Last July, Jason and I visited Montana. It was a trip of extremes. We went high into mountains and far underneath them. Below I explain the above.
Although the lodge was quirky, I’d definitely recommend it.
Jason and I love exploring new places. Our curiosity often gets the better of us, and adventures suck us in. In 2021, we bid on a stay at a lodge in the Bitterroot Mountains near Hamilton, Montana during a charity event and won. Did we know where Hamilton was? Nope. Our Hamilton visit turned into a six-day voyage encompassing Missoula and Butte as well; what mushroomed out of a short unknown was pretty fantastic.
That red-roofed structure way up the mountain is the Downing Mountain Lodge.The lodge has some unusual features left over from its restaurant days like this sliding kitchen window.
Two nights at the Downing Mountain Lodge, located 2,000 feet above Hamilton and not far from the top of Downing Mountain, were our above-mentioned winnings. The Downing Mountain Lodge was built in the 1970s from wood and stone. Its yurt-style circle encompasses a 40-foot diameter. The building was a restaurant at several points in its 50 or so years and as recently as 2008. It felt odd for just the two of us to occupy this space constructed to host 20 or 30 people, a little like The Shining but more peaceful. Being axed to death might not be so bad in such a beautiful, serene place.
Blodgett Canyon was created by a glacier and has 2,000-foot walls of solid granite.
The lodge’s interior seemed unchanged by the last half a century with eccentric, quirky, surprising, and rustic vibes. It smelled of leather (source unknown), old wood, aged rope, and fresh air. There were enough musical instruments about we could have made our own woodland band featuring a piano, guitar, ukulele, drums, flutes, and whistles. We didn’t become mountain musicians, but Jason figured out how to operate the 100-year-old Brunswick phonograph, which had accompanying records.
Hamilton is in the Bitterroot Valley, which stretches 95 miles from Idaho to Missoula.
After leisurely rising the next morning, we hiked the Blodgett Canyon Overlook to a cliffside above Blodgett’s granite, U-shaped valley, which required 531 feet of elevation gain and 2.8 miles of exertion roundtrip. Blodgett is just one of more than two dozen impressive gaps carved through the eastern side of the Bitterroot Range.
Being immersed in a thunderstorm high on Downing Mountain was an unreal experience.
Following this hike, we were hoping to do another, but the weather was iffy with forecasts for showers that kept shifting. In the end, our evening hike got thwarted by three rainstorms. Yet, these were awesome to behold from our perch on Downing Mountain. The hammering rain, pelting hail, zipping lightening, and booming thunder displayed nearly 360 degrees around us were mystical, so we didn’t pout over our missing trek.
The next day, we were off to Missoula and the second segment of our hodgepodge trip, which will be the topic of my next post.
While I’m habitually behind on posts, my website maintains chronological consistency, except in this case. This should have been posted prior to my birthday ramblings, but here it is regardless.
For many years now, Jason and I have believed experiences matter more than things. That’s why we decided to give my family members a long weekend getaway as all their birthday presents for the year instead of wrapped gifts. I did some research and came up with a few location options, and we put them to a vote. In the end, my family picked Bear Lake.
Our rental had slides between floors as an alternative to stairs.
Although Bear Lake is a major tourist destination in the summer, Garden City, the main town on the Utah side of the lake, isn’t usually too crowded in early June, which was the timeframe for our visit. The tourists were trickling in, but most restaurants had reasonable waits, and the water wasn’t cluttered with boats.
The tube rides were much mellower than normal, but the kids still giggled and screamed.
Jason and I rented an enormous house that could comfortably fit my mob of relatives with an indoor trampoline, indoor basketball court, indoor swing set, poker table, pool table, ping-pong table, movie theater room, nine bedrooms, and six bathrooms. Each time a new batch of kids arrived, they would instantly disappear to explore the mysterious and captivating features of the home.
According to employees, these two ropes represent the hardest part of the entire course at Bridgerland.
Sadly, one of my sisters caught COVID through a coworker who came into work sick with a “cold” right before our trip, so she couldn’t join us. Miraculously, with how much COVID was circulating at the time, she and her husband were the only ones absent due to it.
