Helena - Montana's cute little capital

As part of David's new job he had to travel to Helena, Montana. We've both been to Montana before, but only briefly - once to Makoshika state park on the far east side of the state when we were visiting North Dakota, and once to a couple of the Montana towns that border Yellowstone. So Paul decided to join and we added on a few days for a little Montana vacation. We started and ended in Helena, the capital city.

Helena is a charming city of 31,000 people. For such a small city it has surprisingly impressive buildings, and a number of historic sites from the town's early history. The downtown is compact and centered around a pedestrian mall (Last Chance Gulch), and is set right up against the hiking trails of Mt. Helena park. It is a relatively quiet city, but there are a number of restaurants and shops in downtown, and Last Chance Gulch is a bit of a tourist attraction.

The historic structures in Helena include an original pioneer cabin, an impressive cathedral, a fire watch tower overlooking the city, the state capitol building, stately office buildings downtown, and a neighborhood full of restored old houses. The city has a fantastic walking tour app that includes a great map and plenty of information about all of the sites. It has a neat feature where you can stand in certain spots around the city, raise your phone up, and see a historic image overlaid (live) on your current view. This is the first time I've seen augmented reality used this way in an app. Very cool, and we highly recommend this app for a 1/2 day walking tour around the city. Most of the sites, except the state capitol, are all clustered in easy walking distance of each other. Just watch out for the hills!

Reeder's Alley is a good place to start. It's just southwest of the main part of downtown. It's the oldest intact part of the city, built in the 1870s. It's now home to a couple of restaurants and shops, and is a nice place to relax and take in the history.

The atmospheric buildings of Reeder's Alley, with Mt. Helena Park in the background.

A cat in Reeder's Alley.

There's a preserved pioneer cabin at the entrance to Reeder's Alley.

Just up the street from Reeder's Alley is Mt. Helena Park, a series of trails in the mountains next to the city. It's a great amenity. Paul did a short hike here while David was in a work meeting.

There's a great trail network right in the city. This is just a few minutes walk from downtown.

View of the city from Mt. Helena Park.

A deer in someone's yard.

Historic buildings in downtown.

The original governor's mansion.

An old truck on a street lined with trees and historic houses.

The huge cathedral.

Why is this in Helena?

The cathedral is worth visiting for the stained glass alone.

The door of an old prison building (now an arts center).

Some treats at Park Avenue Bakery.

Last Chance Gulch is the main attraction of the city. It's a street that has been converted to a pedestrian mall. The street is lined with beautiful buildings from the late 1880s. While downtown Helena is a little sleepy, it's very impressive for a city of only 30,000 people. The old buildings reflect the power and prestige of the railroads and the mining industry.

Last Chance Gulch.

Of course we found ice cream! "Big Dipper" is in Last Change Gulch.

Montana women's mural.

The Atlas building, Paul's favorite in the city.

It has a dramatic off-centered stone arch.

The top of the Atlas building has salamanders and fire.

Another cool downtown building, right at the end of the pedestrian portion of Last Chance Gulch.

Here's how the building above used to look, using the historic view feature in the walking app.

Part of a mural.

There are a lot of nice buildings on Last Chance Gulch.

We found a giant pretzel at one of the restaurants on the Gulch.

Classic looking.

Another historic view in the app.

The rest of the sites we visited were better reached by car, as they were outside of the central core of Helena. The state capitol building and Montana Historical Society museum are both worth visiting.

The civic center is Moorish in style, and really stands out.

It was closed, but a nice employee let me in for a little tour.

The neighborhood near the civic center is full of grand houses.

Great Northern town center is an interesting new urban area.

It has a "Lewis and Clark" themed trail down the center, lined with businesses, shops, and apartments.

Part of the Lewis and Clark theme.

Carroll College

We found a pasty food truck for lunch. It was really good.

Heavy but delicious. Recommended!

Statue in front of the capitol.

Montana's state capitol building.

The interior of the dome.

Stairway and skylight in the capitol.

The capitol isn't huge, but it has some nice art and grand arches.

Time for the historical society museum, right across from the capitol. Here's Paul with a prehistoric beaver-like animal.

They had huge buffalo hides/furs you could try on.

A fossil exhibit. Montana is known for dinosaur fossil sites.

A diorama of a buffalo jump.

At the end of our trip, as we were driving back in to Helena, we drove by a large wildfire. The "North Hills Fire" was burning just 10 miles from downtown Helena. Luckily the wind was pushing the smoke away from the city. This is the closest we've been to a major fire, and it was quite shocking to watch. Unfortunately this is becoming the new normal out West, and this fire was tiny compared to some of the massive fires in California over the past few years. It was interesting to watch huge planes taking off from the Helena airport to dump retardant on the fire.

Smoke from the interstate.

A massive plume of smoke.

The rest of our time in Montana was spent in and around Glacier National Park, which we'll cover in the next couple of posts.

Salt Lake City & First Day in Yellowstone

Over Memorial Day weekend we took a trip to visit one of the world's greatest natural wonders, Yellowstone National Park. Paul visited Yellowstone back in 2006 and loved it, and has wanted to return ever since. David's Dad hates to fly, but has always wanted to visit Yellowstone, so was willing to take a flight for this special trip. We booked our Yellowstone accommodations 6 months in advance, and most of the hotels were already full - make sure you plan early if you want to sleep in the park!

