My trip was totally awesome!

Despite the unexpected night's stay in Denver on the way to MT and the missing bag at the St. Louis baggage claim, I had the best time on my trip!

We started out in Glacier, which is the most beautiful place I have ever been. I've been there just twice now, but it is my favorite of all the National Parks. The first day was a bit of a bust because of my stupid airline delaying me overnight, but on the second day we got up and hiked to Avalanch Lake. It was gorgeous - I highly recommend this hike. It starts out as the Trail of the Cedars, which is an easy paved trail, and continutes on a slightly more strenuous hike until it opens up to the beautiful Avalanche Lake. The rocks all around the lake were this weird light blue-green color - very cool.

We drove the Going to the Sun Road and saw lots of wildlife: big horned sheep, mountain goats, etc and on the way back, we saw a bear! It was a black bear meandering down the road. When it saw us it detoured into the forest, but overall seemed completly unconcerned with our presence. Needless to say, this pretty much made my vacation. It was topped only by seeing the look on SP's face when I told her the tale.

Day three, we lounged, and I mean lounged, by Lake MacDonald. The next day (our last day at Glacier), we went white water rafting. The rapids were not that fierce, and we were with a family who had no idea how the hell to paddle, so it was a bit frustrating. Seriously, I do not know what this family's problem was. They did not paddle in sync - I cannot tell you how many tmes I heard paddles clang against each other. At one point, the mom completely lost all reason and started paddeling the opposit direction from everyone else. The young girl, who cold not paddle to save her life, finally decided to stop, but her dad kept yelling at her to paddle. So, clang, clang, clang went the oars once again. Idiots. Still, we were going down a river in the middle of 3 million acres of protected land, so it was pretty freaking awesome.

Then we headed to Missoula and my heart immediately felt at home. We saw a pretty cool band called the Warsaw Poland Brothers. They have a bit of ska to them and we danced some jigs and had a really awesome time. We also saw The Inconvenient Truth. Everyone should see this movie! We also went to an experimental short film fest and the first documentary was by Werner Herzog (unfortunately, I've forgotten the title).

We ate a bunch of good food, climbed the "M," met Steve Frost (one of the writers for Twin Peaks), and walked all over town - many, many times - to take in the cool chillin' atomosphere of my favorite town. Me at the top of the M:

My trip ended in Billings where the unthinkable happened - my friend Brandi beat me at Trivial Pursuit. Neither of us could recall this happening before. I'm pretty sure she cheated.