Paradise, Montana

I managed to take no photos of our time in northern Montana. I still haven't gotten into the habit of thinking 'oh, I should take a photo of that'. The good news is I'm generally enjoying the view so much that I don't think about taking photos because I'm too busy enjoying. But I'll keep trying to grow a better photog mind.

Missoula is noticeably larger than the other Montana towns we've visited. It still has a small town feel, for the most part, with lots of biking lanes and paths. It was a bit rainy, so we checked out some thrift stores, a used sporting goods store, and a yarn store (the first of the trip--I think that's pretty disciplined of me!). I now have yarn to make Luke's first part of knitted socks!

There are mountains on all sides of Missoula and the next day we decided to go to Blue Mountain to ride our bikes. It was generally really fun--big pine trees, sweet smelling sage bushes and flowy trails. The biggest thing of note was that Luke met a young deer who sneezed and sneezed and sneezed (it is quite dusty with the fine dirt there), and looked stunned for a moment before bounding off. I also met a deer, but it just looked at me, all cute like.

The next day we drove up the Flathead Valley, to Kalispell and Whitefish. I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW AMAZING IT IS THERE. It makes my heart swell.
So, there are mountains everywhere. Also, crystal clear, pristine lakes. So you can go for a bike ride in the mountains, and then hop over to the nearest lake and have a swim. This is my absolute favourite thing of all time. The hardest thing is picking which mountain and which lake.

We stayed at a free campground at Abbot Bay--and had a morning swim, of course. What was there on the side of the road on the way there? Why, spring water of course! We still had lots from the other day, so we didn't stop.
Then we went over to the Whitefish Trails. There was a sign letting people know that a grizzly had been sighted in the area that month. After our ride we met a local guy on his bike who lives just on the other side of the mountain. He hadn't seen the grizzly, but his neighbour had. We didn't have any troubles. With bears at least.
The green uptrack trail was doable for me, but other than that the trails were too hard for me. But I'm happy to push my bike through the too-tough parts of the blue trail if I get to be in woods like that. Even Luke found the trails tough.

That night we camped at the free sites on Ashley Lake. Since it was the weekend, it was very busy there. Luckily, since we have our self-contained van, we could take a spot that was vacant because didn't have a good spot for a tent.

We also checked out Whitefish. It's quite touristy-hippie-hipster-y, but that's not surprising since it's just outside the National Forest. The 100th anniversary of the parks had just happened, and I felt pretty tempted to check out Glacier...but then Luke pointed out that every National Forest we've been to has always been packed, and truthfully the area outside the park was fantastic enough.

Our next ride was at the Herron Overlook Loops. We went to the trailhead to check out the map and there was another rider there. We got to talking and it turns out he's a fellow Canadian from Alberta. He just moved to Kalispell for work and was loving the area for the same reasons we do. So we did the ride together and got to know each other better, and now we have a friend in Kalispell :)  That might come in helpful when I become a cowgirl and move there.
And of course there was a swim, this time in Foy's Lake!

We went to Flathead Lake, which is one of the cleanest lakes of its size in the world. It's quite big and quite flat, and a lot of the surrounding land is native american reservations. Luke worked on his bike in the Bear Dance trailhead parking lot, while an eagle perched in its nest looked on. It took longer than expected and we ran out of daylight. So we returned the next day to do the ride.

I found the Bear Dance Trails to be challenging, mostly because there were lots of steep areas. There were lots of white pine cones, which are much softer than regular cones. At this time of year they break apart effortlessly and the pieces look like rose petals. I tried eating one of the little nuts from inside, because I had read that it was a staple of the native americans and bears in the area. It was *so bitter*. So either I remembered what I read incorrectly, or they have a tougher palate than I do.
Lucky for me, there's another mountain water spring at the base of the trails so I had delicious spring water to wash that down.
Luke and I were doing different trails, but he took a wrong turn so I ran into him as he was backtracking. As soon as he kept going I noticed that he had dropped his bear spray, but he disappeared instantly and didn't hear me when I yelled after him. So I put it in my pack and hoped he wouldn't need it. Then I met a couple with their two dogs, and they had been on the trails the night before and ran into a couple of bears. After he returned from his ride he was happy to be reunited with his spray (which, it turns out, is made in Kalispell!) and told me that he did see a bear...but it had heard him coming and was already taking off in the other direction.
[FYI bear spray is the best defence against bears, much more so than a gun. We don't worry about it too much, but a mountain biker had been killed when he surprised a grizzly in Glacier earlier this summer. So I'm glad Luke didn't have any problems]
Then, a swim in Foy's Lake. YAY!

