The Great American Road Trip: Idaho and Montana

On July 15, we drove away from our last overlook in Grand Tetons National Park and, after a quick Starbucks break in Jackson, we made our way across the border into Idaho. We were spending the night in Idaho Falls, which was only about a two-hour drive. It was nice to take a short break from so much driving, especially because we had a lot more ahead of us to get to Montana.

We carried some of our groceries into our Idaho Falls Airbnb because we had use of a full-size kitchen, so we refroze our ice packs and refrigerated some drinks and made plans to have pancakes for breakfast from the box mix we were carrying around with us. Ah, the joys of living out of a car. We relaxed for awhile and then we went to explore downtown Idaho Falls and to have dinner.

Falls on the Snake River

Warning: the water is LOUD (again, lol)

A potato-shaped bench that made me laugh (and looks more like a peanut, in my opinion)

We went to Jalisco's for some delicious Mexican food, then went for a walk along the river. There was a Japanese friendship garden on a little peninsula that stuck into the river, where we went for a stroll not long before sunset. We then visited the Manwaring Cheese and Gelato store, where we got scrumptious gelato for dessert and also a little pint of raw milk to try (spoiler alert: it tastes the same as pasteurized milk). We were planning on buying some cheese curds as well, but they were sold out, so we decided to go back in the morning. Our last stop of the day was the Idaho Falls Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, as Idaho Falls is the first place we visited that is majority LDS.

Japanese friendship garden on the river

The Idaho Falls LDS church

We made pancakes in the morning, then went back to the cheese store to buy some cheese curds (which were super high quality, by the way), then hit the road again. Our first stop of the day was Virginia City, Montana, which was about 2 hours and 40 minutes away.

We took a stage coach tour in Virginia City that was incredibly informative, so I figured I'd share some of what we learned. Virginia City was a gold mining town established in 1863 with an illustrious history. Due to the great wealth in the region and the general lawlessness of the Wild Wild West, Virginia City was infamous for criminal activity, especially robbery and murder, which culminated in the formation of the Montana Vigilantes (who went on to hang many people, including the sheriff of a nearby town). But Montana Territory was formed from the originally larger Idaho Territory in 1864, and also due to the great wealth in the area, Virginia City was made the capital of Montana from February of 1865 until April of 1875 when it was moved to the current capital, Helena. According to our tour guide, this choice was made largely because much of the original gold had dried up, but he also told us that Virginia City is the site of the richest placer gold mining deposit in the country, producing an estimated $50 million worth (Also, placer mining is "the mining of stream bed deposit," as opposed to drilling into a mountain, underground, etc.).

By the 1940s, Virginia City had become a ghost town, so a local couple by the name of Charles and Sue Bovey started buying up the buildings, restoring the structures that were falling down, and preserving as many of the original artifacts as they could. Thanks to tourism, Virginia City no longer qualifies as a ghost town; the population was 190 at the 2010 census, according to its Wikipedia page. But a lot of it definitely still looks like a ghost town!

Downtown Virginia City, MT

Inside the preserved grocery store

Coffee, spices, and tea in the grocery store

Inside the stage coach

We genuinely loved the stage coach tour, but it was admittedly one of the most ridiculous things I've ever done. We shared the inside of the coach with what I can only refer to as a family of Montana hillbillies, one of whom looked about 95 years old and was missing several teeth. Our tour guide also told us, verbatim, that he had been "cowboyin' for most of [his] adult life," which was my first time hearing the word "cowboy" used as a verb. The whole experience was an absolute hoot and I'm so glad we stopped there.

We had lunch on the go of cheese curds and other snacks we were carrying along with us in the car as we continued on to Missoula, which was another 3 hour drive. We made a quick pit stop at the University of Montana and then had delicious oven-fired pizza from Biga Pizza in downtown Missoula before continuing on to our Airbnb on the outskirts of town.

University of Montana

Home of the Montana Grizzlies

Missoula County Court House

Unfortunately, we didn't really get the chance to explore Missoula as much as we would have liked, because a lot of the downtown businesses were closed by the time we got there and wouldn't be open before our early start in the morning. But what we did see was very nice--and the pizza was truly top notch.

In the morning, we got breakfast to go from Veera's Donuts (which were also incredible) before turning north towards Glacier National Park. The drive, which was a little over two and a half hours, was absolutely stunning because we drove directly beside Flathead Lake for a lot of it. According to its Wikipedia page, Flathead Lake is the largest natural freshwater lake west of the Missouri River in the lower 48, and it also is "one of the cleanest lakes in the populated world for its size and type." Maybe having a lake house there wouldn't be so terrible, do you think?

