Every year I have these dreams of taking a nice long trip with Kory and each year it sort of slips away. So this year we settled for three days in Montana and northern Idaho.
Kory is the king of cleaning the windshield. He can get every last bug-speck off of that thing. Armed with our Gatorade, dill flavor sunflower seed (don't knock it until you've tried it), and my infinite playlist we headed north. We worried as the skies seemed to get smokier and smokier the further we got into Montana but it wasn't too bad where we stopped. We took the exit for Anaconda and headed to the Old Works golf course. Kory always raves about this course because it was designed by Jack Nicklaus and has black sand in the sand traps. It seems like a weird place for a high-quality golf course, but we think the mine next to it is owned by a British company that is somehow connected with the golf courses in England. Anyway, we hopped in a cart and did 18-holes. I was the cart driver.
After that we headed for Kellogg, Idaho where our hotel was located. I kept seeing signs for this bakery along the highway, so we took an exit and went to The Dinnerbell, which ended up being a bakery/restaurant run by a Mennonite group in that area. We got some cheese curds and tarts and returned to the road.
We checked into our hotel and ate at a little local drive-in called Sam's. Their specialty was breakfast, so I had some really good French toast and loaded hashbrowns. It hit the spot. Then Kory and I thought we'd explore the town a little. So, this is basically a mining town that has a massive ski resort, so in the winter it's got a lot of skiiers but it's a tiny bit deserted in the summer and....well, creepy. We were walking down this walking path when a group of six or seven kids on bikes came by. We thought it was funny that each of them said something to us. Then we walked down further and found that they were down on this bike course just off the walking/biking path. One of them had just biffed it really hard and was crying. Then another one came up and rode around us a little bit showing us how dirty he was from the bike course. We kept walking a little further, but it was getting dark.
We could not figure out why there was a massive car dealership in town with literally thousands of cars and about five locations in town. The town is literally filled up with this car dealership. Kory wanted to go up on this ridge to see this mine. When we got up there, the mine looked closed, but there were hundreds of more cars. We kept walking down the street but couldn't figure out how to get off that ridge and back down to our hotel. We were trapped. And then we wondered where all the people were. And why there were only kids around. So we decided the kids in the town had murdered all the adults. Like we were living in a Stephen King novel. And that they were so friendly to us because they were getting ready to kill us.
So we finally got back to the hotel and got in the car to go get a drink. I was sitting in the car while Kory went into the store and looked over and saw the mural above. Just look at it for a minute. To me it looked like the grim reaper with a bunch of graves around it. If you click on it, you'll see that it's acutally a skiier. But it added to our overall narrative about the town run by the children of the corn.
And our hotel was a little old and scary. The room had a leather rocking chair with a patch worn out completely where the head goes. So it allows you to think of all of the creepy people who have sat in that chair and rocked. The only thing going for this hotel--and this is big--is that it actually had a bed soft enough for Kory's preference. He really actually hates pretty much every hotel we stay in because the beds are too hard. So, he was willing to overlook the haunting due to the soft bed.
We got up early, had some breakfast, then headed to Lookout Pass to get our bike rentals and etc. Then we drove up to the trailhead for the Hiawatha Trail. What a fun trip! It was an old railroad bed that has been converted to a great bike path. It's about 15 miles from where we started to the bottom where you can be picked up by buses and taken back to the beginning. The trail starts with a 2 mile tunnel which is a little creepy, but we did fine. There are lots of signs along the way that tell the history of the railroad and were actually pretty interesting.
We got home from the trip and showered and relaxed. Then we decided to ride the ski gondola that happened to go right over our hotel. It took us over a couple of mountains and was probably one of the steepest and longest I've ever ridden. On the back of those mountains was Silver Mountain Ski Resort which was humongous. Wow! We explored a little, walked around a nature trail, but I was really starting to drag since I had already ridden quite a few miles on the bike.
After that adventure we headed to dinner at the Moose Creek Grill. I had looked up restaurants on Yelp and TripAdvisor and asked locals, and everyone raved about this restaurant. We are now huge fans. Just such good food. I had halibut and shrimp and this incredible risotto. Wow. I would go out of my way to eat there again.