I feel no need to prove I’m a fan of heights.
With so many activity options, including the ones inside our rental, what was first on our agenda? Hit the lake. Jason and I had reserved a two-hour boat tour with a guide in a brand-new pontoon for that morning. While we were envisioning this as a low-key lake wander with some informative discussions on history and ecology, the kids got too distracted by the towable tube, and our tour turned into a watersport montage.
Beaver Creek Lodge has about 40 horses, enough to accommodate larger groups like ours.
As the water in Bear Lake was currently just shy of 50 degrees, most of us were not enthusiastic about accumulating wetness acquired from it, particularly the adults. I was the first grownup to volunteer for the tube. Since I was dealing with a case of prepatellar bursitis at the time and knocking my knee against the tube was repeatedly painful, I didn’t last long. However, my distinguished valor convinced, or shamed, other adults to brave a ride. Our driver skillfully kept all but one of the group from sliding into the water while tubing, but then the kids decided to all jump in anyway.
Tough was, well, tough on Jason as he liked to bite riders and herd members alike.
We had seen the Bridgerland Adventure Center on a hill as we were traveling into town. Its complex jumble of crisscrossing lines and bright orbs intrigued us, so we spent a chunk of the afternoon climbing through this four-story rope course. As each increasing level at Bridgerland gets progressively harder, most of the party focused on levels two and three for more robust challenges. I made it through level one in its entirety and a small fraction of level two before closing time. I may not have slid upside down across a duo of rope strings, but I conquered the course in my own lame phobic way.
The poker skills were lacking but the laughter was not.
That evening, we entertained ourselves with some epic games of dodgeball, poker, and “monster” along with a screening of Avatar in the movie theater room. Boredom did not occur even amongst the grumbly teenagers.
Dodgeball is a vicious sport, just ask any participant’s face.
The next morning, we headed out for 90 minutes on four legs at Beaver Creek Lodge. Some members of our group had never ridden horseback, so there was a mix of excitement and fear amid them. Beaver Creek Lodge was able to accommodate our large troop, but as it was early in the season, the horses were flabby from winter inactivity. They huffed and puffed as we climbed rolling hills and grasslands. My steed, Smokey, was mellow and only seemed worried about getting left behind. In contrast, Jason got the second alpha of the herd, Tough, and he liked to ensure his status by staying in the front and biting other horses… and occasionally Jason.
Moments like this are our motivation for planning family outings.
After our ride, we lounged around the cabin and napped until one of the kids who had arrived too late for our tubing escapades mentioned they didn’t want to visit Bear Lake without actually visiting the lake. So, the entire clan headed to Rendezvous Beach, which is typically packed in the summer but was nearly deserted in its current nippy form. That nippiness didn’t inhibit our sandy endeavors though. One of the kids found a shovel and started digging while others immediately set to fishing. The adults thought there was zero chance anything would be caught, but a sizeable trout was hooked briefly before it dramatically wiggled away.
I find fishing incredibly boring, but I’m glad others have the patience for it.
That evening, our giant group went to dinner at the Campfire Grill. The setting was fantastic and the food decent. However, indigestion still kicked in when we were woken up at 1:58 in the morning by a flashing red light and an earsplitting “beeep, beeep, beeep.” My first reaction was to ask Jason, “What are those boys doing?” It stopped after a couple minutes, and we later ascertained that it was probably the carbon monoxide detector malfunctioning. Ironically, the accused boys weren’t even stirred from their slumber by the shrill alarm even though they had chosen to sleep in a closet instead of on a bed.
Most of us dipped in the lake even though it was not pleasant.
Our outing may have concluded in alarm, but the rest was anything but alarming. Relationships were renewed, limbs numbed, balls dodged, and memories cemented. As you may have ascertained from the contents of this post, Bear Lake makes for an excellent group gathering spot with various distinct activity possibilities in its vicinity.
Big groups need big houses.
