Camping at Bozeman was a great idea but it meant that it would be a full day of driving get to Glacier. The usual discussion of taking the interstate was brought up. To which I was able to nix with a simple "nope". Once on the road we hit a road construction detour that pushed on to I-90 for 10 miles. After the detour we were back on the 2 lanes and it was a nice smooth easy drive. We stopped around Salmon Lake at around 12:00 to fuel up and decided to push on to the next town to get some lunch. The next town was Seeley, and they were gearing up for a four of July parade. Evan and I rolled in and our timing reminded me of the parade scene from Easy Rider. Since Evan is in the military, we decided that he must be Captain America. Which meant that I must be Wyatt. We both laughed and agreed that those roles seemed fitting but we needed different bikes. The restaurant that we chose was on the very end of town. What we didn't realize was that the parade started on the same side street. We discovered after lunch that the parade line up had pinned us in the parking lot. So we found a shady shot and watched the town's parade. It was pretty cool. Evan and I thought the coolest part of the parade was this kid on a mini bike in a monkey suit. It was just so funny-looking and random that we couldn't help laughing. We decided that our trip would be a lot more memorable if we had a monkey suit and took turns wearing it on our trip. I know it is weird, but if you can imagine how crazy it would look to see a guy in a monkey suit driving down the Alaskan Hwy on a Harley or a BMW, I think you'd laugh a little too.
Once the parade was over we continued up 83 to a town call Hungry Horse. It started raining and Glacier was only about 15 miles up the road so we stopped and got a Hotel. Rooms were $112 and the manager was this crabby old lady. We parked our bikes and struck up a conversation with a couple sitting out in front of the room next to ours. They were a family of three from Canada that had rode their Harley's down through Glacier to see the fireworks. I didn't catch their name, but they were a really nice couple with a really cute little boy. I thought it was funny that Canadians would come to a 4th of July celebration but he told me "Hell everybody likes fireworks". I guess he did have a point. The funny thing was I didn't really understand what he was saying until later. You see, the town of Hungry Horse didn't have professional/commercial firework display. What they had was a 4th of July free-for-all. It was the craziest thing I have ever seen. The idea was really simple, everybody in the whole town came to main street and shot off their fireworks. I know it sounds totally red neck, but it kind og made sense.
Everybody was kind of sharing their firework as a collective event. The fire and police departments were also there to keep an eye on everybody. Boy, they needed to do that. It look like a war zone. Most people were just having fun with bottle rockets and fire crackers, however, several groups have decided to act out the civil war or something by shooting at anything. In addition to the mini wars, there were a lot of rockets exploding at ground level or falling over and blowing off balls of fire into the crowd. There was a photo that I wanted to take of an old guy with a fake arm helping a 4 year old light a rocket, but I just couldn't do it. You have to respect some things. Evan and I decided Hungry Horse was a town where family, beer and explosives make the holiday. That is one 4th I will never forget!
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