Our first stop in Glacier was the Apgar Visitor Center, just inside the park, and then we set off down Going-to-the-Sun Road. I had mentioned once in my first blog post how much work I put into organizing this trip, so here's a quantifiable example: only people with reservations can drive down Going-to-the-Sun Road. The tickets to do so were released in batches, so I had a reminder alarm set on my phone to go off when the tickets became available because they usually sold out within the first few hours. And this wasn't the only time I had to do this, so you can imagine how figuring out the logistics on a month-long trip was quite the undertaking. But I digress; I got the tickets so it all worked out! We didn't get very far down Going-to-the-Sun Road before we stopped to take in breathtaking Lake McDonald with its famous colorful rocks.

Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park

We walked around a little at the Lake McDonald Lodge, then continued along Going-to-the-Sun Road, which had one viewpoint more stunning than the next. It was hard to choose, but before we left on this trip, I think I was most looking forward to Glacier among all the national parks we were visiting, and the honest truth is that it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

McDonald Falls

Pardon me for absolutely jamming to Shania Twain in this video, but I decided it was worth sharing anyway

Views from Going-to-the-Sun Road

A marmot on Going-to-the-Sun Road

Big Bend

Jackson Glacier Overlook

We drove the length of Going-to-the-Sun Road (the photos really don't even do it justice, pretty as they are) and exited the park on the eastern side to get to our campground for the next two nights. All the pre-reserved campgrounds in Glacier were full, so I had made us a reservation at Chewing Black Bones campground, a Native American-owned campground less than 5 miles from the eastern entrance to the park.

They assigned us our campsite when we got there, but when we drove out to set up, we realized it was really small, it didn't have a picnic table, and we'd have to set up our tent about 10 feet away from a porta potty. We went back to the office to see if they had anything else available, and they gave us a different campsite that was technically an RV site, but it was in a nicer area and there was a bathroom nearby (not a porta potty). We hung out for a little while and I made noodles on our little rented camp stove for dinner, and then we went back out for sunset in the Many Glacier section of the park.

Sunset at Many Glacier Lodge

Sunset at Many Glacier

Fox carrying dinner home at sunset (She was right in the road!)

More sunset views. Beautiful at every turn!

Back at the campground, I went to take a shower before we went to sleep and discovered there was no hot water, so I ended up taking a cold-water sponge bath. In the morning, Julia woke up on the ground because her air mattress had deflated overnight (I think it sprung a leak because there were these scrubby, thorny things all over the ground). We went into the bathroom to wash up and discovered there was no soap or paper towel, and Julia had to shower while standing in a puddle because of a slow drain. We set off back into the national park because we wanted to get some early hiking in, and we tried to shake off our rough morning, but I was dreading spending another night at that campground. We discussed it and decided to rearrange our plans so that we would leave Glacier earlier than we planned, which meant we wouldn't have to stay at the campground another night.

But anyway, on our way to the hike, we had another incredible wildlife sighting: a grizzly bear and her two cubs! They were eating huckleberries right by the side of the road. Mother Nature continued to bless us with amazing animal sightings.

You can only see one cub in this video but I promise there were two. And the reason I'm confident it's a grizzly is because of the hump on Mom's back, which you can clearly see in this video

SO fortunate to see this so close!

Julia and I both are naturally night owls and therefore late sleepers, but I will freely admit that all of our best wildlife viewing was early in the morning. If you find yourself in any of these incredible national parks, it's worth it to get your butt out of bed in the morning.

The next thing on our itinerary was the hike to St. Mary's Falls. Glacier is a hiker's paradise, with stunning trails all over the place, most of which were above my personal fitness level. But the St. Mary's Falls trail was an easy one, and we went early enough that the trail wasn't super crowded. It was a really nice walk and the falls were beautiful. The only drawback was that the wildfire smoke descended on us again, so I was really grateful that we got to enjoy the incredible views from Going-to-the-Sun Road the day before.

Hiking out to St. Mary's Falls

Clearly I love sharing loud water videos with anyone reading this, so beware, this one is also loud

St. Mary's Falls

Smoky sunrise from St. Mary's Falls

After we got back to the car, we then drove to Trail of the Cedars (which is so flat that it's actually handicapped accessible), which winds through a forest of ancient western red cedars and western hemlocks. It was beautiful, and such a nice walk.

