Essex Montana, and the Izaak Walton Inn
Getting off the train, I asked the conductor how many people usually get off the train in Essex. He said the average is three per day. Sometimes more, sometimes the train doesn't stop at all. Today the total was five, including myself. A red van was waiting for us. The driver asked if we were going to the Izaak Walton Inn. Of course we all said yes...where else would we go?

I mentioned in the introduction how I found Essex, Montana. My friend and I had six days for a trip, and this was suggested as the turn-around point with the train arriving in the morning and leaving in the evening. We would just wander around town for the day, have something to eat, and watch trains go by at the depot.

The "depot" turned out to be a dirt and gravel platform several cars long. There were no benches, no structure, not even a town. Just mountains and trees everywhere. Essex is a town of just a few people, and most - if not all - must work for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad or the Izaak Walton Inn. Perhaps some work in Glacier National Park, which is just a stone's throw away. There isn't much else in Essex. Just down the tracks from the leveled off dirt that serves as the platform is the Izaak Walton Inn. Right on the tracks, it was originally lodging for the Great Northern Railway crews. Today it's a destination for explorers, skiers, and train wackos. Just down the highway is Glacier National Park. In winter there are ski slopes all around the inn which turn into hiking trails when the snow melts. But I'm a train whacko, and for people like me it's the BNSF tracks. There are always helpers waiting in the yard. Helpers are locomotives that are attached to trains to help them over a steep grade. Twenty-four hours a day they idle outside, waiting to push the thirty to fifty trains that come through each day across the Rocky Mountains. Aside from the inn and some surrounding houses, there's nothing in Essex besides the mountains and the trees. A big change from Chicago, and a welcome one. Years ago I got off a train and a van driver asked if we were going to the inn. Back then I said yes because we didn't have a choice. This time I said yes because I knew what would be waiting.

We loaded up our luggage and the van rolled over to the inn. It was exactly as I remembered it. The stone fireplace in the lobby and the wooden furniture were an inviting sight. After checking in I went up to my room on the second floor. It was paneled in beautiful wood and with etched glass around the top of the bathroom wall. The bed was covered with the Great Northern Railway logo, and there were photos of mountain goats and paintings of trains on the walls. There was no television or telephone. My room was on the railway side of the inn, overlooking the yards where the helpers would rumble as they idled through the night. It was perfect.

I had asked about laundry facilities when I made my reservation, and after settling into my room I went to wash my clothes. I learned on my last trip that having laundry facilities en-route makes for a lighter backpack. It was closed for the night, but that would be no problem as I'd have time in the morning. I sat in the lobby for a while. As much as they tried to keep it slow paced, there was WiFi available that reached into the lobby, and even though there was a sign on the wall asking people not to use their computers, someone just had to be online.

I eventually went back up to my room. Leaving the blind open so I'd be awakened by the morning sun, I went to sleep at around eleven.

Monday morning it was raining. I guess I had my weather luck in Chicago. It even snowed a little bit. I went downstairs and realized that when my PDA lost its memory on the Southwest Chief, it took with it my plans to check my email and finish up an eBay auction that had closed while I was on the train. My WiFi drivers were gone, so I tried to use the data port on the payphone with my modem (yes, I have a modem for my PDA for just such an occasion.) But the phone was broken and I finally had to ask the lady at the desk if I could use her computer to send an email. Of course, nothing is easy and it turned into a mess of rejected Paypal payments and I had to set up an email address for eBay to send my messages to so that my brother could retrieve them and complete the auction. Blast that infernal technology, anyway!

The weather cleared up at around 11am. It went from being rainy and snowy to bright and clear. I went for a walk down Highway Two to a place called "Walton Goat Lick". Here the mountain goats come and lick the minerals that seep out of exposed rock in the gorge. Goat lick is about a three mile walk from the inn. As I got closer, the sky started getting gray. But I'd walked too far to turn around now. Crossing a bridge right before the observation point lookout there was a group of four or five goats on the hill. They were too far away for photos, but I could see them through a pair of binoculars that I'd taken along. I think this was a better place to see goats than the "official" goat lick, but unless you’re walking you can’t really see it.

At the Goat Lick observation point there actually was a goat, and I took its photo. But even at maximum zoom it turned out to be a white point in the center of the frame. For the web site I cropped the photo so the goat would be visible.

Ever since I got to Goat Lick there had been a light snow off and on. I stayed under the roof in front of the pit toilets and waited about ten minutes for another goat to show up. But none did and the weather wasn't getting any better so I started back. It started snowing harder, and just as I was about to stick a thumb out a man stopped and gave me a lift to the road leading to the inn. I don’t know where he was from - he said he was renting a car - but he didn't have any problem driving though the snow at seventy miles per hour. I was glad when we stopped at my destination. When I got back to the inn, one of the employees said that they had all four seasons in one day. Morning rain, then snow, then clear, then snow again. Once I got back from my walk I sat in the lobby for about seven hours, with an occasional trip outside to watch trains and enough trips to the gift shop that I think I know their entire inventory.

You can visit the Izaak Walton Inn online at their web site, http://www.izaakwaltoninn.com.

Six-thirty came, and we all piled back in the red van. Just as I checked my inventory I realized that I wasn't wearing my jacket and had to run back in for it. It would be mighty cold in Denver without it. We got to the platform just as the train rolled in, right on schedule.

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