Home...

We decided that inclement weather affected our moods and our desire to see more of Toronto. Therefore we opted out of Gay Pride Celebrations, packed up the car and headed south. After a two hour delay (normal we are told) at the US border, we decided to break our nine hour drive with a night at our friends in Pittsburgh. Lovely evening with them, and then home mid-afternoon today.

Sometime in the next few days I'll reflect on our trip. It was great, we saw a lot and we are happy to be home.

Toronto: Thumbs Up or Down?

It's been years since we spent even a night in Toronto. Ben and I were here in 1982 on our way home from honeymooning in Quebec and Montreal. I'd been here in 1980. Wow, this place has changed a lot. It was a big city, now it's a huge city, going on for miles with high rises everywhere. At first we thought it had lost its charm.
The first place we went after checking in to the Toronto Townhouse BnB in Cabbagetown just east of downtown, (nice place, owner, Tan is a gem), was to get to Jet Phuell for Ben's coffee. A disaster ...the barista had attitude for days, gave himself a tip and made coffee that was adequate. No decaf. This was much different from early morning coffee at Mermaid Cafe in Tobermory,where the coffee was not perfection, but the owner went out of her way to try to do it right. Her machine was not working properly.

Anyway, that was compounded by a drunk boor in the bar, Zippers, we went to for an early evening beer. He was smashed and accused me of being unfriendly. Antagonistic with booze, he could only blither about meeting the Queen Mother and being an executive chef. These were not great intros to Canada's largest city and the first metropolis of size we'd visited since Chicago almost a month ago.

However, later that evening the tram driver (very cute, waved at us this afternoon when his tram passed us) went out of his way to help us with fares, and transfers as we went to Chinatown to relive dinner from 26 years ago. We had dined at the Pearl on Dundas Street, but alas it was no longer there. Instead we went to E-pan on Spadina, a smart place with plenty of Chinese eating there. We discussed dinner and ordered some pickled jellyfish to start, with chilis and a bit of sugar it was lovely. We matched it with a Jackson-Triggs Niagara sauvignon blanc, Our next courses were pork belly (a very mild, thinly sliced tripe) with bean sprouts and a lobster with scallions and dried mushrooms. Both were exquisite. We starched the dinner with Yangchow fried rice of shrimp and BBQ.

Our morning, of course, had been wonderful. We awoke to thunder and rain, but by 9:30 the weather had cleared and we took off on our Georgian Bay voyage to see wrecks and islands. The wrecks from the last century were just below the surface of a harbor, so you could see them from either the deck or the glass bottom view points. The islands are rocky and deserted. Only one has much in the way of national park people. Flowerpot island, named for its coastal rock formations.

Today we went off to the Royal Ontario Museum and caught the Darwin exhibit that had already been in NY. Wonderful. Very intellectual, but very good. And then a short multi-media show called Kaleidoscope on Shanghai. About trends in modern Shanghai. Some of the material was very cutting edge, particularly a mixed media with a woman on film puffing at a another film across the room, which reacted by receding into the screen.


The Royal Ontario Museum is partly in an old building, but it also has a huge new extension designed by Daniel Liebiskind,the architect who has designed the site plan for Ground Zero in NY. The juxtaposition of the old building with the new part, let alone with the adjoining buildings, the CN Tower and other skyscrapers is astounding.

Getting around Toronto, of course, is easy. It has a subway,whose Museum station is designed to complement the building above, and its tram system is extensive.

LCBO of Ontario did not have the First Nation wine from BC we wanted, but we did get a couple of meritage from Ontario and a very expensive meritage from BC. Should be good. Lunch at the Chew-Chew Diner down the street. Ben explores for coffee as I write.

Right now we give the city thumbs up.

Mutiny, Coffee Failure...and a Voyage

Oh, well, Unohu-gozalong fears he will be pulp tomorrow. Unohu failed to get his XXXX dry cappucino till 5 pm today and got nothing yesterday. He was practically blubbering from caffeine failure. Fortunately, Unohu-gozalong had a bright eye for a place in Tobermory today that got the fix in, just in time.

