Day 16 - Fish Creek to Polebridge and Return

Food, food and more food.

Another nice day at Fish Creek in Glacier NP. After the usual early morning birding and breakfast, we all piled into harry & Sally's Roadtrek for a drive to Polebridge for a snack at the Polebridge Mercantile. We have been there befor, but Harry & sally had not. It is a 25 mile drive up a partially unpaved road and Ellen was a bit concerned they might not be open.

She needn't have worried as the mercantile is still there and the line was practically out the door. It is always amazing to us that it seems so unpopulated in the northwest corner of the park, but there is quite a community and the Mercantile has a great bakery. We had our fill of coffee, bearclaws and sticky buns. They make pretty good espresso there. are a puff pastry filled with huckleberries (we call them blueberries) and ricotta and shaped like a bear claw.

After eating our fill (and then some), we went up to Bowman Lake, about 6 miles further on an even rougher dirt road. We have stayed at Bowman Lake on both of our previous visits to Glacier. THe campground is small and primitive, but the lake and mountains in the background are a spectacular view. Today, the peaks were clouded over and the campground was almost empty. There were quite a few cars in the backcountry parking lot though. Harry fished a bit as the mountain lakes are supposed to be productive but nothing was biting.

After a bit of lunch...as if we needed it, we headed back out to Polebridge for another stop at the Mercantile to get pastry to go. And another coffee and a beer.

We were driving back discussing dinner as it was getting late and passed a place we had not stopped at before, the Home Ranch Bottoms Tavern.  There was a sign for BBQ. Hmm, maybe takeout...so we stopped. There was a sign on the entrance saying the that it was the seventh best place to eat in the middle of nowhere. This seemed a good sign...I don't know why.  It was at least the 7th best. The owner was from Texas and smoked quite good Texas BBQ. We had  ribs and pulled pork and brisket sliders and left stuffed.

It was a pleasant ride back to Fish Creek, then we tumbled into Speedy to sleep it off.