Bread and Bread

We poked around downtown Whitefish, which is very Cute-with-a-capital-C, for a while, but everything was closing for the day and I didn’t need a $300 purple fringed jacket anyway (do I need a $20 purple fringed jacket? Possibly). So we went to the movie theater on the Not Cute southern end of town, in a mostly vacant mall that hadn’t seen a facelift since the ‘80s. We saw Drive and it was strange to see L.A. all lit up and infinite on screen as we sat there with one other couple in a tiny town in Montana. Drive was almost a good movie. I’m usually one to favor mood over plot, but we got the feeling that some scenes explaining huge coincidences in the story may have gotten cut to make room for long close-ups of Ryan Gosling’s slowly clenching fist. Also, Carey Mulligan’s character—a Denny’s waitress with a young son and a thing for bad boys—didn’t quite make sense. I think Carey Mulligan is hugely talented, and I loved An Education and Never Let Me Go , but she seemed mo...

This morning we hiked to Red Rock Falls, where we saw a moose (tall!) and some grizzlies (through a telescope!). This afternoon we checked into the Grou se Mountain Lodge in Whitefish, which has turned out to be posher than we realized. I spent some time in the Swiftcurrent giftshop yesterday reading this coffee table book about the great old lodges of the National Parks—they have their own architectural style, which his sort of rustic-lux. The Grouse Mountain Lodge is in that tradition. Everything in Whitefish seems to be, actually. There are lots of real estate offices. And the group of Canadian guys who checked in ahead of us, with their golf bags and spiky hair and Jersey Shore pecs on the verge of giving way to beer bellies, made me speculate that there was a douche bag convention in town. At AK’s urging, I’m reading A River Runs Through It . The narrator’s brother is this smart but super country bar-brawler guy. I hope the convention runs into him out on the town ton...

The great thing about wearing yourself out is that relaxing feels so incredible afterward. Right now AK is sitting next to me in the lobby of the inn (we’re staying in a cabin nearby), drinking a Coke and reading Vanity Fair and looking like the happiest girl in the world. Before that, we hiked 11 miles roundtrip to Grinell Glacier. When I was younger—even when I visited Malaysia—I remember thinking that Africa and continents with rainforests had really scored in the nature department. The flora and fauna of North America were just sort of…beige. But I would like to humbly rescind that assessment. Some things we saw on our hike: Another bear, which triggered my flight-or-photo mechanism. I was dubious about continuing on the trail, but we staked out a space between two other couples and decided there was safety in numbers. The couple in front, whom we nicknamed Northface, had cameras with telephoto lenses and seemed like they were trying to lose us. The other couple, rece...

1. rush hour with bears Last night we ate dinner at a place called the Silk Road —and in case you’re wondering where Missoula keeps its fusion restaurants and funk stores, it’s on The Hip Strip. It’s actually called that. The Silk Road’s schtick is international tapas. It’s a pretty new restaurant and when we walked in, the host/possible manager or owner asked where we were from and proceeded to explain how tapas worked, then sort of half apologized, like, Oh, you’re from L.A., you must be cosmopolitan. (Other people just said, “Is there any time of day that isn’t rush hour?”) But the trying-so-hard vibe was friendly and the food would hold up to or surpass any place in L.A. For $26 plus tip, we had fried goat cheese ravioli, seared shrimp with grilled peaches, an amazing pile of savory French-ish mushrooms and a dessert appropriately named “The Bombe”—chocolate-covered sea salt-flavored ice cream cake. Then we walked along the river and watched the multigenerationa...

1. zootown is my kinda town We landed in Missoula yesterday afternoon, and even though it took us an hour to locate our bags in the tiny airport, we could quickly tell this was a great town. The lone, harried employee at the Delta counter was as patient as a kindergarten teacher. Then again, not one of the dozens of people whose flights had been messed up due to some sort of snafu was making a stink. And when we asked the rental car place whether I could be added free as a driver, because AK and I are Canadian-married , he didn’t miss a beat before saying yes. Yesterday was our bumming-around-Missoula day. We hit a thrift store, explored downtown with its charming old cottages and winding river, and finished the day at the Iron Horse Brew Pub , a place with a menu after my own too-many-flavors heart: salsa-flavored sour cream! Honey pesto scallops! A cocktail called the chai-tini! Everyone gathered around the TV to watch the Charlie Sheen roast, where we were all blinded by S...

We just got back from Montana. The short version? We loved it. The long version? Read my travel journal in the next few posts.