Our trip started in Salt Lake City. There's not a major city near Yellowstone, and flights to closer airports (like Jackson Hole) were insanely expensive on this holiday weekend. Salt Lake City is about a five hour drive from the west entrance of Yellowstone. David had never visited Salt Lake City before, and fortuitously there happened to be an Atlanta United game vs Real Salt Lake, so it worked out to add a little city flavor and bonus soccer match to our National Park vacation.

Flying over the Great Salt Lake.

We had a great view of Denver and the front range of the Rocky Mountains on the flight in.

Our first stop was the state capitol building. We love to visit these, and have seen quite a few together, including capitols in Phoenix, Honolulu, and Des Moines. Utah's capitol did not disappoint. It's a classic, styled similarly to the US capitol. The interior has impressive paintings and a nice little temporary exhibit on the completion of the first trans-continental railroad, which connected the east and west coast with the final golden spike in Utah. From there we went to the nearby Mormon Square. You can't enter the church, but we looked at the outside and walked through the City Center shopping area next door before having an early dinner at Taqueria 27. We made a quick stop at Harmon's grocery store to stock up on food and snacks for the week, before driving south of town to Rio Tinto stadium for the Atlanta United game. ATL lost in stoppage time, but it's always great to go to an away game (we go to at least one every year).

Utah's impressive capitol sits on top of a hill north of downtown.

Jumping picture!

Pioneer painting.

The impressive soaring interior.

Looking downtown from the capitol.

The Mormon Temple.

Salt Lake has a light rail system.

Dinner at Taqueria 27. Mole enchiladas!

Us at the stadium, in the Atlanta supporters section.

David and his Dad.

At one point it started raining - while it was still sunny...

...which resulted in a rainbow!

Night in the stadium. It was a nice stadium with good views.

That night we made the almost 4 hour drive to our hotel near Rexburg, Idaho. It was a long late drive in the dark, but good to get some of the driving out of the way since we'd be on the road a lot the next few days. On the way we saw a monster run across the road. It may have just been a large skunk, but it was probably a monster.

Saturday morning we drove the remaining hour and 20 minutes to the west entrance of Yellowstone. It was a rainy day, but we had some nice views of the Tetons in the distance, and Caribou-Targhee National Forest. We made a quick stop in the visitor's center in the town of West Yellowstone to buy a new annual national park pass and get info on road closures, then drove in to the park. We saw a small herd of bison alongside the Madison River, and continued along a one-way loop next to the Firehole river where we saw our first elk. Our first major stop was the Lower Geyser Basin (AKA Fountain Paint Pot), where we saw a number of geothermal features. Since it was late spring, there was a lot of snowmelt and rain that made the mudpots extra splattery.

First bison sighting.

Firehole Falls.

Best illustration ever?

"Bobby socks trees" that were killed by hydrothermal activity.

David with the geyser field.

Don't be fooled by the other pictures, it was crowded.

A big splashing mud pot.

A hot spring next to the boardwalk.

We continued on to Midway Geyser Basin, which contains one of Yellowstone's most famous sites: Grand Prismatic Spring. After walking around the boardwalk, we took the 1.2 mile round trip overlook trail, which gives astounding views of Grand Prismatic Spring. Don't miss it!

Next came lunch at the very crowded Old Faithful Inn before watching Old Faithful erupt. Hundreds of people lined the boardwalk to watch.

Hot water from the springs flows into the river.

Excelsior geyser has a huge pool with big clouds of steam.

The warm water in the geyser basin is full of organisms.

David and his Dad at the Grand Prismatic Springs overlook.

Grand Prismatic Springs money shot (instagram filtered to hell!)

The Old Faithful Inn interior was really cool.

The food was just OK, but there aren't many lunch options in the area.

You can see the geyser getting ready to do its thing in the background.

So many people!

After seeing Old Faithful, we took a quick look around the visitor center's exhibits and then it started to rain. Instead of wandering around the geyser fields in the wet weather, we decided to head towards our hotel to check in. The ride to the hotel by Yellowstone Lake was around 45 minutes. During the trip we climbed up in elevation over the continental divide, where there was still tons of snow.

At the divide signage pointed us to the small, but unique, Lake Isa. This lake sits exactly on the divide and water runs off it in both directions - so the lake drains into both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans!

About 2/3 of the way to the Lake Village, we saw some cars pulled over in an area that burned in a fire not too many years ago. Here we saw a bear rummaging around! This was the first of 4 or 5 bears we would see on the trip. David's Dad was super excited and jumped out of the car for a closer look. David didn't approve.

After the bear went on his way, we continued the drive to Lake Village, where we checked in and got the keys to our cabins. The cabins here are very modest; basically they're one medium-sized room and one small bathroom. It was hard to not track mud/leaves in every time we went out so the place ended up being kinda dirty by the end of the trip. These cabins, like everything in Yellowstone, aren't cheap either. Planning accommodations here can be pretty tricky.

After a couple hour siesta, we went for an evening drive to Sulfur Cauldron before wildlife viewing at Hayden Valley, one of the two main valleys where wildlife tend to congregate. We saw bison, elk, eagles, and other random critters. Yellowstone is a great place to watch animals in the wild! We ended our day at the hotel, ready for an early start to explore more of the park.

Lake Isa - on the Continental Divide and still covered in snow/ice in late May.

Paul representing ATL United on the Continental Divide!

Our first glimpse of Lake Yellowstone, a massive alpine lake in the Yellowstone caldera.

Bear jam!

The culprit. A large black bear.

Sulphur cauldron is a smelly muddy mess.

Hayden Valley

Road Bison.

Huckleberry everything in the northwest!