Unohu-gozalong felt vibrations in the car that could have been mutiny...no navigator--which would have been painful. It's easy to get lost without a navigator.

Oh, well. We had a great day. A boat trip, a great sunset and a good meal at the Grandview Inn in Tobermory,Ontario. It's a diving and wreck center on the Georgian Bay that is as pretty as Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island and points on Cape Cod, with waters clear enough to see down for many feet.


We started this morning from Sault Ste. Marie, a dump of a town, but it had a good Sleep Inn, and we managed to find a terribly Canadianized Chinese restaurant, the Golden Dragon, that managed to provide a good mix of meats and vegetables, good ribs, and some wontons, with enough left over for lunch today. We also had a good look at the larger boats heading into the locks on the American side, and the recreational boats going through the smaller and older Canadian side.
Don't put the place down as a "must" visit, though.

Manitoulin Island, where we embarked on the ferry to Tobermory was gorgeous. Much like rocky Maine with granite boulders. We were hurried to catch the ferry. The ride was smooth and misty, and the arrival in Tobermory just lovely. Tomorrow we go see wrecks on a glass bottom boat and leave for our last stop before home. Toronto.

Superior and Seagulls

Lake Superior is bounded on the south shore by cliffs and old towns. One lighthouse, derelict for many years, guards the shoals where freighters and other boats went aground on sandy reefs. The major interest though is the Picture Rocks National Seashore, only visible from a boat. These formations have many forms and colors.Of course, the boat gets followed by scores of seagulls wanting something to eat. Fortunately they did not drop, but they sure scream as bread crumbs are thrown at them.

At one point the captain took the 100 feet long boat into a very small cove, which this picture tries to show. While we couldn't quite touch the walls, they couldn't have been more than a couple of yards away.

We found the daily grind in the tiny town of Musining. It also had a used bookstore, so I bought a couple of books to finish off the trip. One an autobiography of Anne Scott James, who for years has been on NPR-BBC "My Word." It was written in 1952!
We crossed the border back into Canada and now are in Sault Ste Marie, thinking about dinner, a bit, and enjoying the view of the locks in the distance.

Superior Lupines

Duluth has history, no doubt about it. We enjoyed our short stay very much in our 1890s BnB.I think another day would be worthwhile in this old raw materials port that is still very much alive. Railroad tracks everywhere going to loading machinery for the freighters that frequent the port. Not unlike this old one that is moored permanently. The new ones traverse the canal under a grand bridge bringing out everything from coal to limestone.From there we traversed upper Wisconsin and into Michigan. Wisconsin at its top end has a peninsula that juts out into Lake Superior. The countryside is alive with wildflowers.One of the villages is an old boating community, where we found our morning (actually early afternoon coffee) that met Unohu's standards.We also acquired lunch at a fishers shack on the coast—smoked whitefish, pickled herring and crackers. Enjoyed with last night's leftovers at a road side table late in the day.

This area of the country is quite off the beaten track, though very pretty. The towns are not sophisticated, the accent is rough, and the people are reserved. Of course, that doesn't stop them from holding testicle festivals, whatever they are. Earlier this morning, Ben walked down for brek at the BnB to find four people (two couples) at breakfast saying nothing to each other. This is not BnB style. He broke ice.

Tonight we're at a log place, the Pinewood Inn, overlooking the Lake, magnificent sunset now that the fog has lifted. It rolled in over Marquette and the northern coast of the Upper Peninsula like San Francisco's. Chatted amidst the mosquitoes with a young woman who, with her husband, is heading out to New Mexico to teach geology at UNM from Massachusetts.

Dinner at one of the local restaurants was very good. We had a Michigan white wine from the Leelanau Peninsula, a Good Harbor Vineyards mix of Chardonnay, Vignoles, Vidal and Pinot Grigio. Nice. With a burgundy mushroom soup (locally grown portobello and button mushrooms) and a grilled whitefish filet, that was all in all more food than we could eat. The Brownstone Inn in Au Train, Michigan.

Tomorrow a boat ride on the lake, maybe explore some old iron mines and then back to Canada for the remaining six days of our trip. We passed 6500 miles today.

