She might kill me...

Before leaving Missoula yesterday morning, we went down to the park at the river, and let the girls play on the fancy playground, and ride the carousel. 

Being a horrible, horrible man, I convinced my wife it was quite okay for her to ride the carousel in her dress. Her only problem came when a little toddler and his mom got on, and she sacrificed the chariot she was going to be riding in, and had to climb on a horse.

She still isn't 100% happy with how she takes a picture, but seeing her yesterday reminded my of another carousel she was riding last June in Bickleton.

That was the picture that motivated her...and 50 pounds later, I'm here to tell you folks...hubba hubba.  Now she looks like I stole her picture out of a Lands End catalog. 



And yes, the girls had a good time also...it was just tough to get a good picture of them...it was a surprisingly high speed carousel. 

After that, it was on our way to our final destination of Bozeman, via Deer Lodge and Butte. 

In Deer Lodge, we stopped to have an inexpensive lunch of peanut butter and honey sandwich's(yes, between light lunch and salad for dinner, it was a day to let our tummies rest) on a picnic table at the Grant-Kohrs ranch, which we just didn't have time to properly explore.

You can't beat free, so we swung through Butte and visited the Mineral Museum at Montana Tech, where there was some neat stuff.  I'll spare you pictures, but wikipedia does it better.  It's another one of those things that is worth the stop, even if it's not worth the trip.





Ask a question, get an answer.

As we settled in for dinner tonight, my youngest daughter surveyed the spread on the table, and those around us, turned to my wife and asked:

'Mommy...why does every dish have meat on it'?

My wife, in one of the great all time answers said: 'Because, we are in Montana, honey.' 

That kind of sums it up...the place even had Montana in the name: The Montana Ale Works. 

In an attempt to be good, both my wife and I had salad...but because neither of us were THAT good, she had chicken on her salad, and I had steak on my caeser salad.  The girls had chicken fingers and fish and chips.  The chicken strips were REAL pieces of chicken, and I can't vouch for the fish, other than to say that my daughter inhaled it, so it must have been good.  As a side dish, the pepper parmesean fries were outstanding.  Both of our salads were good, and hit the spot as something half-way healthy after two days on the road. 

Of course, since it's called Montana ALE Works, we had some beer...once again, three of them, which is one for her and two for me, which is the most I dare drink learning a new town.  Unlike Tamarack, MAW doesn't brew their own beer...but they carry a lot of stuff from local breweries. 

My wife had an OB-1 Organic Ale...and it was more of a brown ale than an amber...it was quite tasty, and very mellow.  It might have been better than my second beer, Bitteroot Belgian Wit, but not better than my first beer, Jack's 90 Scottish Ale.  I like the kind of smokey flavor of a good scotch ale. 

If I lived in Bozeman, I would have no problem visiting Montana Ale Works on a regular basis.  $3 for any pint is a great happy hour deal...much happier here than I was at Tamarack the night before. 

Tamarack

The Tamarack is a variety of larch tree.  Up until a few months ago, I had never heard of a 'Tamarack', but this year I have visited Tamarack Cellars, in Walla Walla(highly recommend their Firehouse Red), The Tamarack a pizza place in Republic(next to the Republic Brewing Company, and most recently Tamarack Brewing, which has a place in Missoula to go with their original place in Lakeside, Mt.

Over dinner last night, I was trying to discuss why this might be with my wife.  In the end we both decided that it was a good name...slightly unique, but deffinetaly having a slightly nouveau west feel to it.  Kind of the slightly hipper 'We Do Too Have Culture' and 'Anything the East Coast can do We can do Better' crowd. 

Let me start by saying Tamarack Brewing didn't blow me away.  There was nothing unique or special about it...a fairly standard representation of the Brew Pub Genre.  I have nothing to complain about, but also nothing that would cause me to eat here a second time before trying out some of the other places in town.  From Yelp research, Missoula has at least 7 or 8 breweries, but not all of them serve food.  Kit recommended I check out Bayern, but with swinging into town on Sunday afternoon, a lot of the choices were already closed, or would have needed me to ditch my family.  Maybe when I swing back through on the 4th...

Positives: Nice looking place.  Friendly Wait Staff.  The beer, especially after two days on the road was good.  Between my wife and I we tried three of them.  The cheese pizza my kids split was good...nice crispy crust.  My wife had a Baked Brie Salad she liked...plenty of bacon, walnuts, spinach and house vinagrette.  My beer batter french fries were also good.

