8-5-2015
Palisade Falls – Bozeman, Montana

Yesterday, I awoke to rain in Calgary, and I’ve been dealing with rain off-and-on ever since.  I filled up on breakfast, left Calgary, and returned to the States, driving all the way down to Bozeman, Montana.  To get to Bozeman, I took the AB-2, followed by the AB-3 and then AB-4 until I reached the border.  The entire drive looked and felt like a drive through the Midwest.  Just rolling hills of corn and grasslands as far as the eye could see.

Unlike my crossing into Canada, the border patrol agent on my return seemed disinterested in me, and after looking over my passport and asking one or two quick questions, let me on my way and into Montana.  From the border, I followed I-15, which snaked along the upper portions of the Missouri River.  The only Missouri River I’ve known in life is big, muddy, and slow moving.  Up here at its source, though, the river is still crystal clear and fast moving.  It was a pretty drive.

I made it to Bozeman around six o’clock.  It’s a pretty town and area, with wilderness kind of like La Grande’s.  I guess after Canada though, the mountains left me a bit underwhelmed.

“No, I think you have great personality, but…maybe we should just be friends?”

I went downtown for dinner, and found a pretty nice place called Copper Whiskey Bar (I guess it had steak there too…).  I sat at the bar, and went gaga over the huge whiskey selection available.  Great dinner.  Great whiskey.  Cute bartender.  All around enjoyable meal.  However, by the time I was done there, I realized that it was still pretty early.  I left and found a bar close to my motel with a patio, and simply spent the night drinking beer in the cool Montana air and catching up on email.  By the time I made it back to my room, I was plenty sloshed and went right to bed.

When I woke up this morning, I spent a good amount of time whining and wanting to fall back asleep to get rid of the hangover I was feeling, but finally resolved to get out of bed and go for a hike.  A short hike.  A very short hike.  Short not because of the hangover, but because I had to drive to Salt Lake City immediately after the hike.

The hike I chose is called Palisade Falls.  It’s located about 20 miles or so up Hyalite Canyon.  I found it in this cheap guide book I bought on hiking around Bozeman.  I got it on Amazon for like 20 cents.  The hike was more-or-less the shortest hike in the book, paved and coming in at just over a mile round trip.  Quite possibly the easiest hike in the world.

Because it was early on a weekday, I more-or-less had Hyalite to myself.  The drive up was forested and pretty.

I hiked up to the falls in no time at all, and took the photo that is the cover shot for this blog entry.  Palisade Falls is pretty dramatic in the summer with its rock backdrop, but I guess the real beauty comes in winter, when the falls entirely freezes over and creates a sort of natural ice sculpture going down the cliff.  Really adventurous sorts use ice picks to climb the falls in the winter.

After hiking out of the falls, I headed along the 191 to West Yellowstone.  The 191 snaked alongside the famous Gallatin River, which, as expected, was filled with fly fishermen.  Once plopping into Yellowstone, the drive actually became quite dramatic and as beautiful as anything I’ve seen on this trip, as fast moving summer squalls would whip clouds around the Sawtooth and Tetons, creating epic landscape lighting in the mountains while soft green grass spread about lazily in the valley below.

Eventually, I hit the 20, which took me out of Yellowstone and back to I-15 in Idaho.  Once getting back onto the interstate, it was a relatively fast drive down here to Salt Lake City, which is where I’m writing this blog now from my retreat at Solitude.  Salt Lake marks the last leg of this epic road trip.  I chose it because, like La Grande, this place was a childhood home of mine.  I lived here from 5 to 10.  I plan to spend the next few days here, tackling some of the hikes I used to hike as a kid, and perhaps one or two that I wasn’t yet strong enough to do as a kid.  Check back over the next few days to see what adventures await me!

Cheers,

Rob