We found out it was Huckleberry Days at the neighboring town of Wallace, so we headed down there to wander around. We decided this is where all of the actual people are. It is the cutest little city. We had a great huckleberry shake and wandered around.
We kept seeing signs that Wallace was the center of the universe, so Kory made sure to stand on the center of the universe!
Saturday, we headed home, thinking we were going to encounter a lot of eclipse traffic, but it was smooth sailing and it was good to get back to our home sweet home.
Kory is the king of cleaning the windshield. He can get every last bug-speck off of that thing. Armed with our Gatorade, dill flavor sunflower seed (don't knock it until you've tried it), and my infinite playlist we headed north. We worried as the skies seemed to get smokier and smokier the further we got into Montana but it wasn't too bad where we stopped. We took the exit for Anaconda and headed to the Old Works golf course. Kory always raves about this course because it was designed by Jack Nicklaus and has black sand in the sand traps. It seems like a weird place for a high-quality golf course, but we think the mine next to it is owned by a British company that is somehow connected with the golf courses in England. Anyway, we hopped in a cart and did 18-holes. I was the cart driver.
After that we headed for Kellogg, Idaho where our hotel was located. I kept seeing signs for this bakery along the highway, so we took an exit and went to The Dinnerbell, which ended up being a bakery/restaurant run by a Mennonite group in that area. We got some cheese curds and tarts and returned to the road.
We checked into our hotel and ate at a little local drive-in called Sam's. Their specialty was breakfast, so I had some really good French toast and loaded hashbrowns. It hit the spot. Then Kory and I thought we'd explore the town a little. So, this is basically a mining town that has a massive ski resort, so in the winter it's got a lot of skiiers but it's a tiny bit deserted in the summer and....well, creepy. We were walking down this walking path when a group of six or seven kids on bikes came by. We thought it was funny that each of them said something to us. Then we walked down further and found that they were down on this bike course just off the walking/biking path. One of them had just biffed it really hard and was crying. Then another one came up and rode around us a little bit showing us how dirty he was from the bike course. We kept walking a little further, but it was getting dark.
We could not figure out why there was a massive car dealership in town with literally thousands of cars and about five locations in town. The town is literally filled up with this car dealership. Kory wanted to go up on this ridge to see this mine. When we got up there, the mine looked closed, but there were hundreds of more cars. We kept walking down the street but couldn't figure out how to get off that ridge and back down to our hotel. We were trapped. And then we wondered where all the people were. And why there were only kids around. So we decided the kids in the town had murdered all the adults. Like we were living in a Stephen King novel. And that they were so friendly to us because they were getting ready to kill us.
And our hotel was a little old and scary. The room had a leather rocking chair with a patch worn out completely where the head goes. So it allows you to think of all of the creepy people who have sat in that chair and rocked. The only thing going for this hotel--and this is big--is that it actually had a bed soft enough for Kory's preference. He really actually hates pretty much every hotel we stay in because the beds are too hard. So, he was willing to overlook the haunting due to the soft bed.
We got up early, had some breakfast, then headed to Lookout Pass to get our bike rentals and etc. Then we drove up to the trailhead for the Hiawatha Trail. What a fun trip! It was an old railroad bed that has been converted to a great bike path. It's about 15 miles from where we started to the bottom where you can be picked up by buses and taken back to the beginning. The trail starts with a 2 mile tunnel which is a little creepy, but we did fine. There are lots of signs along the way that tell the history of the railroad and were actually pretty interesting.
We got home from the trip and showered and relaxed. Then we decided to ride the ski gondola that happened to go right over our hotel. It took us over a couple of mountains and was probably one of the steepest and longest I've ever ridden. On the back of those mountains was Silver Mountain Ski Resort which was humongous. Wow! We explored a little, walked around a nature trail, but I was really starting to drag since I had already ridden quite a few miles on the bike.
After that adventure we headed to dinner at the Moose Creek Grill. I had looked up restaurants on Yelp and TripAdvisor and asked locals, and everyone raved about this restaurant. We are now huge fans. Just such good food. I had halibut and shrimp and this incredible risotto. Wow. I would go out of my way to eat there again.
Saturday, we headed home, thinking we were going to encounter a lot of eclipse traffic, but it was smooth sailing and it was good to get back to our home sweet home.
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