Today was spent mostly on the road. We’re in Helena, MT for the night at fake cinnamon roll smell infused Holiday Inn Express. Our goal today was to get as close to Glacier National Park as we could from Devil’s Tower.
We came across southern Montana and turned right at the Yellowstone left, Glacier right intersection. Southern Montana was really pretty but I just have that sense of “we’re really far away from everything else” that I don’t care for in places to live in. Towns we stopped in were definitely cool though. It seemed like people, despite being really into horses, were pretty cool people.
After a stop in Billings at local burger expert Hardee’s, we analyzed the map and realized our original goal of Great Falls, MT for the night was not even on the quickest route to Glacier. Helena was though and it had the added bonus of being the state capital if you enjoy crossing silly milestones off your list.
In Helena we tried to catch up on our Internet and then went out in search of a steakhouse. The two options on most searches for “Helena steakhouse” were Applebee’s and some place called Silver Star. After weighing the pros and cons carefully, Silver Star won our business. It was a nice evening out so we ate on the porch and there appeared to be some conferences going on in town. For what we couldn’t determine but I believe one involved self-satisfied overweight men and another involved depressing spinsters who eat alone with their legal pads at steakhouses.
On the way home, I wanted to see the capitol proper so we stopped outside and I stood in the intersection to get you the lovely shot above. Coming from states that have beautiful domes (even on our old capitols) I was disappointed to see that at 9:30pm the capitol wasn’t even lit up.
The evening finished with running in to that same spinster across town in our hotel elevator where she grumpily gave me advice on acquiring ice. Helena was good to us.