After a good night’s sleep, we spent all of Wednesday on the train to Glacier. They let us off the train sometimes, mostly so the smokers could light up. it was nice to get out in Shelby Montana, with about three hours to go before reaching our destination.
Shelby didn’t look like it had a lot going on. But of course they had a casino.
Kevin spotted this tan building, saying it was probably a police station. he spots things like that.
We were going all the way to the far side of Glacier, to the town of Whitefish. But first the train stopped in East Glacier, where we’d leave from when going home. the funny thing is that this photo looks nothing like the station when we boarded on our last day…maybe this is what the station looked like from the other side of the train. because when we got on the train to go home, we were right across from the Glacier Park Lodge. Hmm.
maybe the lodge was hiding behind this other train car! because it was funny that all we could see of East Glacier was this big ugly train.
we passed the tiny town of Essex, and we did see a few houses dotted around. a very remote place to live, for sure.
We arrived at the Whitefish Train Depot right on time, at 9:00, and were exhausted and kind of cold. We were staying for two nights at the Chalet Motel in Whitefish; it was only about a mile and a half from the depot, but even though i’d initially said we could walk there, we didn’t want to do that because like i said, cold and tired, plus we had so much luggage.
for some reason i’d pictured a bunch of taxis waiting outside the Whitefish depot. It was a major town outside the park, right? Nope. No taxis. The other people who got off the train had clearly made plans for getting somewhere, but at first we weren’t quite sure what to do. I didn’t have the Uber app on my phone, so i couldn’t call an Uber, but i had written down the name of two cab companies. I called the first one and the guy said it’d be an hour wait. no way. but the second guy said he could be there in three minutes, yay for that.
he did, indeed, arrive quickly and we were relieved to load our luggage into the back of the car.
but then, the man appeared quite mad. he almost immediately starting long diatribes about this and that, all kinds of things, a constant stream of crazy coming from his mouth. oh brother.
even though it was a quick ride it seemed to go on forever. when we arrived at the motel he kept talking and i quickly ignored him, bustling around getting out our bags. finally, he went away. whew.
I had originally reserved a room at a fancy hotel there in Whitefish, one that would have picked us up at the train station. but I ended up modifying our trip, and we were going to stay there two nights instead of just one, and realized that this motel was about half the price.
besides not having a shuttle for the train station, the Chalet Motel was lovely. It’d been around for a very long time, maybe the oldest motel in Whitefish? But a charming woman named Eva bought it a year ago and clearly poured all kinds of energy and money into making it a charming place.
Here’s the cute red fridge in our room.
and i couldn’t believe the print on this chair – we have the same print on a throw on one of our chairs.
Everything seemed brand new and nice. Plus she served a little continental breakfast down in the tiny reception area, including homemade banana bread.
Whew, we were glad to go to sleep that night.
ok then,
mrs. home from vacation hughes.