On the advice of the ranger I met at the actual Columbia Falls farmers market—The Columbia Falls Community Market, so named, I presume, because this is the farmers market the community actually attends—I drove to Polebridge through Glacier National Park. Although a longer route, it was, he said, a much nicer road, and worth it to save the wear and tear on the vehicle. He further encouraged me to continue on from Polebridge up to Bowman and Kintla lakes, and said I could even take my trailer. Thankfully, I ignored this piece of advice; more on that later.
Polebridge, I had read, was a community without electricity on the northwestern outskirts of Glacier National Park, famous for Polebridge Mercantile, which has served as a general store, post office, and bakery for the few local residents for over a hundred years. Though it was unclear if the post office part is still true, the bakery is alive and well. They have huckleberry everything.
If you want a remote bar, then the Northern Lights saloon next door should suffice, which inhabits the rather homey cabin built by the original proprietors of Polebridge Mercantile.
Those two buildings are, I think, all of Polebridge, though there seem to be some summer cabins next to the Mercantile, and I believe there are even a few full-timer dwellings in the area. I was disappointed to discover that new owners bought the Mercantile and saloon this year, and apparently decided to bring electricity with them. Still, the town is quiet and the scenery is beautiful.
After eating my tasty pastry and drinking a few sips of the most burnt latte I’ve ever had, it was time to head down the road to the glacial lakes.
I somewhat wish I stopped after this picture, taken from the yellow sign you can see above.
Kintla Lake is the more distant of the two lakes, and I decided I should go there first and hit Bowman Lake on the way back. The scenery is beautiful, but the road is rough, narrow, and full of potholes. I got to know the width of my vehicle quite well, because much of the time the road was barely wide enough for two vehicles. The rest of the time, it was somewhere between 1-1.5 car-widths wide with infrequent places to park half of your car off the road. It wasn’t that bad, I decided, after spending some time staring at the lake and wishing I’d stolen that canoe in Polebridge.
Kintla Lake used to be the benchmark lake for the state, containing the cleanest water, according to an old ranger every passing child called “Grandpa”. This is what I learned while trying to discover if it was worth the extra 12 miles to see Bowman Lake, which is apparently the most photographed lake in Montana.
As it happens, the answer is no, but no one would tell me that. The road to Bowman Lake is much steeper and narrower. I passed a van full of kids that got stuck on the shoulder of the road and needed a tow; I was happy I didn’t have the equipment with me. I then got into a hand-wavy argument with an oncoming vehicle, whose driver didn’t seem to know that the vehicle heading downhill has the responsibility to reverse, not the vehicle heading uphill on the side of a cliff.
Bowman Lake was not markedly different from Kintla Lake, but I did end up in an unescapable conversation with an old-timer. He kept talking until the sun was about to set, interjecting at intervals that I should “go slowly” and “not drive in the dark”. He explained at length how he had started out with a tent and truck years ago, on a mission to find where he wanted to live after he retired. He quickly discovered possessions were a hassle and gave away his tent; tables, he said, or the back of his hatchback if it rained, worked much better.
He found out after a year or so that he didn’t want to live anywhere but on the road and he’d been travelling ever since. The only exception was about two months following an accident in which he’d totalled his vehicle; he’d stopped to visit his daughter, and was about to head back on the road when she insisted he was unwell and needed to see a doctor. Turns out he had bleeding in his brain, and the surgery held him up for another three months.
He was relatively upbeat until he got onto the topic of destinations. He morosely stated he was running out of places to go. When I suggested Canada, he said he’d never go to Canada, because “they have mosquitos there.” I didn’t ask about Mexico.