Jazz--Now Hills

Winnipeg—Jazz, Duluth—Hills. It's a long way between these two cities. And they are very different, besides being on different sides of the border with different cultures. Winnipeg was a lot of fun. Duluth looks like it will be much slower for the night we are here.

The second night of the jazz festival in Winnipeg was more to our taste than the third group the previous night. Flo and the Flosoul Band in a cabaret had much more identifiable music, R & B. Turns out she is a member of a local Anglican church. We ended up sitting with three of her friends, a woman from Jamaica who had studied in the UK before coming to Winnipeg, and two other friends who were there to enjoy the jazz. We had the pleasure of meeting Flo after her performance.

The second act, Divine Brown, from Toronto, I believe, was brassy and bold, loud and extreme. She had a bit of Tina Turner about her, in a short dress with good legs, and her voice carried well, though it was muffled a bit by a sound system that needed some adjustment.

We had dinner at Earls, which our innkeeper, April Kassim, had words about. I said that Earls appears to be a place where one obviously goes to be seen. We sat next to a group that I assumed were beauticians. All in their 20s, two having their birthdays. Nice, but a bit cheap. 2 guys, five women. The others in the restaurant, outside in the lovely night air, were a few gays, lots of sportsmen, and lots of very good looking women...who were dressed in very high heels and very short skirts. April says the place is known for its very good looking female servers and very popular among the fashionable, if somewhat knock-off, crowd. Good calamari, dry ribs, pad Thai for Ben, salad with mangoes and chicken for me. Half liter of Okanagan Chenin Blanc. Bad, very bad, martini. Lime instead of lemon, vodka, not gin. Should have sent it back.

We had a good walk about Winnipeg. Along the Assiniboine River Walk, a walk we took yesterday, we were asked to participate with two women and a guy in a sexual sandwich! And a bit further, we stumbled on a gay cruising area. Further along we learned about Louis Reil, the province's first premier in 1869 when it sent folk to Ottawa to complain about being annexed into Canada by the Brits in the Confederation of 1867 without their permission, to be immediately given provincial status as Manitoba and a federal subsidy. Happy Ending. At la Fourche where the Red and Assiniboine come together, we watched clouds gather and stood under a huge tent listening to yet more jazz as hail fell in 1/4 inch (5 mm) ice pellets.

Got a couple of small sandwiches from the local market and walked back through the muddy trail to the Columns. The sexual sandwich though had vanished! Bologna.

No trouble at the border. Crossing Minnesota, not much of great interest. Very pretty. Some lake views. Thunderstorms always in the distance. Met a couple from California on their way to Vermont via Ontario who were walking their corgi at a lake-shore rest area on US Route 2.

Duluth, massive hills alongside Lake Superior. Matthew Burrow's 1890 Inn very Victorian with lots of stained glass, woodwork. Burrows made his money in the clothing business. Not as grand as the Columns, older by 15 years, but still shows the wealth of this old city, now mainly a transshipment port. I think I shall be Victorianed out by the time we get home though the innkeepers are delightful here and I await a brownie.

We shall go to Grandma's Restaurant for dinner along the shoreline of Lake Superior.
Duluth, of course, is tiny compared to Winnipeg, perhaps a tenth the size. But it clearly has history and all the downtown buildings are connected by skyways against the fierce winter.

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Dinner at Grandma's verandah outside was ordinary salad and hamburgers. But we got to see huge ore and coal carriers enter and leave the port as we ate.

Jazzed by Winnipeg

Last night we went to the first of two concerts here for the Winnipeg Jazz Festival. The groups we heard were all piano groups, a quartet led by Francois Bourassa of Montreal, and two trios from Winnipeg. The music was all excellent. Many original compositions from Glenn Buhr, who has put out CDs here in Canada and also plays with the Winnipeg Symphony, and also from Will Bonness, also local, whose drummer, Curt Nawoset, is a young phenomenon. Bonness' group did a piece composed by Nawoset for piano, bass and drums that was just ethereal. Bourassa's quartet has developed a style that is a mime of electronic music which was not to our taste, though it was a positive experience to listen to it. Tonight we hear two soul performing groups from Winnipeg. This afternoon we ran into a program by a Toronto singer (I think) at the Forks, a festival marketplace at the confluence of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers.

