Big Canoe Travelers

Tuesday 9/7

Today we headed off at 7 am to travel 30 miles for a great Montana breakfast at a colorful place called Ekstrom's Stage Station. We then headed to Garnet Ghost Town - an old mining village now managed by the BLM of the US Government. We then returned to Missoula for lunch at the brewery called Bayern Brewing for some brats and some beer - and beer sampling.

The picture of the bear was from yesterday and the sculpture was made of old machine parts and hidden in it was a geocache - John Ham was the finder and we all signed the log!

Monday

Rocky Mountain Smoke Jumper Base - awesome men and women train and are based here for
fighting forest fires. The amount of gear that they mush carry is enormous and then they drop them the equipment they need. If they land in a tree they must climb down out of the tree, remove the extra gear and then climb back up the tree to retrieve their parashute and then climb back down again!

We then visited a museum after lunch and learned about the great fire of 1910.

Saturday and Sunday

Saturday was the first travel day on our Glacier to Geysers Caravan and we drove to Missoula in two waves of six coaches each. After settling in we had a putt putt golf tournament and Bill and I won the couples first prise!

On Sunday we headed to the National Bison Range and we were fortunate in seeing quite a few Bison, a few Pronghorn Antelope and one elk! The antler collection is from the elk which shed their antlers each year.

More Glacier Pictures

Glacier National Park Sept. 2, 3, & 4

We spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at Glacier National Park and it is indeed a national wonder! Please note we are dressed for the cold - even long johns for me!

We had the group of us in two of the Glacier long red buses - they have been reworked as dual fuel vehicles. We took the tour boat on Lake McDonald, went for a short hike on one of the trails, and Bill took a few to Polebridge to visit the bakery there.

8/31 & 9/1 Off to West Glacier, MT

We departed Fort Stevens at 7 AM and we traveled east along thee Columbia River and fortunately we had a overcast day for traveling east. We spent Tuesdaay night at the Elks Lodge in Spokane, Washington and arrived in time for their weekly Taco and Chili night. Paul and Betsy Hughes were traveling with us. We arrived in West Glacier shorty before Happy Hour started and we were the last of the 12 coaches to arrive (John and Rita Ham arrived the next morning). This trip was surprisingly beautiful with rivers, mountains and lakes.