I love Montana.

Oh Montana

Our first Montana stop was Bozeman, one of our first destinations from when we first started traveling. It's still as vibrant and beautiful as it was a couple of years ago.
Luke had ordered a new hydration pack from REI so we went to pick that up, drove around to see what's new, and stayed at the (free) Battle Ridge campground again. They've had to cut down a few trees but it was still great--especially when a couple of owls hung out in the neighbouring tree and hooted back and forth as we were going to sleep.

The next day we biked the Emerald Lake Trail in the Hyalite Canyon. There were quite a few people on the trail, hiking, running and biking. It's such a beautiful area!

That night we stayed in the Walmart parking lot. It had a nice view:

However, it was much more active during the night than I had hoped. This included a guy doing unbelievably shitty rap to music that had a repetitive high-pitched ding. All. Night. Long. This annoyed other people besides me, but whenever someone would yell at him to be quiet it would just encourage him to be louder and use more swears. Awesome.

The next day we learned that a large part of the Yellowstone River (not the part of the river in Yellowstone Park though) was completely closed to any use at all. A parasite was killing large amounts of trout and the river was closed until they had it under control. How awful.
I also learned about a local area called Beaver Chew. Back when Lewis and Clark were doing their famous voyage through the area, Lewis had left a message for Clark on one of the trees at the fork of the river to tell him which way to go. Then a beaver chewed the tree down before Clark could get the message. So Clark went the wrong way and almost died. Lesson learned: don't leave messages for your friends on trees.

We went to Leverage Canyon, which is also a popular trail destination with lots of bikers. It's a bit of a climb, but there's some great views at the top. Then we left for Helena.


Helena has the biggest city park in the US, with quite a number of trails...so we went for a fun bike ride! We then walked around the downtown for a bit to see what's changed since the last time we were there too. There were a few more stores for rent than I remembered, but it's still very lovely.

We grabbed some groceries and as I was walking through the parking lot I noticed a large yellow truck running with no one inside (that seems to be a thing there. how hard is it to turn your vehicle off?). It was also parked diagonally across two parking spots, parked illegally in (two) handicap spots, and had "TRUMP Make America Great Again" plastered all across the back of it. I think their idea of 'great' and my idea of 'great' must be very very different.

The next day we went to Grizzly Gulch, another fun trail area, for a bike ride. There were a few old limestone ovens used to make mortar for brick and stone buildings in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Luke very nicely found us a place for a swim, and there was a bonus very friendly dog who came over to hang out with us as we swam.
We decided to move on to Missoula and got to do the gorgeous drive through the Helena National Forest.

Much to my absolute delight, there was a mountain spring water fountain along the road!!! We filled up our water containers and I drank as much water as I could to maximize the spring water experience. The water tasted soooo amazing.

Luke filling our water container

There was a fellow also getting water, so we chatted with him a little bit. He was quite soft spoken, but unbelievably nice. He was making lemonade--the bag of squeezed lemons was right there, so it was as fresh as it gets--and he kindly offered us some. It was also so delicious. I'm smiling hard just thinking about it.

What we've seen of Montana makes a lot of sense to me. People seem to care about community and the quality of their society. There are co-ops and thriving arts scenes. And they make mountain water springs just because they can.

Our next blog stop will be Missoula and then the Flathead Valley/Glacier National Park area, my new favourite place!

