Finding America

Since we had to do a fair bit of driving today we got up early to hike the Trail of Cedars inside Glacier National Park. The park doesn’t fully open until mid July, due to its elevation the Going-to-the-sun road was not yet drivable.

We were able to get a fair way up the road before further progress was barricaded. Fortunately the Trail of Cedars trailhead was just off the road and we got straight to it. The morning was idyllic. The suns rays came in little rays through the canopy above and the well worn path along the river was easily tread.

There were bear sightings recently in the area so we made sure to make plenty of noise. When hiking along a river it is important to let any bears in the area know you are coming which means making more noise than the ambient roar of the cascades.

Speaking of the cascades, there were some unique runs along the path and watching the water tumbling down the stony river bottom was a pleasant sight. After a good hike we had to turn back in order to make the hike out in time to meet our 11 am departure.

A bit west of Glacier is the substantial town of Kalispell. We were pretty famished and the sight of a Thai restaurant had Kodi parked and us with menus in our hands in no time. Lunch was delicious, the service was really slow and we spent more time here than we would have liked with so many miles yet to be driven, but with a good plate of Thai in front of us it was hard to complain.

Kalispell has nice clean streets and though bigger than its sister city of Whitefish, Kalispell sill maintains a sense of charm.

After lunch it was a solid couple of hours driving down to Bozeman, MT. We found a nice, but packed, KOA west of town and we parked Kodi before heading into town to explore.

It was dinner time and we were looking for someplace to grab some grub downtown. There weren’t too many dinning options but boy there was a glut on watering holes. The little main street running through Bozeman had more bars per capita than any other town we had stopped in. Bars of all types too but they did tend to lean towards the suds rather than cocktails.

We found main street to be appealing and were bummed that we didn’t find any dinning to our liking. With stomachs grumbling we drove back towards the KOA and found a retail center with a Fudruckers. Sitting in front of a big screen tv showing the Jazz-Warriors game and with a big buffalo burger to eat we didn’t feel to bad that we didn’t find anything downtown. This is what we were looking for all along anyhow.