Greetings from Glacier National Park in the beautiful Montana Rockies. I gotta tell ya, I have THE BIG 35 coming in June, and I certainly can find some things I would do differently in the run up, but travel-wise, the last year has not been one of them. If you had told me last June that within the next year I would get a close-up view of glaciers in Tibet and in Northern Montana, I wouldn’t have believed you. I am now 4 miles from the Canadian border doing glacier viewing whereas the last time I did it I was 20 miles from India.

Needless to say, I have had an incredible last 24 hours. Getting to Glacier Park from Portland brings you up the Washington State side of the Columbia River shore, including Bonneville Dam and The Dalles. Then, you make a dash over that weird Washington desert in the east through Pasco and Spokane. Then it is an hour and a half across the panhandle of Idaho. Much of that part of the ride is in the dark, but I did get a whiff of Pasco, and must say I am glad my sensory interface ended there.

Fast forward to the crack of dawn and your fearless traveler makes his Montana debut just west of the burgeoning burg of Whitefish. Lots of cowboy hats and pickup trucks in the parking lot at Whiteyfish. The air was considerably better. In fact it smelled downright delish. It smelled of a wonderful variety of pine I haven’t had the olfactory pleasure of before. From their, it is an uphill slog into Glacier Park, which needless to say, has proven itself to be end to end beautiful. While seeing all the logging operations along this ride so far makes my stomach turn quite a bit, I can say firsthand there are lots and lots of very big trees left standing here. Pines in ravines well below the train with their tops above the train were quite common, and I must say, they are something that impresses me more than even the amazing skyline of Hong Kong. It isn’t just the size of the trees, it is the fact that they are nearly perfectly straight to boot. Surreal and wonderful.

The rail line across the park is interesting in that it doesn’t follow any one river across the mountains which such mountain lines often do. The mountain pass we used was at about 5000 feet, called the Marias Pass. We hit some good long tunnels and trestles to boot, each a favorite for me. When you hit a trestle you can hear the difference in the sound of the rails, and while I was drifting in and out of sleep overnight I heard some frighteningly long trestles roll underneath the coach. Since most of this line is single track, I can only imagine what the view out the side would have been as most trestles are barely the width of the train itself. Good living.

In Whitefish, at the west entrance to the park, their was a Hertz office at the train station. At the east entrance to the park was Avis. The east entrance to the park is on the Blackfoot Nation Indian Reservation, so there is a little special something to make that entrance more attractive: Blondie’s Casino. Blondie’s seemed to be about the size of a suburban garage, but that wouldn’t dissuade me. While Whiteyfish seemed to be a little more buffed out in terms of amenities, it lacked the most important one (at least within walking distance of the train station), so I would suggest you should make the east entrance your HQ for visits up this way.

Just in the time taken to write this lil’ bit, we have headed out of the park, up a gentle slope, and up onto the famous “Big Sky” country. I am just getting my first look at it, and I will have little to look at but it for the next 12 hours, so I will stay my hand for now. If I may add one other little “Oh My Gawd My Vida Loca” moment, it really has only been a few weeks since I saw the venerable Merle Haggard in New York City sing those immortal words “Turn me loose, set me free, somewhere in the middle of Montana” from the song Big City. Well, here I am but a few days away from that Big City moment, turned lose and set free somewhere in the middle of Montana. While riding the rails nonetheless.

I think my head is going to explode.