Negatives: My Reuben.  It looked VERY promising...a thick pile of pastrami, lots of slaw...but it was very very peppery.  First, there were bell-peppers diced up in the cole claw...kind of neutral on that one...but the pastrami was very, very peppery.  Distractingly so.  It would not have made my top 10 reuben list. 

Beer: Like I said, my wife and tried 3 of them: The Wakeboard Wit, an Amber Ale, and an Oatmeal Stout.  I tried to get the Sip and Go Naked Apricot Ale, but they were out.  They were all pretty good, and tasted like beers should taste.  I'm not going to try to describe the individual flavor notes...can't do it wine, can't do it with beer.  I found the stout to be the most pleasing. 

 Don't expect a similar review of the Wingate's Continental Breakfast...

Fools Gold

Today, we continued on our vacation, stopping in Kellogg, Idaho to play in a gold mine and have some lunch, before stopping in Missoula for the night. 

I would put our two stops for the day, Crystal Gold Mine and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, in the same catagory: Neat Stops, but not something that would be worthy of a day trip all by itself.  My wife says to make Kellogg worthy of a day trip, you would need to pair the Gold Mine with a gondola ride up to the Silver Mountain Resort, or a visit to the indoor water park. 

First off, the Mine.  Crystal Mine is an abandoned mine from the 1880s, that drifts 550 feet into the side of a hill, and at its deepest point, you are over 900 feet underground.  I was very proud of the way my wife handled herself...for someone that isn't always comfortable driving through a tunnel she can't see the end of, she had a good time.

We saw some gold...I mean, you can't expect to see HUGE amounts of gold, because then they would still be mining there...but I guess they feel there is more money to be made in tours than in mining. 

The most interesting thing going on in the mine though, was the Smithsonite...a form of zinc carbonate that leeches through the rock with water, and will eventually lead to all the normal type of cave formations you can expect.  I must have taken 30 different pictures of it: blue, green, brown, and white, with everything in between...I'll save you all but one of those.

After touring the inside of the mine, they let you do a 'Free Hour of Panning' for gold...which was perhaps the most disappointing part of the day.  I didn't expect to strike it rich(once again, if there was THAT much gold in the river, they would be panning, and not giving tours)...but I at least thought I would get to pan directly in the river.  Instead, they have big plastic drums set up with gravel in them, and then have it seeded with some iron pyrite and cute little rocks.  The kids dug it...my wife and I had fun humoring them. 

Afternoon found us in Missoula, and with time to kill before we could check into the hotel, we decided to visit the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundations headquarters.  I'm not sure this was a better choice than visiting the Big Sky Brewing Company, but it was probably more family friendly. 

RMEF is even less of a 'destination' than Crystal Mine...but if you are cruising through Western Montana and need a place to stretch your legs...this is a good one.  I few educational type stations inside, and a nice 1/2 mile loop outside.  They say you need to keep your eyes peeled for wild life, and I thought that was bunk until we spotted this mulie doe just chillin out.

She was keeping a close eye on us...but then I would keep a close eye on my kids also.

That's a tasty burger...

If you ever find yourself cruising through Couer D'Alene, Idaho and think, Boy Do I Need  a Hamburger, then the place to go is Scrud's Gourmet Grub. 

After our afternoon took a zig yesterday, we then had to zag on our dinner plans, and instead of one of Spokane's finer brewpubs, we had to scramble to find someplace in Couer D'Alene.  Since my wife seemed to be in a hamburger mood, Yelp research lead us to Scrud's. 

Even if you serve tasty food, which Scrud's does, you need a gimic in the restaurant business, and Scrud's has two of them: 'Stuffed' burgers, and vintage soda's. 

If you are like me, and you watch a lot of M vs. F, and DDD(Man vs. Food, Diners, Drive-in's, and Dives), you might have seen 'stuffed burgers' before.  Basically, you take two thin patties, and put your fixin's inside those two patties.  Scrud's had about 7 'permenant varieties' and then a few specials for the 4th of July week.  They both terrified me: The M-80, with Ghost Chili Cream Cheese and jalapeno's, of the All American...1 pound of beef with bacon, bratwurst and american cheese in the middle.  The M-80 sounded terrifiyingly hot, the All American burger seemed certain to kill me(and if it didn't, my wife would). 