The Black Hills SD

I had very low expectations of South Dakota and Mt.Rushmore in particular. Usually if it's a well known tourist destination, I don't enjoy it. So I was pleased as punch to learn how wonderful the Black Hills National Forest is!

We didn't actually stop to see Mt.Rushmore, but we saw it a bunch of times regardless. We drove the Iron Mountain Highway (the 16A), which had a number of one-lane tunnels with a view:

Can you see the teeny tiny faces of some presidents?

There was a fun stretch of road that had a pigtail bridge, which is a spiral road built in 1932. It was a bit hard to photograph, but it was entertaining to drive!

I also took a photo of this bit of road, which Luke called 'car singletrack'.

I actually did take a couple of photos of Mt.Rushmore, from afar.

As we first started driving up the Iron Mountain Road, a crazy bunch of tractors came driving down. There were probably about 50 of them. It was pretty adorable.

It was another hot day, but Luke found me a lake to swim in! It was Horse Thief Lake and it was perfect. It has lots of easy ways to access the water for swimming and it also has cliff diving. I haven't cliff dived before, and starting with a 25 ft jump didn't seem like the way to start, so I didn't partake. Maybe next time!

The cliff diving rock

My safe dock jump

We also camped at a free campground just down the road from the lake--it's at a popular rock climbing area called Wrinkled Rock.

There was a thunder storm over night which cooled the temperatures off a bit for the next day. We still had a morning swim (couldn't resist another dip at Horse Thief Lake!) and went for a bike ride on Storm Mountain. It was a super fun ride and everything smells of sage...you can't beat that.

We climbed back in the van and headed to Montana.

Going out west trip #3

It took us about three days of driving all day after leaving London ON to get to our first destination--the Black Hills of South Dakota.
It was soooo hot. Luke and I don't like using air conditioning, so we relied on having the van fan blowing air on us to keep us going. It actually was comfortable enough, as long as we weren't doing anything beyond sitting as we drove. After the three days, I was pretty dehydrated and it took almost a week for me to feel mostly normal again. Blech.

There weren't many highlights on the drive, since we didn't stop much. However we did stop in Sparta Wisconsin, which calls itself the bicycling capital of America. It's in the centre of 101 miles of state trails (penny farthing not required)

We also stopped at the Spam Museum in Austin Minnesota. I've never seen Luke so enthusiastic about a museum before. Unfortunately it was closed when we got there, so we had to make due with peering through the windows and taking this photo op:

Our last notable stop was in Wall South Dakota, to see the kitschy tourist trap drug store, It was full of 'wild west' buildings and souvenirs galore. It made Luke's skin crawl, so we only really had a chance to take a photo of their cheesy T Rex before we split.

my T Rex impression

We also made a stop for some groceries for lunch in some super small town, at what looked to be a grocery store but was actually more like a dollar store. They had five aisles of 'grocery' items, that were 80% junk food. We did find sliced bread though and, thanks to the fantastic tomatoes from my dad's garden, we had a decent lunch. I did however luck out and bought Luke this bonus item.

That brought us to our first official destination--Rapid City, SD.

I love Vermont

After another day in East Burke and the Kingdom Trails, Luke and I drove to Montpelier, Vermont's capital. It's a small town, but sooooo pretty and lovely. It has a beautiful downtown, with lots of public art and cast iron bridges going across the river that winds through it. Luke has lots of photos of it on his blog [blog.photonstudio.net]. Check it out.

We stayed just outside of Montpelier, in a little town called Barre. They have a trail area, called Millstone, where one of the trails has a bunch of really nice carvings in the rock.

And here's the view at the end:

There are several old quarries in the area, that are all filled with water now. And you can swim in them! Here's the one I swam in:

I've never swam anywhere that obviously deep. There was a little ledge and then it dropped down about 100 ft...and you could see all the way down. Awesome.
Here are some other quarries too:

We also rode at Perry Hill, an area recommended by a trail builder Luke ran into a parking lot. Lots of climbing to get up there, but the super fun payoff makes it so worth it!

