Montana--Day 1

I've seen plenty of amazing photos of Glacier National Park and of Montana in general, so it was high time that Jean and I went out to Big Sky country to check it out for ourselves. And, I needed a good destination to serve as an anniversary gift to my lovely wife, so Montana it was!

As with most trips, the actual travel part wasn't that exciting. We flew out of Logan and connected in Denver on our way to the final destination of Missoula, Montana.

I WAS excited to see an official New Belgium Brewery restaurant in the Denver airport that served my favorite beer, 1554, which is not sold in New England. Mmmmmmm.

Aside from that little delight, our Saturday involved flying with our not insubstantial luggage (hey, you try bringing two full size mountain bikes, sleeping bags, bike tools, helmets, cycling shoes, and clothes for an active vacation that involves hiking and biking in temps from the 40's to the 80's... and some rain gear, just in case) and then driving a few hours to West Glacier.

Arriving into Missoula, we were immediately impressed with the surrounding scenery, and I actually wish I had planned to spend more time there. But alas, there's always a good reason to go back!

Anyway, we did hit the Missoula Wal*Mart before making the scenic drive to West Glacier, as we needed to stock up on some supplies that we did not pack (i.e., a small coolers, etc).

Once we had our supplies, we hit the road in our rental car. The mountains and surrounding landscape turned out to be as amazing and impressive as we had hoped--plenty of rugged peaks, lush green grass and trees, blue lakes, and wildflowers... we were psyched.

The drive from Missoula to West Glacier took about 3hrs, and we arrived at our little rental Kabin without incident. We unloaded and got ready to attack the following day.

One thing that was a bit weird was the fact that the sun didn't even come close to setting until 10pm. It was very strange to be sitting around in full daylight and then realize that the time was almost 9:30...