| Driving
through the wide open spaces of the eastern part of
the state, then across the Bighorn Mountains, Peter
Thody falls for Wyoming in a big way. Cody serves up
some Wild West history, gunfights and a rodeo, but it
is the beauty of Yellowstone, America's first and best-loved
national park, that takes his breath away. |
The first time I became aware of Montana's
existence was in the early 70s, when Hannibal Heyes and
Kid Curry - "Alias Smith and Jones" - were making
their weekly appearance on British TV screens. One particular
episode involved bandits, gold dust and a poker game by
the name of Montana Red Dog. The association was clear:
This was a place of gunslingers and cardsharps, where loveable
rogues robbed trains and banks (but never shot anyone).
Fast-forward to Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven,"
a film that, until recently, I mistakenly believed to have
been set in Montana. The fact that it's actually set in
Wyoming and was filmed in Alberta, Canada, is immaterial.
The immense landscapes will in my mind always be Montanan.
The third thing I knew about Montana (or second
if we discount "Unforgiven") was that it's a big
place. Seriously big. If I had dollar for every time I'd
been warned not to let the gas tank fall below half full,
I'd have, well, certainly enough for a gallon.
So it's with expectations of outlaws, unforgettable
scenery and excitement at spotting gas stations that we
cross Montana's southern border on State Highway 72.
Time pressures make it impossible to stop at
the nearby Little
Bighorn Battlefield, but the wonder of the scenery more
than compensates. One minute we're heading through vast
open prairies, the next we're on Interstate 90, tracing
the route of the Yellowstone River between low, heavily
wooded buttes and marvelling at the sight of the Rocky Mountains
in the distance.
Pulling into Livingston to find lunch, we discover,
not for the last time on this trip, that our preconceptions
of a rough-and-ready Montana are fairly wide of the mark.
Established in 1882 to service the Northern Pacific Railway,
Livingston is now home to a number of museums, including
the Livingston
Depot, a beautifully restored station and a thriving
arts community. And there's more to come. After taking our
lunch order at The Dawg House, the owner asks where we're
from.
"Leeds, England." I tell him. "It's
… "
"Yeah," he interrupts, smiling in
recognition. "I know it. Passed though there on business
once."
Now I wasn't expecting that when we walked
in.
From here, we continue west over the Bozeman
Pass before turning north towards Helena onto Interstate
15. There are radon
health mines in and around Boulder, where patients voluntarily
expose themselves to low-level radiation in the hope of
curing various ills. And just a few miles east, there's
the historic mining town of Elkhorn.
For us, though, the desire to explore is unfortunately outweighed
by the need to find a decent pharmacist: My wife Carole's
arm has swollen to comical proportions in an adverse reaction
to a bug bite. Maybe we should have tried the radioactive
treatment?
The next day, well-rested and once again boasting
equally proportioned arms (the antihistamines worked a treat),
we cross the Continental Divide at MacDonald Pass before
picking up State Highway 141 and heading north into ranching
country.
Today's midmorning coffee is at Trixi's, in
Ovando. We pull up in the car park and are massively impressed
to see a grizzly bear in the back of a pickup. Now this
is what we expected of Montana: backwoodsmen who keep grizzlies
as guard dogs. Sadly, closer inspection reveals that it's
actually just a very, very large dog.
Disappointed but now feeling sufficiently safe
to park up, we go in and order coffees.
"You guys are not from round here, are
you?" enquires Loretta, our server.
"No, we're from Leeds, England. It's …"
"Oh, I have a pen pal in Liverpool. That's
near you, isn't it?"
Two random Montana diners and in both, our
host has personal knowledge of our part of the world. Two
is far from a representative sample I know, but even if
the next 98 couldn't pin a tail on Britain's backside, it
still makes a nonsense of the notion that non-coastal Americans
have no interest in what goes on beyond their backyard.
Moving on, we pick up supplies at Clearwater
Junction and head north through lush green forests and past
vivid blue lakes. At one, we stop to make sandwiches. The
bread tastes like cardboard and I suspect the cheese is
an unwanted byproduct of oil refining, but so beautiful
is the scenery that it couldn't have been a more perfect
picnic.
A few miles later, we arrive in Kalispell,
our roughly pencilled-in destination for the night. Now,
the tourist bumf on Kalispell suggests a town chock full
of art galleries and antiques stores but I'm afraid all
we can see are dirty trucks and cheap-looking motels. We
decide to try Whitefish,
10 miles up the road, instead, and are rewarded with a main
street of coffee shops, bookstores, Internet cafes and sushi
bars, all overlooked by the appropriately named Big Mountain.
The next morning, filling up with gas, I fall
into conversation with an old guy in blue overalls, and
tell him how much we like his town. For some reason, this
sets him off on a rant about green issues. "There's
some of them environmentalists in the woods up there, you
know. Tryin' to stop the logging. I call them terrorists."
None of your latte-drinking, Internet-surfing,
"new Montana" nonsense here, then. And so disarmingly
charming is he that I find myself tutting and raising my
eyebrows in a shared understanding of the problem. "Yeah
… environmentalists, eh?" (I know, it's pathetic
isn't it? I'm so easily swayed by a smile that I shouldn't
even be trusted with the vote. A single foxy wink from Sarah
Palin and I know whose box I'd have ticked.)
Our destination today is Glacier
National Park or, more specifically, the 52-mile-long
Going-to-the-Sun
Road that connects the western and eastern entrances
at Western Glacier and St. Mary. The approach to the park
offers little suggestion of what's to come, just long gentle
bends following the course of a fast-flowing, glacial grey
river, the kind of place where you feel slightly cheated
not to see a grizzly and a couple of cubs playing in the
water.
And then, suddenly - wallop! - we're climbing
the steep ascents, looking down over the precipitous drops
and carefully negotiating the tight switchbacks for which
"The Sun Road" is famous. A minute ago I was driving
with a hand draped casually over the wheel, now I'm clutching
it at "10-to-2" like a learner driver on his first
road test.
Many of the walls that stand between us and
the valley bottom way below are so low that any protection
they provide is purely psychological, so the only chance
the driver gets to take in views other than the road immediately
ahead is by pulling into one of the frequent but often overflowing
turnouts. But when such opportunities do present themselves,
any stress evaporates. This is a landscape for which adjectives
like "towering" and "majestic" are spectacularly
inadequate.
Onwards and upwards we go, past one alpine
vista after another, occasionally making way for the historic
red buses that have been carrying tourists across the park
since the 1930s. Logan Pass marks the Continental Divide
and the arrival of the slightly less scary descent down
the western side of the park into the resort town of St.
Mary.
Our plan was to lunch and move on, but it seems
wrong to limit Glacier to an in-and-out-in-a-day trip so
we treat ourselves and book into St.
Mary Lodge for an afternoon of sightseeing, an evening
of elk carpaccio and Kobe beef at the Snowgoose Grill, and
memories of the view from Room 101 that will last far longer
than any concerns over how to pay for it.
The next morning is our last in Montana. We
make our way back over the Going-to-the-Sun Road - this
time on the more comfortable, hill-hugging side - before
heading west on State Highway 28 through the Flathead
Indian Reservation and a landscape that turns out to
be the closest to what I'd expected of Montana: huge, wide-open
grassland, rolling hills and only the occasional homestead
to signify any human presence. There's a beauty to this
landscape that goes beyond the merely scenic, an emptiness
that finally suggests the Montana of outlaws, "Unforgiven"
and infrequent gas stations. In short, it's the perfect
way to end our visit.
Peter
Thody
11/28/08