Winnipeg is a pretty little city on the banks of its rivers, both flowing north to the Arctic Ocean.
Probably metro about 750,000, with a lovely older downtown surrounded by newer skyscrapers, an imperial whipped cream pseudo beaux-art legislative building (the equiv of a state capitol), which is not quite as pretty as Regina's. However it does have an exhibit of bears on the grounds; Ben fell in love with Looney. The residential districts that show the money and power that flows and flowed through here from the grain business. This city grew quickly in the last years of the 19th century and it shows, particularly in the BnB, the Columns, on Westgate where we're staying...and grand manse of a place with paneled walls and a huge imposing central staircase.
We have our own verandah overlooking the garden, and the house backs on to the Assiniboine and the river walk...where we muddied our feet after huge thunderstorms walking home.

Last night we ate at Bistro Dansk, on Sherbrooke Street,near the BnB. Nice Danish food. I had meatballs with cabbage, Ben had a schnitzel of chicken breast. We started with herring in three kinds of cream sauces: Russian, curry and soured cream. No wine, just a beer for me: Tuborg.

Tonight we go to a performance late (22h00) and we leave for Duluth in the morning. A long day tomorrow.

Who'da Thunk in Regina?

Months ago when we decided that Regina would be a stopping point between the elusive Edmonton trolleys and the Winnipeg jazz festival, our friends said "Regina, why there?" Added our friend Rob from Ottawa who lived in Regina, "yes, OK, fine..."

Well, folks, it's not the biggest city in the world, and it's not in Canada's most popular province, but, well, we ate here, we dined here, and we were served the best meal (arguably, but not by much) of the trip so far.

Willow on Wascana is a small restaurant with a wonderful view -- and a mission. It's to use Saskatchewan products in as many places as possible on the menu and serve as many grand Canadian wines as they can find. With help from our servers, Sharon and Scott, we avoided the hen party inside the glass walled building for a table on the verandah, overlooking the Wascana--a man-made lake on a stream, because all capitals must have water--and the provincial legislature, a turn of the last century wedding cake of beaux-art architecture and imperial whipped cream.

Outside we went through the menu with a fine tooth comb, and examined the wine list equally. Our choices: starters of smoked steelhead trout with salad with raspberry and pecan dressing for John, pickerel pierogies for Ben. Both were exquisite. Then to the mains: lamb breast stuffed with spinach and cream cheese with mint couscous and pickled red new growth kale for John and a grilled steelhead trout mountain with potatoes in a tower (vertical is over, but it looked good), for Ben. Each was topped with a fresh garlic chive flower.The tastes were fabulous. All the ingredients as far as possible are local Saskatchewan, drawn from local growers in the valleys and fields around Regina.

Then to make it even better, the best red of the trip. A Meritage, Qwam Qwmt 2005 from NK-Mip Cellar in British Columbia, the only Canadian winery developed by a First Nation. Mmmmm... it held up to everthing with aplomb. The tastes were just exquisite. We hope to buy more in Toronto; the restaurant sold us their last bottle.

As we watched the sun go down at 10:00PM over the Wascana, listening to the honks of the geese, and the chatter of the cranes and pelicans, we can say it doesn't get much better.

Flash: Edmonton's Trolleys Go Kaput

Edmonton city council voted to scrap the city's remaining 40 trolley busses yesterday. Now I know I shall never get a chance to ride them. By 2010 North America will be down to six systems. A sad day for electric transit.

Dinner last night at Gabbana on Jasper St. was total fusion. Onion cream cheese breads, Swedish meatballs with Thai peanut sauce for starters with an NZ sauvignon blanc. Then lemon chicken as a whole breast with a shrimp in a wonton with sweet sauce, and a pork and yam dish with slices of pork atop yam in a slight peanut sauce. Very nice and very different. We enjoyed it.

Off to Regina. Maybe elk tonight?

