it can even be seen out of a car window for us unfortunates who can’t do the vertical hikes. It was even better than I’d hoped – many, many places to pull off the road and gape at the views.

Lovely Lake McDonald:

I could have stood here all day:

We’d been told that the park would be crowded and that traffic could be bumper-to-bumper. Luckily, this turned out not to be the case, but there was a little gridlock around one of the park’s most popular hikes, Trail of the Cedars. It’s just a one-mile loop and it’s even wheelchair accessible, so anyone and everyone can enjoy it.

We were grateful to have that leafy interlude, because soon we were creeping along Going-to-the-Sun Road with sheer rock face on one side and sheer drop off on the other. And yes, it was crowded. Going-to-the-Slow Road might have been a better name, but I’m not sure anyone would drive over twenty miles an hour on those steep curves anyway. A once-in-a-lifetime experience, and for us, probably only once. Amazing. And a little terrifying…

We even saw a mountain goat, but too far away to get a good photo. Luckily, we found a willing stand-in:

We were dusty, dizzy, tired and hungry by the time we arrived at the cheerful St. Mary Lodge late that afternoon and so relieved to find that our accommodations there were top notch.

Loved the hanging flower baskets :

Loved our cozy room:

Loved the view of the stream from our balcony:

And loved our dinners at the Lodge’s Snowgoose Grill:

With the heavenly but harrowing Going-to-the-Sun Road in the rear view mirror, we quickly decided that “roughing it” wasn’t all that tough. We slept very, very well that night, looking forward to discovering Glacier on the morrow. So excited to have finally made it here!

Missoula.

I’ve been trying to get to Missoula for decades. It was worth the wait.

Now I will always remember the Clark Fork River. And the train whistle that sounds just often enough to remind you that it was the Northern Pacific Railroad that more or less put Missoula on the map back in the 1880’s. I will also remember the song sparrow outside our hotel room overlooking the river that woke me at dawn each morning and beckoned me to the terrace to listen to that rushing river flow. All day long, jubilant summer celebrants bobbed past on their river rafts. As well they should, because I hear the winters can be harsh.

We were here to visit the CE’s sister, Gail, whose sweet house which had me humming Crosby, Stills & Nash “a very very very fine house, with two cats in the yard…”

At least two cats. Rumors of several others, but only one, the regal Puck, deigned to make our acquaintance.

One of our favorite evenings of the entire trip was whiled away perched on Gail’s back porch dining on chicken pesto and morels while the sun set on a perfect Missoula day. And then to top it all off, ice cream with fresh-picked huckleberries. If backyard dinners could be awarded Michelin stars, I’d give it three.

If you go: You may not be able to score an invite to dinner on Gail’s back porch but we did have some other great meals: The Pearl Café and Scotty’s Table for dinner, lunch on the patio at The Iron Horse (dog friendly – we met a lovely Viszla there) Not to be missed: bar food on the patio of Finn & Porter overlooking the river, and the upstairs terrace at Plonk, where they serve a lovely cheese plate and a memorable butterscotch pudding (we all shared but you might want that pudding all to yourself!)

You’ll also want to go to the Saturday Farmer’s Market next to the old train station where on some weekends a certain local rock star performs.

Other must-sees include Rockin’ Rudy’s, billed as the “original hipster department store”,

and a multitude of downtown galleries and shops. My favorites were Cloth & Crown and  the 4 Ravens Gallery which features a panoply of lovely treasures, corvid and otherwise.

But go soon…summer is already on the wane.

Thanks for a great time, guys!

 

 

Sun Valley to Missoula

What I love about a road trip: the heart, already full from a place just discovered, quickens in anticipation of another place, new, just up the highway a bit.

We downed our morning coffee and headed north out of Sun Valley with a crystalline blue sky above and the Sawtooths to our left. At Challis we joined up with the Salmon River, which would be our companion, hanging convivially just to our right or our left all the way into Salmon, Idaho.

I can see how, for climbers, the only way to conquer a peak is to claim it, step by step. But being fainter of heart and broken in body, I have to be satisfied with snapping photos from my shotgun seat in a car. In this country, even that is exhilarating!

Salmon was our halfway point, and a welcome one after nearly three hours on the road. I’d picked out a place for lunch, highly lauded by online reviewers. We easily found a parking spot right on Main Street; Salmon, population 3,050, does not fit the definition of a tourist town. As we tumbled creakily out of the car, we encountered a local and asked about the restaurant.

“Just came from there,” he said, a bit grumpily.

“Was it good?” I asked.

“Not in my opinion,” he harrumphed. Something about his stance and the cowboy hat square on his head told me his opinion was to be respected, so I asked him if there was a place he could recommend. He pointed down to the next block to Bertram’s Brewery, which was packed with cheerful locals enjoying a burger and some Mt. Borah Brown Ale. It turned out to be an excellent choice.

Thus sustained, we continued north on U.S. 93, crossing into Montana, trading out the Salmon River for the Bitterroot and then crossing paths somewhere around Sulah with the ghosts of Lewis and Clark’s 1805 expedition. In September of that year, they camped somewhere northwest of Sulah and recorded:

“…we set out at 2 oClock at the same time all the Indians Set out on ther way to meet the Snake Indians at the 3 forks of the Missouri.  nothing to eate but berries, our flour out, and but little corn, the hunters killed 2 pheasents only. ” 

We’d eaten far better than Lewis & Clark, and our road was easier, too. But it was comforting to know that some of the scenery we were seeing remains mostly unchanged from their days.

All told, it was about six hours and some change from Sun Valley until we pulled into our hotel parking lot in Missoula. Some of the most beautiful country we’ve ever seen and a new pin in the travel map, besides. We were hardly as enterprising as Meriweather Lewis but I have a new appreciation for these words from his journal:

“Entertaining as I do the most confident hope of succeeding in a voyage which had formed a darling project of mine for the last ten years, I could but esteem this moment of my departure as among the most happy of my life.”