2019 Montana Trip

Pre-Trip

Our first big trip of the summer season for our little family which includes my wife Becky, our dog Tilly, and me the writer of this blog you are now reading. Living in the northern part of the United States you will find (if you do not already know) that summer is a time for construction, traveling, camping, weddings, and getting some sun on your white pasty body before you have to go back into hiding. After looking like Ralphie's brother from the movie "A Christmas Story" all winter I am excited to put on some shorts and sandals and see our family in Montana.

We are going on this weeklong adventure to see two weddings. The first wedding we are attending will be for my cousin and the second will be for my sister-in-law. The first wedding will be located in Great Falls and the second wedding is south of Missoula in the Bitterroot Valley. I am excited for both weddings. They should be a lot of fun.

According to Google Maps we will be traveling a total of 1,696 miles, 1 day, 3 hours, 6 minutes round trip. This does not include travel taking place at our destinations. Our traveling plans are as follows. We will start in central North Dakota travel west to Glendive then exit the interstate to Circle and use a central Montana route to Great Falls. After the wedding in Great Falls we will go north to stay in Glacier National Park (GNP) for the first part of the week. The second half of the week we will be camping on the shores of Whitefish Lake. Ultimately, the goal is to find our way to Missoula for the Bitterroot Valley wedding by Friday night's rehearsal dinner. After all of the festivities during the week and a short stay in Billings have been completed, we will follow the interstate east all the way home.

We have recruited some company during our camping. My sister-in-law will be staying with us in GNP. She picked out some board games for us to play and I have some North Dakota whiskey and Montana bourbon for her to try during our stay. My wife and I are planning to introduce her to the wild ways of Polebridge, MT to see the Polebridge Mercantile and the Northern Lights Saloon. We may have to buy a shirt, have a brew, and a meal during our visit. Due to her bridesmaid duties, we will have to part ways with her for a little while until the Bitterroot Valley wedding. My Dad and Ann will be staying in Whitefish during the week. We will get to spend time with them in Great Falls and while we are camping.

A side task for our trip is to take some time and start to fill out our Montana Brewery Passport. A gift from my wife a couple of years ago that details your visit to each Montana brewery included in the passport. The brewery visit is considered complete after the establishment stamps your passport on the page provided for that brewery. The passport also provides an area for you to write notes about how the visit went, what beers were tried, and how they tasted. We plan to fill up the page with as much information as possible. I will be bringing two growlers for the tastiest beers to drink near our campfire at night. I am not sure how many breweries we will be able to visit with the limited hours breweries have and with all the other festivities going on, but we will give it our best shot. If you have Untappd (Facebook for beer drinkers) please follow me @troymcgill70 and we can share reviews of our drinks with one another. Even if I am drinking by myself in an airport waiting for a flight. You, my new Untappd friend, can keep me company 😉🍻🍺.

I have grown up camping with my family. We would take a couple of weekends or sometimes a week each summer to go camping. I cannot remember camping with a dog when I was younger. Now that I am older and have the responsibility to know the rules and regulations of where we are camping I found that taking a dog with you camping (or anywhere) can be fun but will limit you on what you can experience. GNP has a list of rules of what you can and cannot do with your pet. After reading GNP's rules this is what I took away from it. You need to have your pet properly restrained at all times, clean up after your pet, and your pet cannot be anywhere that is undeveloped. I bring this part up to not complain, but to share with you what I have researched pre-trip. I will share later in this post how our experience was with bringing Tilly along for the ride.

Post Trip

Becky, Tilly, and I finally made it back home after our Montacation. We were greeted by a huge thunderstorm and a moist house temperature of 80 degrees Fahrenheit. After waiting for the rain to stop we were finally able to unpack all of our gear, eat, and relax for the rest of the night. I am still getting used to being at work and Becky is taking some time to gather herself after finishing her first year of graduate school. Tilly is thankful to be home. She was able to get back into the groove of her regular schedule of dog stuff she likes to do while at home.

The weddings were super fun. At my cousin's wedding the wedding ceremony took place at a spot overlooking the Missouri River. The weather behaved and there was a little wind with a good amount of sun. The reception took place at a different location and was full of laughter, beer, and good food. My sister-in-law's wedding took place all at the same venue, but in different areas. The ceremony was down near the Bitterroot River and the reception was up top near and under the dance pavilion.

Unfortunately, the weather was not as accommodating. The ceremony was threatened to be delayed because of a storm moving through the area. The bride and groom persevered and got married exactly where they wanted to. With only a little rain and a couple of thunderclaps to add to the ambiance. The reception got a couple of raindrops and we were able to eat, dance, and have a couple snorts of liquor with family and the wedding party.

