So there we were on Sunday morning, drinking our coffee and chai, safely settled into the RV park in Columbia Falls trying to plan the next couple of days. Glacier was only a short drive away but…it was still Labor Day weekend and we’re not fans of large crowds when there isn’t a pandemic to worry about.
As excited as we were to see the park, we opted to wait until after the weekend when we assumed the number of visitors would lessen. This left us with the question of what to do for two days to avoid people but still have fun?
Well, we certainly weren’t going to hide away in The Pub when we could be out exploring the local countryside instead.
Dave discovered that Jeep has what they refer to as “Badge of Honor” trails all over the US where you can earn badges by *gasp* off roading. Imagine that. There was a trail nearby called the BlackTail Wild Bill trail we could take to earn our first badge. Having given up both my tea set and dish collections over the past few years during the downsizing process, I needed something to collect that would fit into our new, smaller lifestyle. Yep, I’ve traded china for little metal badges we can attach to the jeep! I laugh at this too.
We figured if there were too many vehicles on the BlackTail trail at worst we would need to find another place to go, so what the heck. Fortunately, we only met a few other people over the entire 12 miles.
Life with Dave is generally an adventure. Sometimes a planned adventure but just as often it involves “I wonder what’s down this road.” This is what happened as we meandered through the mountains looking for the badge of honor trail…which we promptly passed because there appeared to be a giant golf ball on the mountain top that we really needed to check out.
A “golf ball” on top of the mountain
I still don’t know what the golf ball actually is, but the view from the top of the mountain is really something to see.
Detour completed, we headed for the trail head.
Starting the trail
Jeep has this one rated as a 5 – 9 for difficulty which is fantastic! We stayed somewhere around a 6 because a) we’re not die hard off roaders so b) our jeep is not equipped to handle the more challenging aspects. What is great about this drive are the options. For the most part, we were able to pick and choose which technical difficulties Dave wanted to tackle while not having to worry about going through something neither he nor the jeep could handle.
Climbing out of one of many, many trenches along the roadside
This is an off road playground
Best part? This area of Montana is GORGEOUS! Tall trees, blue skies and spectacular scenery.
Yes, I have a thing about tree lined roads
After being gleefully jostled around for two hours we drove on the smoother pavement around Flathead Lake to check out the local communities. This would have been more fun if social distancing wasn’t a necessity but you work with what you have.
Instead of making numerous stops to check out shops and whatnots we only stopped to purchase, unsurprisingly, a bottle of wine from a local vineyard, cheese from a local cheesemaker, Flathead Lake Cheese (with the coolest walk up window)…
…whiskey from Whistling Andy’s, a local distillery…
…and of course a drive through for dinner because it while it was a long, enjoyable day by the end of it we were hungry, tired and ready to relax.
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