That weekend we drove to Montreal, to visit Luke's brother and his family. The wait at the border to get into Quebec was brutal--it's really not big enough for the people wanting to pass through it. But we had a wonderful visit!

We had a day off before we were due to be in Ottawa....so we turned around and went back to Vermont for the day. That's how much we love it there. The border was still awful, even on a mid-morning on Monday. We stopped in Burlington because you can't not stop there.
Then we went on to Wains, to the Camel Hump State Park. We were in the clouds all day, so there was a nice drizzle/mist the whole time keeping us cool.

The next day we drove to Ottawa to see my brother and his family. We learned our lesson and opted not to cross at the Quebec border but drove over to Cornwall to cross instead. We had a great visit with them as well, and went to the Museum of Nature to see the ultimate dinosaur exhibit (yay!).

After Ottawa we stopped in the Belleville area to meet up with our friend's dad for a visit. He took us to Goodrich Loomis for some riding and then we had a great lunch, with great conversation, in Trenton. After lunch we stopped by the fantastic bike shop of the area, Bloomfield Cycle, to pick up some new grips for my bike (I feel like I'm always buying new grips).

We also stopped in Cobourg to go to the beach. I had no idea their beach was so good! It was a super hot day though, so even in the water I was toooooo hot. I stayed and played in the waves as long as I could though :)
Then we headed back to London for a week to visit and regroup for....our trip back out west!

Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Maine and Vermont

Our first plan was to drive the Cabot Trail around Cape Breton. We stayed a night in Ingonish to enjoy their beach and ocean. The swimming wasn't too great, since there was lots and lots of seaweed, but Shae and I got in the water so she could have her first official dip in the ocean! There is a cute tiny shop called The Groovy Goat Soap Co. in town, where you can buy homemade goat milk soap and visit the goats (and pigs and ducks) in the barn out back. Very cute!

The next day we did the drive around to the west side, stopping for a lovely little hike to a beautiful waterfall and also stopping at Pleasant Harbour to enjoy the sea.

That night we were lucky enough to get a campsite at right by the sea. The campground was essentially a parking lot, but the water and beach was just a flight of stairs down the small cliff.

The next day we stopped at the Celtic Music Interpretive Centre in Judique, totally just to indulge me. It was pretty small, but I found it to be fun. There were fiddles you could play, step dance instruction videos and a little computer that taught you phrases in Gaelic.
We drove to Truro, to spend a night at a campground that Ed, Tricia and the kids stayed at on their way down. The big draw was a giant bouncing pillow, which was inflated and rubber, in the ground. Luke figured out how to bounce to get Shae and Tegan flying high, and soon there was a group of children swarming Luke to also get in on the high bouncing fun!
Luke and I were actually quite impressed with Truro. They have a really good bike shop (yay Bike Monkey Bike Shop!!), quite a lot of trails, and a really nice gorge with waterfalls.

We then made our way over to Bar Harbour Maine and Acadia National Park. When the Rockefellers owned it, they built carriage roads all through the park which are now closed to cars and wonderful for biking. There were piles and piles of people there for biking!
We stayed at a surprisingly nice campground (usually the commercial RV parks don't have much nature or privacy, but this one did a good job).  There were blueberry bushes everywhere, so we picked and ate blueberries to our heart's content.

Next was Vermont! Luke and I stopped in the Carrabasset Valley on the way. We were soooo impressed! Besides it being *stunning*, they have so so many trails and a full time trail crew always improving what's there and building more. It was super quiet while we were there, which makes me feel like this is a somewhat hidden gem....that we need to spend more time there!!!

As we continued west we saw a beautiful little old mill, and had to stop to take a picture:

We met back up with Ed et al. in East Burke Vermont later that night, after a beautiful drive through the mountains of New Hampshire. We stayed at the campsite closest to the Kingdom Trails and spent the next day riding our bikes. It was a hot but fun day, and Shae and I cooled off in the river (even though we had found one, large leech on a rock. Brave.)

The next day we stayed on for another day of bike riding, while Ed and his family started heading back west towards Toronto.

