The Munchkin's Notebook

Today we started our drive to Box Elder, SD around 7:30AM after having breakfast at Denny’s.  The drive was only supposed to be about 5.5 hours if we followed I-90,  so we were able to make a few stops along the way.  The first stop was at Little Bighorn National Battlefield National Monument .  I was not expecting much based on the battlefields around Virginia, but this one was rather interesting. I just wish it was cooler than the upper 90’s when we visited so we could have walked around some more and seen more of the battlefield markers.   The monument area shows both sides in a respectful manner.  The one thing I was surprised about is that there is a National Cemetery there that has veterans from the Indian Wars all the way through to the Korean War buried there.  I would recommend a visit if you are driving along I-90 in Montana.    The darkened stone is Custer's This is the side dedicated the the Native American Tribes From there ...

On road to Many Glacier This is a double day because day 7 was really long and day 8 was all driving.    On Day 7 we decided to drive to the east side of the park, specifically the Many Glacier area, since the Going-to-the-Sun road was still not open, we had to take the long way around which takes about 2 hours.  Note about 30 minutes of that two hours is going only 25 MPH or less on the dirt/gravel road into Many Glacier.   I highly recommend not taking the primary Google suggested route and use the route of US-2 to State- 49 (closed in the winter) to US-89 because the views along 49 are outstanding, even if the road has no guard rails with some steep drop offs.   We left a little after 7:00AM, the goal was no later than 7:30AM because it would take  2 hours to get there, which would get us there by 9:30AM and give us time to hike and do a few other things.  I realized if we got there about 9:30AM, and did the Grinnell Lake  trail we would g...

Today was a very rainy day, with it raining off and on till about 2:00PM, so I didn’t get a sunrise photo this morning.  Instead we slept till about 6:15AM and got breakfast at 7:30AM and then drove up to Polebridge.   People drive up to Polebridge, which is about 35 miles from the Canadian border,  to get fresh baked goods.  We got a large huckleberry bear claw and a spinach pastry roll. Was it worth it to drive 15 miles on an unpaved, potholed, dirt road in the rain, in my opinion no. The bear claw was good, I haven’t eaten the spinach roll yet,  but not driving down a dirt road to some one building town, good.   After that little adventure we drove over to the Fish Creek area to hike the Rocky Point trail.  I wanted to hike this trail to see if it would be a good place to take a sunrise photo over Lake McDonald.  Sadly the point was facing the wrong direction for it to work well.   The best location will be from the boat launch in Apgar....

Lake McDonald Today we discovered that the hotel does not have breakfast,  and the most useful breakfast place opens at 7:30AM. I personally would have liked to have been out already heading to the park at 7:30AM or in the park, since parking spots at popular trail heads fill up quickly.   We had breakfast at Glacier Highland Cafe, which was ok, and reasonably fast. From breakfast it was to the park, with the first stop being the visitor center.    For those that don’t know, Glacier NP went to a ticketing system for park entry, so unless you are staying at one of the lodges in the park you need a ticket, which is good for 7 days.  Tickets went on sale on May 28th;  we got ours that day and we were lucky to get one,  they sold out within an hour for all dates from June to September.   Entering the park was fairly easy, before the actual entrance they had three rangers/volunteers checking to make sure you had a valid entry ticket before you ev...

  Today started with an early morning trip to WalMart to pick up a flat of water and some juice to replenish our supply.  We will use refillable water bottles in the park; we didn’t use those on the drive because they don’t fit in any of the cup holders.  After our resupply stop at WalMart it was back on the road to the Belton Chalet , which is just outside of the west Glacier NP entrance.    The drive started out very clouded over and stayed that way for about 75-percent of the last 25-percent of the drive had rain.  We stopped twice on our 4 hour drive, once at a gas station about half way in and then again at Marias Pass which is a two-for-one stop because there is also a monument to Theadore Roosevelt as well as signs about the pass.  The monument, which is an obelisk, was constructed in 1931 in honor of the president who made forest conservation a national policy.  From there it was on to the hotel.   We arrived too early to ch...

Today was another long day, even though it was only a 7 hour drive.  We started the day at 0700 with breakfast at Taco John’s. I did not have a taco, I just ate the potatoes ole, which were basically tater tot crowns with some flavoring while Jim had the beef and potato burrito.  After breakfast we started the drive around 0730 to our first destination, the Painted Canyon Visitor Center of Theodore Rosevelt NP ,  which was about 30-minutes down the road. This area is basically the badlands of North Dakota, the less famous sibling of the Badlands NP in South Dakota.  We stopped here for about a half hour or so taking pictures and so I could get a stamp in my park passport. What is interesting about this first visitor center is it is also a rest stop, so it was easy for Jim to drive the CrossTrek around the parking lot to get a picture with the national park sign. From there we went down the road a little bit to the Theodore  Rosevelt NP Southern Unit Visito...

Today we started our journey at 0700 CST and arrived at our destination at about 1815 MNT, thus it was a long day.   The states are getting bigger now, we only covered about three states,  the rest of Wisconsin, all of Minnesota, and a good part of North Dakota.  While it was a long drive we didn’t do a whole lot.  We had a rest stop right before we got out of Wisconsin and a couple in Minnesota, those potty breaks are important.    Our longest rest stop for the day was in Fargo, North Dakota where we had lunch at the “Space Alien Grill and Bar” and stopped at the Fargo Visitor center.  The food was typical bar and grill fare, the only a-typical things on the menu were the super sized baked potato meals and the pickle fries. Our friend Christina got the half taco baked potato and salad combo while Jim got the pickle fries.  The pickle fries were a bit odd, while we have had fried pickles before but pickle spears were a bit strange, not really...