Montana

Royce: From Salmon, ID we drove with Dad to some little town in Idaho to meet our good friends Tyler and Nicki on the way from their home in Reno to see family in Montana. Tyler and Nicki lived with us after they sold their house and we lived with them in their new house right until we left Reno. Now they are taking care of our dog, Scout, and providing a huge amount of behind the scenes support for this trip.

Our plan was to visit Montana with some locals and get a chance to see where Tyler and Nicki grew up. Our first stop was Butte to have a breaded pork chop sandwich and visit Nicki and Tyler's alma mater - Montana Tech. We did a bit of touring around campus and then left for Deerlodge. Nicki's parents are in Deerlodge; they actually live on the Federal Penetentiary that is located there. Nicki's dad, Dave, manages the prison dairy and her mom, Ida works at the local hospital. Dave whipped up some great steaks on the barbie and the rest of us did some quad riding on the prison grounds. The next morning Tyler and I went to tour the prison dairy (women are not encouraged to visit) with Dave. It was a pretty big operation and is run entirely by prisoners.

Our next stop was Glacier National Park, where we stayed and Tyler's grandparents cabin just outside the park. They were great to stay with and we ate very well the whole time. Our schedule was fairly tight so we decided that the best way to see Glacier was to do a one hour helicopter tour. It was incredible! It was like being in some Imax movie about glaciers. Huge mountains, sweeping vistas, knife edge ridges, blue cirque lakes and terrain falling away under the chopper like you would not believe! We covered the park from the south boundary all the away to the north boundary and into Canada. There really is no better way to see a park of this magnitude than by helicopter. We spent the rest of the day driving in the park and did a short hike to a beautiful lake.

From Glacier we went south to Helena, Tyler's hometown. The highlight of Helena was getting to hang out with Tyler's parents, Hooter and Karen. Getting to drink with a guy from Montana named Hooter has been a dream for a long time. We did some more BBQ with family and some touring around to look at some cabin property for sale. Montana really is a beautiful place and I hope we can make it back for a longer trip in the future. Nicki and Tyler put together a great overview tour for us. We were sad to leave and drive back to Reno.


Tyler, Nicki and April on the river behind Tyler's Grandparents Cabin


All four of us in Glacier National Park