The trip length and time was something easy to overcome with great travel companions and all of the amazing scenery we saw. Of course, because we were traveling during the summer our first miles on the interstate were through road construction. There was some hail in Lewistown which forced us to hide under a gas station canopy. Which worked out well to watch the storm pass as we ate our McDonalds. We went through some more road construction shortly after St. Mary as we were making our way to GNP and over the Going-To-The-Sun Road. Riding around with my Dad and Ann we stopped by to see my Aunt and Uncle in Hungry Horse to wish my Uncle a Happy Birthday and to see the Hungry Horse Dam. The traffic going from Kalispell to Missoula was pretty heavy and slow moving. The rest of the trip from Missoula to home was nothing out of the ordinary and the traffic was good in most areas. There are some other stops Becky and I made along the way that I will discuss later.

The camping was great. It was fun to get my sandals on, sleep on the ground, chop wood, and start fires. My sister-in-law joined us in camping in GNP. I was able to share some of the North Dakota whiskey with her, but not the Montana bourbon. We played a dice game called Farkle and I tried to teach lessons on how to swing an ax to chop firewood. The lesson did not go well. I could not figure out how to teach good ax swinging motion or position through words or demonstration. We went exploring in Polebridge and ate lunch at the Northern Lights Saloon. We got some bear claws pastries at the Polebridge Mercantile. If you have not had a bear claw you should make the trip to Polebridge solely just to try one. They are delicious. Becky was the smore (graham cracker outside with fire roasted marshmallow and chocolate bar inside) maker all week. The smores tasted excellent next to our campfire at night. After we packed up camp in GNP my sister-in-law left to help with the Bitterroot wedding, and we went to Whitefish Lake State Park (Whitefish). The weather while we were camping in GNP and Whitefish was not ideal, but we made the best of it. We set up a tarp palace to protect us from the rain while we were staying in Whitefish which made our stay more comfortable. We visited my Dad and Ann while we were in Whitefish. We were able to watch the 4th of July fireworks over Whitefish Lake from Ann's cabin. They were nice enough to let us shower and feed us some food while we were there too.

Hello to my craft beer friends. Here is a list of the breweries we visited on the trip. The Front Brewpub and Mighty Mo Brewing Company in Great Falls, Backslope Brewing Company in Columbia Falls, Tamarack Brewing in Lakeside, Lolo Peak Brewing Company in Lolo, and the Beaver Creek Brewery in Wibaux. All the breweries we visited had great beers and atmosphere. At the Mighty Mo Brewing Company, we randomly ran into one of my cousin's friends that I met at his wedding. We had a couple of beers and talked with him while we were at the brewery. Small town Montana! You are bound to run into somebody you know wherever you go. What better place to run into an old or new friend than at a brewery? It was difficult to visit more breweries with our traveling plans and activities that were planned in the areas that we were staying. It was also difficult to visit more breweries due to having Tilly. I will talk more about the experience with bringing Tilly below. All in all, on the brewery front we did what we set out to do for the most part and started filling in our Montana Brewery Passport. If you would like to know more details of the beers, we tried and/or add me as a friend follow the link provided to my Untappd profile @troymcgill70. Cheers 😉🍻🍺!

Bringing our dog Tilly with us on this adventure worked well. We just had to plan out our vacation knowing we have a dog to take care of and make sure that we were following the rules set by the places we visited. Tilly is a great traveler. We did not have any issues with her getting motion sickness while driving. She basically just slept whenever we were in the vehicle. Much to my wife's irritation I like to drink a lot of water during the day. Which gave us plenty of opportunities to stretch our legs at all the rest stops along the way. Whenever we stopped Tilly took full advantage on getting some sniffing, pawttying, and running around in. While we were camping other campers and park rangers would come by our campsite to pet Tilly or tell us how cute she is. It is some unwanted attention for our campsite, but good interaction for Tilly and us to meet some of our temporary neighbors. I appreciate hearing strangers offer good praises about Tilly. I have noticed in most of these conversations the stranger usually bypasses the owner and talks directly to the dog. Which leaves Becky or I to answer questions from the stranger to Tilly as an unpaid third-party translator due to Tilly's inability to speak human. Bringing Tilly prevented us from visiting more places along the way, but in the long run we would not have had as much fun without her. I am glad we brought her and got to experience the trip with her.

Becky and Me
Whitefish Lake State Park, MT

Becky and Tilly
Whitefish Lake State Park, MT

Tilly and I under the tarp palace.
Whitefish State Park, MT

Becky and I before our one year anniversary dinner.
Downtown Great Falls, MT

Becky, Tilly and Me
Lewistown, MT