Molly, one of our FM co-workers, is from Alaska, and she recently went back to see her family, which inevitably means she went fishing. She says:

We ended up with 10 fish, which was 95 lbs of processed meat. These were probably 15-20 lb fish originally, which is pretty tiny for a halibut. We call these “chickens”. A few days before I got there someone caught a 354 lb’er….which is what we would call a “barn door” because as you can see they are flat, so it’s like pulling a barn door through the water. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to pull in a fish that big! I caught a 130 lb’er once and that took over an hour.

Here’s a photo she took of them hauling one in:

Anyway, the cool part is, her family sent her home with a lot of the halibut meat, and when I found out she was giving it away, I eagerly offered to take some off her hands. So yesterday she brought in three fillets for us, which we defrosted that night, broiled with a little olive oil, salt, pepper, and herbes de provence, and served over jasmine rice. Simple. Delicious.

Incredible movie. I cannot recommend seeing this enough. It’s like a live action version of The Omnivore’s Dilemma meets Fast Food Nation. Getting to see Joel Salatin from Polyface Farms was worth the price admission alone.

Only in Texas…

Go Unicorns!

After two nights in St. Mary, Montana, we packed up on Saturday, June 20th, to begin the long drive towards Spokane, Washington. But first we planned to head south around the park and re-enter it from the west, in order to drive the Going-to-the-Sun Road from the other side. Only 12 miles were accessible from the east, which we drove the night we arrived, whereas 29 miles were open from the west.

Two parts of the road in a switchback were destroyed by an avalanche over the winter, rendering the already narrow road a frighteningly narrow single lane wide. I can’t say that I’ve ever witnessed the destructive after-effects of an avalanche before. It basically looked like the mountainside had been combined in a blender, tree trunks, boulders, soil, snow and all.

It took us an hour to make it up to the point where the road was closed, just passed a section known as the Weeping Wall. We parked for a bit, had a snack, saw a family of bighorn sheep, and watched children horseplay precariously on the mountainside snowpack. And then we really began our drive home.

We opted to take US-2 west rather than I-90, and so meandered through Kalispell, MT, Bonners Ferry, ID, and Newport, WA on the way to Spokane. We were so exhausted after driving all day long, we had Indian food delivered to our hotel room, and collapsed.

And that was it. We woke up late the next morning. We went to Huckleberry’s, a local organic grocery store, for a well-deserved brunch. And then we headed over to the airport to catch our flight home to San Francisco.

Our route from Glacier to Spokane

We saw numerous instances of Blackfeet prayer flags tied around the aspen trees along the road outside the park

View of Two Medicine Lake (I think) as we drove around the park

McDonald Creek rushing alongside Going-to-the-Sun Road

A view of the valley as we climb Going-to-the-Sun Road

A nice view of Going-to-the-Sun Road cut into the mountainside

A picturesque waterfall, falling across the road

The view from as far as we could go, just past the Weeping Wall

And that’s all folks! This is the end of the road. Time to go home.

We had originally hoped to spend Friday, June 19, driving across Glacier National Park via the Going-to-the-Sun road, possibly stopping somewhere midway for a hike. But just after we’d arrived in St. Mary on Thursday night, we discovered that about 5 miles of the 53 mile long road were impassable due to heavy snowfall and an avalanche earlier in the winter.

That changed our mental plans somewhat, so we decided instead to enter the park on Friday morning at Many Glacier and take one of the trails departing from around Swiftcurrent Lake. The ranger at the entrance station suggested that the Grinnell Glacier trail offered the biggest “bang for the buck” in terms of its sweeping views of the surrounding valley. She also warned us about grizzly bears—everything warned us about bears: signs, brochures, other hikers—which seriously freaked us out. But we never saw hide nor hair of a bear (besides the two black bears we spotted along the road in Yellowstone). It didn’t stop us from making all sorts of noise as we passed through heavily wooded areas.

Even though it was pretty overcast in the morning on most days, the clouds would usually break sometime in the afternoon, offering a window for taking spectacular photos. Not this time. We hiked in the drizzling rain about three and a half miles up the trail, until it too was blocked off, due to an “unstable snow bridge”. So we didn’t make it all the way to the Grinnell Glacier. One gets the sense that Glacier National Park obeys its own seasons. Still it was an amazing hike, one I’d be happy to do again in better weather.

Lake Sherburne, near the Many Glacier Entrance

The trail along Lake Josephine

Heading up the Grinnell Glacier Trail

Turquoise Grinnell Glacier Lake

After a quick lunch in Mammoth Hot Springs, we hit the road north, leaving behind both Yellowstone and Wyoming for Montana’s Big Sky Country. We took US-89 out of the park, traveled west a bit on I-90, and then headed the rest of the way north on US-287—a drive I cannot recommend enough, especially the part after it overlaps with I-15. There is nothing around, except the Rocky Mountains to the west, Canada to the north, and rolling fields of the Great Plains all around. For hours. Soul cleansing stuff.

Our goal for the day was to reach Browning, Montana, the largest city near the east entrance of Glacier National Park. It’s located within the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Upon arrival we discovered that there was not much happening in the way of hotels or restaurants, so we continued up the road to St. Mary, located right at the entrance to the park. We stopped at a nice lodge with a restaurant and got a room for Thursday and Friday night.

A woman in the gift shop informed us that the Going-To-The-Sun road through the park was not yet open, a chunk in the middle was partly destroyed due to a major avalanche during the winter, and another part was still being plowed. But she encouraged us to drive into the park up until the road was closed, about 12 miles, as the animals like to come out before dusk. We’d been driving all day, but since the sun wouldn’t be setting until after 10pm, we figured, why not. We drove into the park, didn’t see any animals, and drove back to the lodge for a late dinner.

Leaving Yellowstone

US-89 just north of Yellowstone

US-287 on the way to Glacier National Park

First view of Glacier National Park along the road to St. Mary

We woke up on Thursday morning, June 18th, in Mammoth Hot Springs, at the very northern entrance of Yellowstone. Before beginning the long drive towards Glacier National Park, we took our time exploring the springs. The cloudy skies lent a macabre feeling to the already eerie scenery.

Orange runoff from Palette Spring

Interesting formations of Palette Spring

Steamy section of Mammoth Springs’ Main Terrance

Spooky shot of Canary Spring

Three dead trees

If you can believe it, the last four posts, West Thumb Geyser Basin, Old Faithful, Beyond Old Faithful, and The Grand Prismatic Spring, as well as this one, all took place within a single day, Wednesday, June 17th, of our week-long road trip.

At some point in the middle of it all, we figured we’d try to see if there was any chance we could stay in the park that night. So we called the central reservations line, and lo and behold, they had a cabin with communal bathrooms available in Mammoth Hot Springs, at the very north end of the park. So with that destination in mind, we made a big 130 mile reverse-S through the park to see as much as we could.

Bison munching by the road

Crossing the road

Munching on the other side

I really wanted to see Yellowstone Falls (in the “Grand Canyon of Yellowstone”), but by the time we got there, the clouds had come in, and it was starting to sprinkle. So I wasn’t able to get the best shot in the world. I guess I’ll just have to come back someday.

A nice view of Yellowstone River near Tower Fall

Along the way we stumbled upon two black bears in the wild

Crop of another shot of the cinnamon brown one on the right

And we caught a glimpse of what we think is an elk

Stephanie posing in front of our Mammoth Hot Springs cabin