A few weeks has passed since I returned from Montana. There has been time to process the photos and reflect over the trip. First and foremost, the plan worked--the reservations were honored at the hotels and lodges and the accommodations were comfortable, food was available and no one went cold or hungry. A selection of photos from the trip are in a Picasa Web Album.
Traveling in and around Yellowstone Park in summer requires reservations--without them you could seriously end up sleeping in your car. Also, it is good to keep an eye on the clock during the travel days when we changed hotels. The days are long here in summer (it was still light at 9:30), but don't count on restaurants and hotels being open late. Pahaska Tepee, for example, closes down at 9:30 PM--no gas, no food, no hotel check-in...no nothing. We discovered this little fact when we arrived about 8 PM and were glad we left several stops in Yellowstone Park for a later visit.
Our first stay was at the Dude Rancher Lodge in Billings. This downtown motor-lodge has free parking, WiFi and a restaurant that serves a pretty good Montana breakfast: eggs, hash browns, juice and coffee. You can walk the entire downtown of Billings from this lodge. We found a good local pub, The Montana Brewery, for dinner and ale--their pasta was especially tasty. It surprised us that the Montana Brewery was the only crowded restaurant downtown on a Friday evening.
We left Billings and drove to Red Lodge to stay at the Pollard Hotel, which is a truly historic hotel dating back to the glory era of Red Lodge in the early 1900s. Where we found the Dude Rancher Lodge in a state of arrested decay we found the opposite at the Pollard. The hotel was spotless and very elegant in a rough-and-tumble western fashion. The complimentary breakfast was from the menu of the dinning room and included, of course, the classic Montana eggs and hash browns. Our evening meals were at the Red Lodge Cafe and the Red Lodge Pizza Co. The Red Lodge Cafe is a traditional western cafe--they feature liver and onions as well as steaks The cafe was once featured in a NY Times travel article. Adjacent to the pizza company is Natali's Front Bar, a quiet friendly place to enjoy a beer. Especially good if you want to avoid cowboys and bikers and watch the European Football, soccer, on TV.
Next stop Pahaska Tepee, another historic western Inn. We stayed in a half of a large A-frame that resembled a tepee. The room was ample and comfortable and featured new plumbing and good beds--another planning success. The dining room opens early, 7AM, for breakfast. Classic Montana breakfast again and WiFi. The telephones were down while we were there due to a flooding Shoshone River so the internet was the only way the lodge kept in touch with the outside world.
From Pahaska Tepee we traveled to Cody to see the town and the Buffalo Bill museum complex. A power failure sent us out of the museum to picnic on left-overs from our ice cooler. Later, we found a great ice cream and cookie shop to round out our meager lunch.
We returned to our lodge for dinner and found that the whole dining room was reserved for a tour group arriving by bus from Yellowstone Park--this with the 9:30 PM closing time looming. The energetic staff found us a table in the bar and somehow got us dinner cooked and served with time left over. If you are in the area check out Pahaska Tepee. We had a great time there and would definitely go back if we were out Cody way sometime.
We re-entered Yellowstone Park to spend the day seeing things we missed crossing from Cooke City to the East Entrance and then made our way to Ennis, Montana and the Rainbow Valley Inn. Ed and Jeanne Williams are the hosts at this lodge style motel. Our room, which actually was a double-width trailer located a block from the motel proper, served us perfectly. Jeanne wove the basket at the right from pine needles taken from Ponderosa Pines.The inn recommended the Reel Decoy BBQ and Grill for dinner and we tried it. Great food, just what we needed after a long day of sight-seeing. The BBQ and the dessert cobbler were really special. Next morning, I ate the complimentary breakfast early at the inn's office, coffee and doughnut, and used their WiFi while waiting for my travel companions to wake up. We then went for a real breakfast at the Ennis Cafe--Classic Western breakfast or blueberry pancakes. After breakfast we traveled the 30 miles or so to Virginia City and ate lunch at a sandwich shop and had pizza for early dinner while waiting for the musical and variety show at the Virginia City Playhouse to start at 7 PM. All in all we were pretty well fed and well lodged on this segment of our trip.
Next day we returned to Billings by way of Bozeman. We stopped in Bozeman to visit the old Gallatin County Jail, now a museum, and the Museum of the Rockies. The folks at the Museum of the Rockies recommended the Pickle Barrel for sandwiches, so we went across campus to try it out. Great sandwiches, but the meat portions were a little large. Don't even think of ordering a full sandwich; the half is more that you can eat.
Back in Billings, we stayed again at the Dude Rancher Lodge--no surprises. Dinner again at the Montana Brewery and breakfast at the lodge restaurant. Both were consistently good. That left us some time to kill before the 4 PM flights back to California. We found nothing better in West Billings than a Sub at a gas station--Oh, well.
The travel reservations for the trip went smoothly and met our expectations. I'm thinking that that contributed greatly to our having a really nice trip.
Note: The horses were part of the 2002 Billings City Art Project. More than 40 of the horses were on display and several are still standing in the downtown area. There was an auction in support of preservation of the Billings Railway Terminal. The Trojan Horse at the right was last seen at Rocky Mountain College, being the work of an art professor at the college.
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