Next post: more wonderful amazing Vermont!

Catching Up

So, I continue to be a lazy blogger. We've finished the trip and are back in Ontario....so I'm going to whip through the second half of our trip out east!

On our last day in the St.John's area we drove out to Torbay and biked the East Coast Trail. There were amazing views, and even though it kept looking like rain the bad weather stayed away for us.

And here's a very short video of a cliff with gulls:

We then drove back west to Corner Brook, which is an interesting town. The layout isn't terribly visitor-friendly, since it took a fair bit of exploring to figure out where things are. It is very pretty (except for the large paper mill) with lots of hills and water. Here's a sunset view of the city (from a surprisingly nice look-out from a strip mall parking lot)

We took this photo on a Sunday night, and the McDonalds was the only thing open at the strip mall. I couldn't believe how busy it was--everyone in town must have their Sunday dinner at McDonalds! The seagulls in the parking lot were happy though.

We went to Margaret Bowater park, since it was a good place to park for a bike ride. Luke had just left for his bike ride when I jumped on my bike and my front shifter promptly broke in half. I collected the pieces of my shifter from the ground, loaded the bike back on the van, and went for a hike instead. (miraculously Luke was able to put the shifter back together that night, and got it to work (more or less) even with a missing spring)
They have a fantastic little swim area in the river at the park--with lifeguard--so it was the perfect thing for me after a hot day's hike. The water was icy cold, just as I like it!

The next day we did some chores and Luke got a haircut. When we first got to Newfoundland I had asked Luke if he thought it would be a good place to get a haircut (I needed one pretty badly). He told me they'd give me bangs and make me look like I listen to bad country music, and even though that was a joke I didn't dare risk it. So I had to laugh when Luke's hairdresser commented that "you're not from around here" when he asked for his city slicker longer-on-top/shorter-on-the-sides cut. And I teased him that they had given him 'corners' at the back (which they did).
Since it was our last full day on the island, we bought some NL jam (the same as from Luke's childhood) and got a last order of Mary Brown's taters. Then we drove to Port aux Basque to catch the ferry the next morning.

One of the views on the drive to the ferry

Port aux Basque, before the thick fog rolled in

The next morning we took the ferry to Sydney Nova Scotia, which took all day. The ferry ride was 6 hours, but they also told us to come line up two hours before the ferry left for some crazy reason.

The pay-off was that our friends Ed and Tricia and their two kids Shae and Tegan were waiting for us on the other side. We had travelled with them last summer out west, so this summer the trip was out east :)

And more Newfoundland

Once we started heading east, the sunny and warm weather turned to foggy and rainy weather.  It's all still beautiful though!

We stopped off at Terra Nova National Park for a pit stop, and much to my delight they have free showers! We had tried to have a shower earlier that morning, but couldn't find a good place to set up our camp shower...so it was a very welcome surprise.

Later that day we arrived in St.John's and we did a driving tour of Luke's old neighbourhood (Luke grew up there). A whole lot has changed since he moved away and it is a whole lot more affluent and larger. I loved all the colourful houses and the art and culture in the community.

I also dropped into the Nonia store, where they sell hand knit items made by women in the surrounding communities for charity. The had *beautiful* things.

We wandered up and down Water St for a while. Then sat down for some coffee. Mmmmmm. There's a particular coffee shop that we liked called The Jumping Bean, where we spent some quality time.

Since we had another rainy and very windy day the next day, we did some touristy things and went to Signal Hill.

Here is Cabot Tower, where Marconi received the first transatlantic wireless signal.

And here's one of the views:

We had planned to hike around a bit, but the wind was so strong that we cut the hike short.

We also went to Cape Spear, the eastern-most point of North America. We walked around the WWII bunkers that remain from when it was a strategic spot in the Battle of the Atlantic, mostly used as protection from German submarines.

The gun barrel, that is mounted on a disappearing carriage that allows it to be hidden from sight.

The ocean was a bit rough from the wind and rain.

I had too much rain on my lens to take any more photos!