ISO Edmonton's Elusive Trolley Busses

We begin with Unohu's search for the perfect coffee:


We arrived in Edmonton last night in the middle of a huge rain storm. The clouds had been threatening during our trip down from the Icefields Parkway along the Continental Divide between Alberta and British Columbia. They followed us through Rocky Mountain Home and Red Deer (those are really place names in Alberta) and began to dump their rain on us as we waited for our hosts to arrive from work to let us into the BnB.

The Icefields Parkway is a trip. In many ways it was one of the most impressive mountain experiences we have ever had. Not only did we see more bears,

but we drove above the tree line and at every turn experienced glaciers that appeared about to drop their tons of snow as they retreat up the mountains into non-existence.




Edmonton, set in the flat prairies, but on the banks of a huge ravine where the Saskatchewan River flows north to Hudson's Bay, is a pleasant city of many parks and gardens. The architecture is somewhat non-descript late 20th century office modern downtown, and mid-century sprawl elsewhere with wide streets. Very reminiscent of Dallas, though perhaps with more trees.

Throughout the city the streets are hung with trolley bus wires. Edmonton is one of seven North American cities with a trolley bus system. It's the only one I haven't ridden. And probably will never ride.

As far as we can tell from the bus drivers and inspectors with whom with talked, the busses have been put away for the summer because they are hampered by light rail and road construction. So I can report that we spent $7.50 each for day-long bus passes, that we rode the light rail system (nice, but still an overgrown tram system), saw the ancient tram that rides over the river, and rode a heckuva lot of trolley bus routes under trolley bus wires, but on busses with diesel engines. Oh, well.

City council is debating abolishing the entire system, claiming the busses are old and none of the drivers like them, but it would be sad for North America just to have six remaining systems...and Edmonton's appears to be fairly large too.

Our Bnb is very nice, a sprawly mid-century ranch with a pool. Dale and Alfredo, the hosts, are very pleasant and the bed is good. We had dinner at one of their recommendations last night, Il Forno, nearby. We had nice calamari to start, followed by a blackened arctic char for Ben, and a small veal steak for John. Both done perfectly. A southern Tuscan sangiovese to go with that was nice, but wine in Canada, like all booze, is very expensive in restaurants and quite pricey in stores.

We spent part of the afternoon at the Royal Alberta Museum. We had passed it to see that it was hosting a show on "Dragons" from Paris and thought it might be fun to visit. Ben enjoyed the totem overlooking the city, where the god has the world on his shoulders.

Yes, it was fun but we enjoyed the show on the sinking of the RMS Empress of Ireland in the St. Lawrence with over 1000 dead in 1914 more. Besides discussing how a certified ship could sink in 14 minutes after being rammed by a coal ship, it went into the accomodations on the ship, including how primitive, for us even First Class was. (You went down the hall to the loo or for a bath). And how third class had to wash their own dishes! It interested Ben because that's how his father and grandparents came. I could relate to the size of the vessel, but 40 years later when the Crosses came from the same British port of Liverpool, the accomodations in first class were more like a Marriott, with bathrooms with bidets ensuite and full staterooms, not bunks.

Tonight we think about Thai fusion for dinner on Jasper, the main drag. Tomorrow we leave for Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Off to the Prairies

Last night at Silver Dragon was fine...not as good as the first night because our menu choices were not so interesting. However, chicken balls with honey were fun, eggplant stuffed with chopped shrimp very nice and a ma-po tofu, tofu with chopped pork in spices was good. Better than the Irish at the next table or the Arkansans behind them who had chow mein, chicken with peanuts, and for the Irish, a bottle of Mateus. We have come a long way baby!

With the thought that we may not have internet access for a few days--possibly a week or more, we wish you a pleasant few days. We leave Banff this morning for Edmonton via the Icefields Parkway. Thence to Regina in Saskatechewan and Winnipeg in Manitoba. In about a week we'll arrive in Ontario after the Great Lakes. However, we may be pleasantly surprised to find coffee shops and BnBs with internet access.

Rocky Alberta

We drove down to Banff village from our place on Tunnel Mountain, looking for dinner. None of the menus we had found in the rack in the lobby really appealed to Ben so we walked a bit on Banff Ave to find something of interest.

