3 INCHES OF STEAK, BISON, BEARS AND A ROAD THAT DEFIED WORDS

To gear up for our border-to-border National Park blitz through Montana, we scored our own playlist for cruising blue highways: Ennio Morricone, Hank Williams, Old 97’s and Dottie West. To sound like locals, we practiced saying “crick”for creek. We tried out the two-finger wave. On the back of a beat-up notebook,we scribbled, “Bison, Gravel Roads, Grizzly Bears, Huckleberry Danish, Moose Drool, Geysers, Glaciers” — a wish list of all the things we hoped to discover. We wanted a slice of Montana’s culture with mind-blowing scenery and some Coen brothers quirk on the side.

We started at the southern edge of Montana. Just under a mile from Yellowstone National Park’s northeast entrance, Silver Gate, Montana, population 26, is nestled at 7,400 feet in the Beartooth Mountains near Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley. At the edge of town, the Pine Edge Cabins proved to be a calming base camp. Their rustic log porches and quilted comforters are Goldilocks certified. Organic coffee is served in the lobby, and a healthy population of Labrador retrievers bound around owners sporting mud-caked hiking boots. At night, a fire crackles in the pit out front. Watch your neck; stargazing can be an irresistible sport with 10,000-foot peaks surrounding town.

The next day, we hit the Cooke City Store — a general mercantile built in 1886 that is on the National Historic Register. Owner Troy Wilson mans the original hand-cranked cash register and doles out daily fishing reports. He suggested we try Slough Creek, an intimate trout stream that flows through alpine meadows filled with elk and bison that lies about 20 miles inside the Park. He said the Yellowstone cutthroat were biting and sold us a handful of mayfly imitations along with our national park fishing permits.

Wilson also suggested a 70-mile day drive of the Upper Loop. He handed us a map that showed how Yellowstone’s interior roads form a loose figure 8. The smaller, top portion threads through Tower-Roosevelt, Mammoth Hot Springs, Norris Junction and Canyon Junction. When we passed through the Lamar Valley, a.k.a. “Yellowstone’s Serengeti,” on our way to join the loop, pods of wolf-watchers invited us to peek through their spotting scopes. One eagle-eye even pointed out a grizzly with two cubs on a hillside. A highlight was our stroll around Black Sand Basin in the Upper Geyser Basin. We also visited the Norris Geyser Basin, where we watched a rare eruption of Steamboat Geyser, the world’s largest geyser. Our favorite evening spot was the deck of the Beartooth Café in Cooke City, where we sipped from frosty bottles of Moose Drool, brewed locally in Missoula, while awaiting our crazy, three-inch-thick, hand-cut sirloins. Afterwards, we settled into a table at the jam-packed Miner’s Saloon, where the food, which the menu listed as if it were just typical bar fare, proved to be anything but.

Driving between Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks was a day-long mad dash along two-lane highways and interstates. It’s a two-and-a-half-hour trip from Cooke City to Livingston (without bear jams), three and a half hours from Livingston to Missoula on I-90, and another two hours from Missoula to West Glacier. As Hank Williams hollered through the car speakers, we made our way to Glacier before the sun ducked behind the horizon.

50 MILES TO THE SUN, 100 YARDS TO A GRIZZLY AND A HUCKLEBERRY DANISH DIRT ROAD

We upped the comfort level in Glacier, booking a room at the Lake McDonald Lodge, a swiss-chalet-style landmark on the shores of the Park’s largest lake. Prying ourselves from the lobby’s stone hearth was a challenge, but we had hotter places to visit; we were “going to the sun.” Never had we been on such a road: hairpin turns on a narrow slab of pavement twisting through tunnels and beneath waterfalls along a mountainside ledge popping with thousands of Indian paintbrush — and too many glaciers to count.

At the summit of Logan Pass, we met John, a summer guide we’d hired through Glacier Guides to lead us on a custom day hike to Granite Park Chalet – one of only two original backcountry lodges in the Park. As we traipsed the Highline Trail through wide meadows thick with bear grass, John spotted two adult grizzlies 100 yards above us. Farther up the trail, we came within 25 feet of two bighorn sheep, and chubby marmots chattered the entire route. Inside the stone lodge, built in 1914 and 1915 by the Great Northern Railway, John set up lunch as we visited with hikers from Germany and New York. After a side of “monster cookie,” we headed down a shorter trail (no backtracking!) to a lower pullout on the Going-to-the-Sun Road where John’s truck was waiting.

We still had one more item to cross off our list. For that, we planned a day trip to Polebridge, Montana, a town with no electricity (the 90 residents use generators and other alternative-energy sources) located one mile from Glacier’s northwest entrance and thirteen miles from Canada. The Crown of the Continent website warns, “If you journey to Polebridge, however, be prepared for dusty roads, which are an integral part of the North Fork character. Drive slow and watch carefully for wildlife and other drivers. You would be wise to have at least one sturdy spare tire.” Now THIS was a gravel road! A dusty lane paralleling the North Fork Flathead River rocked us along yards of washboard. Though Polebridge is just a blink of a town with a few rustic cabins, it’s here you’ll find the Northern Lights Saloon and the “Merc,” a historic mercantile/bakery/gas station. You’ll know you’ve hit the front edge of Polebridge when you come upon a hand-painted sign nailed to a tree warning, “SLOW DOWN, PEOPLE BREATHING.”

At first, we thought this was in reference to the thick dust, but the more time we spent on the Mercantile’s porch sipping coffee and gnawing on homemade huckleberry danish, the more we realized it was just another of those unexpected Montana things. We grabbed a pen and began to write, “Square Butte, Jackalopes, Jersey Lilly Saloon, 4-H Kids…” — the beginning of our next Montana wish list.