On a related note, the Bear Lake area is known for its raspberry shakes, so we decided to undertake a comparison of all the raspberry shakes in town. Despite our diligent efforts, we only made it through shakes at three places. Of the three, the winner was Zipz, but the best burger went to LeBeau’s, and Merlin’s Drive-In triumphed in the fries category. There are a lot of cute burger joints in Garden City. If visiting, be ready for plenty of nostalgia and grease.
Unlike humans, Nature makes few mistakes. For the last piece of this post, I will shift from people’s slipups to Nature’s brilliant flukes as I cover our interactions with Goblin Valley’s remarkable figures of contorted stone.
The goblins are composed of Entrada sandstone, which was formed 170 million years ago.
After our investigation of Temple Mountain and short peek at Goblin Valley, my parents joined us for dinner at Duke’s in Hanksville. We followed that meal up with another at Duke’s the next morning. There ain’t nothing wrong with having chicken fried steak for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Duke’s is a solid place to eat if you find yourself near Hanksville. With our bellies bursting, we headed for the hills… well, valleys.
Unlike most state parks, at Goblin Valley visitors are allowed to roam and interact with the thousands of inhabitants.You are never too old to sway with the ghouls.
Goblin Valley State Park encompasses nearly 4,000 acres of some of the most bizarre terrain you’ll find on Epsilon Gorniar II. Unlike other parks, it contains only a handful of official trails. Otherwise, you are on your own to wander, climb, and explore. Unfortunately, it’s no longer an isolated secret. These days, Goblin Valley State Park often receives an intense influx of tourists between 11:00 and 3:00, at least on weekends. If there are no open parking spots, staff won’t let any more cars in until some become available. To avoid this, we arrived at 10:00 AM, a successful approach. If visiting, I’d recommend you do the same.
With a little wandering, the goblins will gobble up other sightseers, and you will get an appropriate sense of isolation as you investigate this lunar-like environment.Does Goblin Valley look familiar? You may recall it from a stony scene in Galaxy Quest.
We scrambled around for almost eight hours, crawling into holes and over hoodoos. After poking around First Valley for a while, which is the valley closest to the parking lot, we wandered to the Second Valley of Goblins. It contained significantly less people. Back in its remoter regions, we saw no one. Second Valley looked a little different than First Valley. Probably due to its relative narrowness, water had etched deeper paths through its sandy bottom. The hoodoos seemed hewn of rougher stuff with thin jagged pieces of a lighter rock protruding regularly from their surfaces. Apparently, there is also a third valley, but we didn’t make it that far, which is too bad because I’m sure it was deserted.
Sometimes connecting with Nature isn’t about a hike but a nap.Despite its remote location, Goblin Valley has become one of Utah’s most popular state parks.
My parents left in the late afternoon, and the rest of us hiked to the Goblin’s Lair and the Goblette’s Lair. The Goblin’s Lair is a natural 70-foot sandstone cavern that was formed when part of a slot canyon collapsed. One of its skylights can be used to rappel 90 feet to the cavity’s bottom. We didn’t enter that way, but the non-dangling entrance still tested my bouldering skills. Thankfully, Jason was there to assist my squat legs on those massive slabs. His lack of claustrophobia also came in handy. He took the kids exploring in a tiny tunnel that leads off the main chamber. They clambered through that channel for about 100 feet until he decided a tight spot requiring an army crawl was a great place to turn around.
The Goblin’s Lair used to be a secret of the park that was difficult to find. Now, there is a marked path to it.
The Goblette’s Lair, a much smaller hollow, we found far less impressive, but as it is only a short trek from Goblin’s, why not.
By the time we finished hitting all the gremlin hideouts, we were a little pooped. I’ll admit, my thighs were quite tender the next day. Plus, my knee was still displeased. As the proverb goes, “A sore body pairs perfectly with fine memories.” Man, those sagacious proverb writers really know their stuff.
The colossal boulders that collapsed to fashion the Goblin’s Lair must be scaled to enter it.
From professors to goblins, our extended weekend was full of unusual characters, and most of them weren’t even family members. Humans’ idiocies were contrasted with Nature’s wondrous creations, curiosity was satisfied, and knees were dissatisfied. Outdoor outing extravaganza perfection!
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