They also had several other One Pound Plus, or Spicey challanges so you could write your name or get your picture on the wall...but in the end, I passed on those.

I ended up ordering their Bo Sox burger(bacon and blue cheese in the middle) while my wife got the Zeus(feta cheese, and gyro meat in the middle, with tzatziki sauce on it.  After ordering it, she said it is never something she would have thought of ordering on a burger.

In her words...Best Burger She's Ever Had.  If I have had a better burger than my Bo Sox, I can't name where it was from. 

I would have taken pictures, but that would have required me to put down the burger...and it was one of those burgers that was soooooo juicy, if you set down, you weren't going to pick it back up in one piece.

The fries that went with it was good too...you could see the cook in the back putting potatoes on the french fry cutter as orders came in.

Fabulous. 

The vintage sodas were neat also...they had about 10 bottles soda selections, each made back when you put real sugar in soda.  I had a Moxie, my wife had Dad's Root Beer, and my older daughter got an old fashioned Orange Soda...she couldn't believe how much it actually tasted like orange.

After that dinner, I didn't really argue with my wife when she suggested we just eat the continental breakfast at La Quinta this morning...

Flexibility pays off.

I have not always been a flexible person, when it comes to plans.  It used to be that once I had an idea, or thought about how things should go, I got down-right pouty bitchy if those plans didn't work out.  Blame it on being a stuborn Taurus, or Oldest Child syndrome if you want.  The truth is, I am someone who takes great enjoyment out of planning something...I have almost as much fun planning and researching alternatives as I do executing those plan, that when one of them falls apart, I used to take it very personal.

It's something I've been working on though, and today, I saw some payoff. 

We started our Montana road trip today, with the first planned stop being in Spokane.  I figured we would roll in early afternoon and visit Spokane's River Front Park, with the worlds Largest Radio Flyer Wagon.  We would have some fun, maybe walk around some shops, and then have dinner at one of three places I had narrowed things down to.  We would then roll up to Couer D'Alene to sleep for the night. 

Ready, set, go.

It was all going fine, until I got to Spokane, and my directions led us right into a series of streets closed for Hoopsfest, 'The World's Largest 3 on 3 Tournament', which might explain the lack of available hotels in Spokane that caused us to sleep in Couer D'Alene for the night. 

You see though...unlike other times, I had an Alternate Plan, and using my wife's cell phone, I guided us into Manito Park and a fine afternoon. 

Not that I want to have to turn in my 'Man Card'...but what a pretty, pretty place.  There are 5 seperate Gardens, with many smaller attractions mixed in.  The only thing not blooming was the lilac garden, which had already done it's job.  This kind of bummed my wife out, as she loves the smell of lilac's, and I'm sure 128 lilac trees in bloom smells wonderfull, but after 4 acres of roses, I personally was smelled out. 

My kids preferred the Japanese Garden, with it's pond of Koi and ducks.  I thought it had the potential to be very peaceful, you know, without the kids...but the green shade of the water was a little...intriquing. 

My wife's favorite was the formal Duncan Garden, and then the indoor Conservatory, with lots of neat, special plants. 

It was a great rescue of a day that I would have let fall apart with pouting once upon a time.

Good Timing

I cut that one pretty close...my updated Concealed Carry Permit showed up in the mail this afternoon, just in time for me to verify the Idaho and Montana Reciprocity Laws before hitting the road Saturday morning. 

Yes...I was a bad gun owner...my permit had expired for a while.  I rationalized it...I can't carry at work, and so that rules out 90% of the time I am out of the house.  Truthfully, most of what I have ever used my carry permit for was getting around the wait times when I wanted to buy something. 

Along with the reciprocity rules, I also wanted to check what differences there are between the states.  The main difference between Washington and Montana is the difference in wording in regards to alcohol.  In Washington, you can't bring your firearm into a bar, or that area of a restaurant where you need to be 21 to get into.  So...Appleby's is okay, but not the 'bar' in the middle of Appleby's. 

According to the Montana Department of Justice, one can't carry: any place where alcoholic beverages are sold, dispensed and consumed.

That's a little more restictive than our wording here, so I'm glad I checked that, with visits planned to several brewpubs as well as the Big Sky Brewing company.