road trip, part 3

In case you were wondering what happened on the rest of our Montana road trip, I'll tell you now: the bus broke down and our camera died.

There, I said it.

I've been debating how to follow up on this part of the story without any pictures to document it, so I'll do my best to recollect from memory...

When we last left our protagonists, they had just settled into comfy digs on the outskirts of Glacier National Park. There was wine to drink and stories to tell, and a general excited anticipation to explore the park in the morning. So we woke at a reasonable hour, ate a substantial breakfast, and piled into our vehicles. We were unsure of how best to fit 5 adults and 1 baby plus a gigantic carseat into either Butterball or a Honda station wagon, so we settled on both. The idea of cruising around Glacier in separate rides was a bit disappointing, so we vowed to stop often and switch up passengers for maximum enjoyment.

For those of you who don't know much about Glacier (and I highly recommend checking it out), the park's main "attraction" is Going-To-The-Sun Road, a 50-mile winding road that courses from the east side to the west side, and every peak in between. The word 'breathtaking' does not even do it justice. Let's just say that the word 'wow' came out of our collective mouths hundreds of times in a few short hours.

We began at West Glacier, and had barely gone a mile when the sight of beautiful Lake McDonald inspired us to stop for a closer look and some photographs.

Well, it's not a great picture of Lake McDonald, but it's the last one you'll see with Butterball in it, because this is officially as far as she made it through Glacier National Park. About half a mile later, we pulled into a rest area to use the facilities and simultaneously relieved her of her duties, too.

What I didn't tell you is where the bus troubles first began, way back on Day 3 in Missoula. At some point on Lolo Pass we had taken a diversion down a washboard dirt road which, apparently, had loosened some bolts in ol' Butterball's gullet. The sounds she was making as we limped into Kevin's driveway could only be classified as "not good". Nevertheless, we proclaimed it to be an innocent "knocking" and hoped some super high octane (barely street legal, it said!) fuel cleaner could sort it out. And we crossed our fingers and drove, and made it to Glacier, and most likely would have made it over Going-To-The-Sun Road and back again if some jerkoff walking by had not said, "woah. that's a valve. you should NOT take that over the pass." So what do you do in that situation? Risk it? You don't want to break down on a 1.5-lane road with no shoulder and 100-foot cliffs on either side. No! You pile into the Honda accord wagon and make your gracious host sit in the trunk for the whole day, that's what you do!


Yes, that's his Cavaliers hat in the background. And yes, he had been to Glacier twice before so we didn't feel as bad giving him the bum view. And yes---in the long run, we couldn't have been happier it turned out that way, because it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun in two cars. (Besides, I think he sort of liked being Trunk Monkey.) And finally: yes, that is the last picture taken in gorgeous, ultra-scenic Glacier National Park before our camera battery died.

On the bright side, if your camera is going to die on an epic journey such as this one, it may as well happen when your good friend the professional photographer is in the car with you. Because Shawn had not one, not two, but THREE cameras with her! So when she gets the thousands of photos from the trip organized, I will be sure to share some of them here. In the meantime, I won't try to describe in words what we saw, other than: we saw a Grizzly with three cubs! and a grey wolf! and a black bear from about 20 yards away, right outside the bar where we were having a beer! Kevin said it was the most wildlife he'd seen in all his years in Montana, and we all agreed it was one hell of a trip.

To be continued...