Banff is very pretty, somewhat quaint, but not much as Jackson Hole. It's surrounded by mountains, quite close in, mostly still with snow, but not on the ski slopes. It has a broad range of visiting nationalities: We have heard English in a variety of accents, including North, London, Scots, Ozzie, Kiwi, a variety of American and Canadian and even East African. Add in French both Canadian and European, a few other Euro-langues, Hebrew and then a variety of Asian like Hindi, Mandarin and Cantonese, and Tagalog, with some African languages and you have the salad that is Banff, and I suppose Canada.

Dinner: The Silver Dragon, on the third floor with a view of the mountains in a small downtown building. Order: A Kokonee British Columbian beer, then wor won ton soup, mu-shi pork with pancakes, and salt and pepper squid--with hot spices deep fried with white rice. We enjoyed it so much we will return tonight. We figure we can get caribou and elk in Edmonton or Winnipeg, but we aren't sure about good Chinese.

We had a good coffee at a local coffee shop this morning, Evelin's, which also makes sandwiches that we had later this afternoon along with more coffee because Unohu liked it so much. Got a bit of a ribbing from the barista and the sandwich maker; it was close to 4PM when we arrived for lunch.

We drove up to Lake Louise to see the blueness of the lake and the distant glacier. It lives up to expectations.
The glacier has receded significantly in the last 150 years but it is still impressive at 7 meters thick. It did NOT drop a piece off into the lake even though I thought about stamping my feet hard. I guess it just didn't realize the importance of seeing ice drop hundreds of yards. Shux. No matter how long we looked, it didn't drop.

For those who enjoy esoterica:

Moose, Elk and Bears, Oh My...

Of course we spent time in Helena finding an appropriate coffee—not perfect, but the General Merc, an old store turned coffee shop, novelty and game emporium—filled our cups with cappucino and latte. Not bad, but not perfect. However the bagel that Unōhu had was good, as was the bearclaw that Unōhu-gōzalong enjoyed. Last Chance Gulch is a hoot, and Helena will go down as one of our gems.

The run from Helena to Glacier is lovely. Through serious canyons and over serious prairies, occasionally narrow two lane roads at 70 mph, and at the end very winding roads through the Blackfoot Reservation (poor—only a few thousand live here) leading to Glacier.

Glacier National Park is grand. It's been difficult for us to categorize the various aspects of the Rockies. After all, we have seen them in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and now Montana. In each place the geologic structure is different, the snow and treelines move up and down the mountains, the flora vary a little, and some regions are more populated than others. Some have more wildlife. Moose and elk abound. Some special wildflowers abound in Glacier, particularly the glacier lily.
In all, we tend, as of today, Saturday night, June 14, 2008, to think Glacier is the grandest.

We took a Red Bus tour, really a kind of char-à-banc bus, dating from the 1930s. Fine, very chatty driver and a group of tourists, mostly in their 60s and 70s from all over the country. We ventured through the park's eastern side in this bus; regrettably much of the Going to the Sun highway over the park to Lake McDonald is still under 20 feet of snow so we could not see the more lush scenery of the western park.



Instead we saw magnificent lakes, glaciers, flowers and yes, BEARS!

An awe-inspiring day, full of mountainous wonder.


Now, the Many Glacier Hotel: If you think these old hotels are long on luxury, forget it. The rooms are comfy enough but spartan. The food is adequate, the wine list is sort of adequate, the service is basically college students who try hard and do well enough. It's the site that makes up for the hotel drawbacks. Forget dressing for dinner--in sweaters and slacks we were overdressed. But the views in every direction, meeting a mountain sheep outside before breakfast, seeing the lakes, the snow, and the flowers, makes up for it. Like Yellowstone, you don't come here to be pampered, you come here to view and see and enjoy the mountains. I do hope the condo in Banff is more comfortable for a couple of days. I don't hold out much hope for the BnB in Edmonton.

We've arrived in Banff; it's a long drive from Glacier,in part because we detoured through the cener of Calgary--interesting big city with lots of tall buildings and rapid growth.