A felled tree on Trail of the Cedars

The colorful rocks in Glacier aren't just in Lake McDonald

Fun fact: most of the water in Glacier looks turquoise and even kind of sparkly because of something called glacier dust, which is the particles ground up by moving glaciers that are then picked up by the melting water. The particles are so small that they are slow to sink to the bottom of streams and rivers, which gives the water a cloudy, sparkly, turquoise look. The more you learn, right??

We then went back to the Lake McDonald lodge to the boat rental area. I had interest in going out in a rowboat, but they only had one and it was already taken. They did, however, have a whole row of motorboats lined up. Julia was really nervous about renting a motorboat, which was very funny to me because she's a really strong swimmer and loves to go canoeing through rapids and whitewater rafting. I'm a very nervous swimmer and was totally game for the motorboat, so I managed to talk her into it. And we had a great time! In the interest of full disclosure, I very nearly crashed the boat when we brought it back, but I managed not to (just barely), so crisis averted!

Driving a motorboat on Lake McDonald (It's electric, so no gross gasoline pollution!)

We did a very, very careful shuffle so we could both have a turn driving the boat. Such a good time!

So at this point, we decided to deal with our plan to abandon our campsite for the second night. We had tickets to go on a boat tour of Two Medicine Lake the following morning, which was the only thing potentially preventing us from leaving our campsite early. I tried to call the boat reservation line to see if we could change our reservation, but they don't have a real phone line; it's just a robot who takes reservations (LOL). So we decided to exit the main part of the park so we wouldn't have to do the crazy Going-to-the-Sun cliffside danger drive yet again, and swung around the bottom of the park to get to Two Medicine, which is in the southeastern corner of the park. Thankfully, we were able to change our tickets for the following morning to the last boat tour of the day at 5pm, so we motored up to the campsite from there, threw everything in the car, and booked it back to Two Medicine in time for the tour. This all would have been a lot easier if I had thought of changing our plans before we actually left the campsite for the day, but at least it all worked out! And Two Medicine, unsurprisingly, was gorgeous.

Two Medicine Lake

On a second boat during the same day! (This time as passengers)

Another view from Two Medicine Lake

After the tour, which was lovely as you can see, we headed southeast and spent the night at a motel in Great Falls, which was two and a half hours away. There was a Perkins attached to our motel so we had breakfast for dinner and nobody had to sleep on a deflated air mattress in a crappy campground for the night, so I definitely consider that a win.

In the morning, we continued on to our original destination for the day: Bozeman, MT. But we made a quick stop in Helena to see the Montana State Capitol.

Montana State Capitol

We got to Bozeman earlier than I had planned, since we rearranged our plans and didn't have a boat tour to contend with, so we got to explore downtown and do a fair bit of shopping. Julia made out like a bandit at one particular jewelry store, and we had a deeply satisfying late lunch at Bozeman Taproom & Spirits.

Downtown Bozeman

Inside Main Street Market in Bozeman

We also got some huckleberry ice cream from Sweet Peaks Ice Cream to bring back to our Airbnb, which was just as good as it sounds. Our Airbnb for the evening was a sheepherder's wagon (similar to a Conestoga wagon) at Serenity Sheep Farm. Our host, LaVonne, was so accommodating, and she also sold us a couple of things she makes from wool at her nearby mill. Technically it's a sheep farm, but they had a bunch of animals, including pigs and goats as well as an alpaca and a donkey. We love staying there.

Julia with the sheepherder's wagon, our home for the night

The following day, we had a very long drive ahead of us, so we went out for a very nice breakfast in downtown Bozeman to fuel up. I'm not usually a food photographer but this was such a nice presentation that I couldn't resist.

Delicious breakfast at Jam! in downtown Bozeman

Jule had a "breakfast charcuterie board" that we keep saying we're going to replicate, because it was so good and so unique, but we've haven't gotten around to it. One of these days!

We turned south and headed for Utah. Our final destination that day was Salt Lake City, Utah, which was about 7 hours from Bozeman. We made a quick sandwich stop in Pocatello, Idaho at The Works Deli and Grill, which was a build-your-own hoagie place à la Subway (but considerably better). We made it to Salt Lake City late in the day and got takeout to eat in our Airbnb. Thankfully, we had no driving to do the following day, as I had planned a whole day to explore Salt Lake City.