This is a reanimation of the Vicaribus blog as lived by Miro Kazakoff and Ehren Foss in 2004 and 2005. The photos may be spotty.

Many Glacier to Great Falls

Posted by ehren

Monday we made a show of hiking around a little, mainly just to prove that we were still capable. After driving to the Many Glacier area to the north of St. Mary we hiked a 4-mile round trip to Red Rock Falls. The elevation change was minor enough that Miro kept all of his clothes on, though I did spend a fruitless half hour trying to get a picture of him falling into the glacial water as he climbed out onto the rocks.

I'll take credit for it, since it was my idea, and a great idea at that; Why not finish the hike and haul ass to East Glacier for Mike's train, and in the meantime go eat a ton of food somewhere? We took MT-464 back to Browning instead of the 89. I was gambling that thhe 464 wouldn't do as much climbing over the Hudson divide as the 89, and would therefore be a faster road. The landscape was again the spooky and empty rolling ranchland like nothing else we've seen. I told Miro that it will continue like this for about 2,500 miles, eventually turning flat and to corn, and he's still wrapping his head around that.

In East Glacier mostly everything was closed, so Miro led us to the lodge but that was too expensive (also we looked like hobos). Instead of risking a half mile walk up the 89 to the other restaurants (chance of downpour) we ate at a local quasi-tex/mex place. As soon as we were sitting down inside, the skies opened up, some of the hardest rain we've seen on the trip, aside from the squall line on the way to Austin.

It was still pouring by 6:30, so we scampered over to the bus and drove it a short distance to the train station, in an attempt to drop Mike off in some kind of dry state. The rain prevented us from re-enacting movie scenes where tearful goodbyes take place while running alongside a departing Empire Builder, waving hankerchiefs, but the sentiment was all there.

Miro, Annely, and I decided to drive at least halfway to Great Falls, so as to put us within range of the airport should morning alarms malfunction. The drive was as arresting as any through the mountains. Waving grasses, sunlit buttes, a hundred miles of Rocky Mountains shadows in the distance, high winds blowing us all over the road, massive rain...We should have investigated Choteau for an RV, since it was the only major town along US-89 and in an unbelivably picturesque location...but, we only saw signs for the KOA.

Over the next hour we made it to Vaughn, then the I-15, it turned dark, and finally we made it to Great Falls, unable to find any sort of RV park until it was pointed out to us hiding in a clump of trees kitty-corner to the gas station where we stopped to ask directions. Never in a million years would we have found the entrance on our own, down two dead-end streets, underneath railroad tracks. The showers, however, were the best I have experienced since leaving Boston, except for the curtain rod mounted just out of view at 6'2".

In the late, late morning we drove Annely to the airport, the security detail let us sit there for a few minutes while she signed the bus, and then we set a course for INTERNET. The next 10-day stretch will be the first real guest-less section of the trip since May 18th, when we met up with Sean and Rana. It's completely made our month and a half to have everybody along, but I think Miro and I are a little worn out, and are actually excited about spending a few days loping about between truck stops, Wal Marts, internet cafes, and exotic fast food chains, just like old times. Plus, I need to get some work done, pronto.

Through the afternoon we closed the bakery offering WiFi, then moved to a downtown coffee shop until that closed, and finally we set up shop at the public library. The library had far and away the best connection. It took all afternoon, but I uploaded all 140+ photos from Glacier, vetted the roughly 100 graphic designers that responded to an ad I posted on boston.craigslist.org before we left Kalispell (for a new project... why do I never learn?...let's call it C-FACTOR), responded to e-mails, performed a CVS checkin of SPECTRE, etc etc. No actual work yet, but everything I needed to get out of the way for the sake of progress.

On the way back to the bus Miro and I stopped at a truly vintage burger stand offering $0.49 burgers, $0.69 cheeseburgers, prices scaling appropriately from there. I ate my fill for $3.43. We were in the mood for something a little different, so we decided to hit the Flying J for the night (too many Wal Marts). I went for either a 5 or 8 mile run, depending on how far apart the blocks are in Great Falls, through little ranches, farms, and scrubland, rainbows, setting sun, light rain, you name it.