We also were delayed for the first time in probably 20 visits to Canada by a "random" check at immigration. It was a small port of entry and it appeared that the Canada Immigration was stopping everyone for checks who was not a returning Canadian. That of course meant mostly Americans. Part of getting back at the US for our silly passport rules no doubt. It's time we did something about them. The Bush Administration continues to think we should make life difficult for Canadians coming to the US and I don't blame them for doing the same. I just don't deal well with it when it's Ben and me.

Anyway, we're in a pleasant condo where we can cook breakfast with a view of mountains and pine forests about a 15 minute walk downhill to the center of Banff. We will explore this evening.

Wireless in the condo! Yippee...of course it was down when we arrived and the maintenance guy had to work on it to get it up. That's been the story of today! Except for the very fine rhubarb pie we had for breakfast at a pie shop in St. Mary's, Montana.

Unskedded Sidetrip Finds a Gem

We left Yellowstone yesterday once again having cleaned off the car covered with four inches of snow. We'd decided with the weather so poor that after we had seen the "must sees" we just didn't want face more cold winds and faces full of snow. However, the sun as shining and the snowy, wintryvistas were spectacular--a perspective most visitors to the Park don'have. We did a quick stop by Yellowstone Falls, which were clear of storm for a while.


So we decided to break our trip to Glacier NP with a stop in Helena, Montana.

What a wise decision. Not only is Helena a delightful gem of a little city, but it gave us a chance to do a bit of exploration around Butte and continue the Search.

Let's talk the Search. As you may have noticed, most mornings contain a sidetrip to find a perfect XXXtraDryCappucino. Yesterday's search took us to the junction town of Livingston. There in a parking lot, amidst western clothing stores, in a valley populated by emigrants brought in by the Northern Pacific was a lovely drive-through Java Joe, which made an excellent XXX for Unohu. And of course a good double shot skim latte for Unohu-gozalong. Sipping it through the rain on the way to Butte.

Butte was the richest hill in the world. Now it has one operating mine and a suburban style town attached to the 19th century old historic district. Mine heads are visible all around the valley and two great big pit mines remain--similar to Bingham.
One is still operational. Butte has seen better times, we guess, but now there are no operating polluting smelters that ruin the valley air and the place appears to be picking itself up. Most of the deep mines closed about 50 years ago. The old downtown has the air of a decayed steel town in Pennsylvania. Ah, the detritus of uncontrolled Industrial Revolution.

Then on to Helena. It was founded in the 1860s as a silver town. We stayed in a new hotel built in the old Last Chanch Gulch, which was the mainstreet of the silver miners and is now a pleasant walking mall of mostly 1890-1910 office buildings and stores nestled against the hill valleys. With only 25,000 or so inhabitants, it's not large, but we found the hotel, with pool and gym, and a fine restaurant last night. It also doesn't hurt to be six floors up and viewing the entire valley and distant mountains.


The restaurant, Benny's Bistro, serves a variety of dishes, well. Patty, our waitress, had her recommendations, and since there were only two other couples in the place on a thursday night, had a chance talk.

We discussed the wines of the day (I had one, a glass of Oregon Pinot Grigio, a bit on the sweet side, but what I wanted), the specials and and Idaho wine. We also had a good bit of politics at the end...she being an Obama supporter who said she expects Montana to go blue this election.

The special I had, the world's best meatloaf, was better than mine. I was impressed. Nicely bound with mushroom gravy, sauteed kale and garlic mash. Lovely. Ben had two crepes florentine stuffed with spinach, made by a local crepe maker! For starters we split a smoked Montana trout with cream cheese, capers and cucumbers and a selection of breaded and fried fresh Northwest oysters. And the wine...we learned something: The Columbia Valley in Idaho makes a nice chardonney: Coeur d'Alene Vineyards chardonnay. Very European in taste. Not quite a white burgundy, but very nice with the mains. Not the best with oysters. For them we decided we needed a sancerre or entre-deux-mers, but these were not to be had.

Today we head to Glacier. Depending on hookups it is possible the next posting may not come till we reach Edmondton, Alberta next tuesday. Not sure about the availability of connections in Glacier or Banff. More to come. Happy Father's Day.