Up north towards Canadia

We left Belgrade, Montana this morning bright and early and headed north through Montana towards Glacier. At lunch we stopped in Helena and ate at a surprisingly good restaurant in one of those little “fabricated Main St.” developments. Apparently Helena is the “best little art town in the country”. We didn’t go into any galleries, though, so I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that statement. But we did have a nice lunch, and that was all we needed. Honestly, I think that was our first meal in nearly two days, as my last meal had been that over-cooked buffalo burger I complained about in a previous post. After lunch we got on a two lane highway that headed towards Glacier that went through absolutely nothing. I swear, this was the loneliest highway I’ve been on in this trip so far. Well, it was lonely except for the construction workers. At one point we were just driving along, doing about 80, and all of a sudden a flag man appeared. That was about as much excitement as we had on the drive.

When we got to the park at 6:30 the ranger informed us that the “Got-to-the-Sun” road through the park is closed at its peak – so while you can see most of the park, you can’t drive directly through it. As our trip is as logistically lean as possible, this is going to make for another speed-viewing day tomorrow. And my car is tired of me driving the shit out of it up and down these mountains. But whatever, we’ll get ‘er done tomorrow. Once we checked into our room, we decided to try to find someplace with a TV to watch the NBA finals game. Our first stop was the Many Glacier Hotel bar, but they did not get ABC. Strange. So we thought we might as well go ahead and see some of the park since we had another couple of hours of daylight, and not shit else to do to entertain ourselves. But unfortunately about 10 miles into our drive the skies opened up and a storm came through. Great. By the time we got to the other park entrance it was pouring, so we stopped into that hotel and checked their TV for ABC. I swear, they had direct TV, so they had about 8,000 channels. But not ABC. What the fuck. They then informed us that they were closing the restaurant and bar because of the storm and the high likelihood of a power outage. Oh, ok. That meant it was probably best for us to just drive back to our room and call it a night. First, though, we stopped at this big restaurant outside of the park to see if they somehow, someway had a TV that carried ABC. Nope, no TV. Oh well, I guess we were just shit out of luck today. The last 15 miles of the drive back to our motel I felt like Snoopy in that Peanuts movie where they’re all in France – Snoopy and Woodstock are driving a little jalopy on a tiny road through a storm, trying to find the “chateau” that they’re staying at for the night. I was Snoopy, Alex was Woodstock. We made it back safely, though, and I’ve now decided to drink some of the mini-bottles I brought along for the trip. I’m now on my second Jamaican Rum and coke, thanks to some rum Yves imported for us this year from Costa Rica. Thanks Yves!!!

I mean, really what the fuck. A county where no one has access to ABC? What the hell is that all about?