Montana is for badasses

Our trip to Montana began with a 9 hour drive from Washington state. Granted that is a way shorter drive than coming from North Carolina but its still long.  We stopped in Spokane Washington to sample a brewery and have lunch. While there we were chatting with a couple guys from southern California.  They became so intrigued with our story that they bought us a growler full of beer for our trip.  We decided any trip that begins with free beer has got to be good!

We stayed our first night outside the park in Columbia falls and had dinner at yet another brewery before headed to bed. It would be our last shower and night in a bed for the next 2 days.

Once driving into the park we saw a beer right away run across the road. Since we thought we were going to see way more bears we wrote on the map where we saw the bear and decided to keep count of all the bears we saw. Unfortunately it wasn't hard to keep count as that was the only bear we saw. The main road through the park is the Going to the Sun road which is about 50 miles straight through the mountains of the park. If you are too scared to drive it yourself you can ride the red bus that will take you on a guided tour.

The entire road is only open for a few months of the year starting around mid-June due to the snow.         

Plowing the road.

The views from the road were pretty spectacular.

Once we got to the campground we had planned on staying at we were disappointed to find they were not longer allowing tents due to recent bear activity in the area. We were planning on hiking around Two Medicine area so we ended up finding a campground there.  The campground was full both nights we were there and although there were no showers it did have bathrooms with running water.  At night the ranger led talks on the wildlife. The first night was on marmots which we got to see the next day and the second night they talked about grizzly bears.

Our first day of hiking we did about 6 miles or so which is not a good idea to do if you are trying to break in new boots. Especially not good to do in boots that are too small. I got the monster of all blisters on my pinky toe. We got to see a moose hiding in the bushes, a wood pecker, and what we are pretty sure were eagles nests.

The end of our hike was a water fall that we got to climb up the sides and peer down to the bottom. We also stuck our toes in and it was cold!

After driving to and through the park and hiking we were pretty hungry and went back to camp to heat up some dinner on the camp stove.

Day two began with a 9-10 mile hike to ice burg lake where you can see real ice burgs in August. I was most scared of this hike because it was boosted most likely spot to see grizzly bears. There were so many people on the hike that it would be highly unlikely we would see one.

We got to see a few more wild life on the ride back to camp.

We then settled in for our second camp meal which was Jamaican beans and rice with jerk chicken.

The next day we drove out of Glacier and headed south to Bozeman Montana were we would get to re-group and shower before entering Yellowstone for another two nights of camping.  On the drive down through long hilly roads of pure Montana lands and Big Sky county we got stuck in a few road work areas.  Now from what we can see in Montana when a road is bad they don't just repair it. Nope they destroy the entire road and start from scratch. And they don't do this a section at at time. Nope they do this for miles of road. We drove through miles and miles of gravel mud roads along side road crews standing around looking at the dirt while all the paving equipment lined the road but I'm not going to say anything... ;)