Friday, July 30, 2010

Along the Way

Heading to the next stop on the Lewis and Clark Circuit are a couple of things worth seeing. On the south side of Glacier is the Izaac Walton Inn. Built to house train crews on the Great Northern Railway, it now caters to tourists/train lovers looking for a unique place to stay between the two sides of the park.


It's furnished with vintage furniture, train memorabilia, and old photographs.


In addition to the inn, there are cabooses you can stay in. On a hill overlooking the train tracks, they offer excellent train watching. Don't know how much sleep you'll get, though.


The insides look a lot like the inside of an RV. The difference is that these go for $230 a night with a 2-night minimum.


Or you can stay in the Great Northern 441 luxury locomotive. All for the low, low price of $299 a night, also with a 2-night minimum.


There is a bridge going over the tracks to the cabins and cabooses where you can get good shots of trains. This one went by before I could get up there.

Farther south, in the tiny town of St. Ignatius on the Flathead Indian Reservation is the St. Ingatius Mission. Established by Jesuit missionaries in 1854, the current church was built in 1891. It's pretty impressive, but the real surprise is inside.


There are 58 beautiful dry-fresco paintings, done around 1900.


Amazingly, they were painted by the mission cook!

5 comments:

  1. You can sleep in the locomotive? Holy Cow, do you have to shovel coal into the engine for electricity? ;c)

    Just slightly out of my price range.

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  2. Beautiful pictures and what a beautiful Inn I would love to see that, I think I will have to skip the sleeping in the train part, thats a tad too expensive for me lol

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  3. What a super place!! I always get goose bumps when I hear a train whistle...although I hated riding the subway..I think I would love to travel by train if I had a luxury car such as one of those..lol thats a wee bit steep for my blood tho.
    THAT chruch is amazing a COOK did that..omg he could have been more famous than Michael Angelo...amazing!!
    Happy Trails to ya'll

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  4. That bike ride looks like so much fun! I've added it to my 'to-do' list. :D

    Those frescoes are beautiful. The one on the left in the last photo keeps catching my eye. Love it.

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  5. Those frescoes are gorgeous! And a very interesting inn. How do you find these places?

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