Polebridge, Montana

In a previous post Tara mentioned Fred and Judy Babb, who gave us a ton of information, about everything… everywhere. One of the things they told us about was Polebridge. Pole bridge is a small town (no idea the population, but it can’t be more than 100) about 45 minutes north of the West Glacier entrance to Glacier NP. The reason it’s 45 minutes is because the last 16 miles of the trip is on a dirt road. The dirt road has signs like “Slow down, people trying to breath”… and “Dust is a 4 letter word”… so speeding down this dirt road wasn’t really an option. We are now roughly 20 miles from Canada.

Now when Fred and Judy told us about Polebridge, all they said was “there’s a restaurant that has no electricity… it’s neat and you should check it out”. Tara and I were fully prepared for a slightly cheesy, candlelight/propane lantern dinner with expensive prices and “frontier decor”… we couldn’t have been more wrong in the right kind of way…

Polebridge’s downtown is essentially a dirt parking lot, with the Northern Lights Saloon, and Polebridge Mercantile… that’s it. We were planning to have dinner, or drinks, or whatever they offered, at the Northern Lights Saloon. Luckily for Tara, Friday night is wood-fired pizza night. We ordered two pizzas, bbq chicken, and chicken pesto… they were both incredible. Northern Lights was also pet friendly so there were a number of pups running around. Live music was being played by two men who… if not locals, should have been. They really knew the crowd and before Tara or I knew it… tables of people would just up and start dancing… it was like a Phish concert with no drugs, different music, but the same kind of dancing… you know the dancing where you think… “there’s no way they’ve ever done that in front of a mirror and thought… yup, that’s my move tonight”…

Murphy hung out under our picnic table and really wasn’t that impressed with the local pups. There were two dogs of specific note… there was the three legged coyote dog, who looked like a Husky, and a German Shepard had a 3 legged pup… shepard body with two white eyes… and three legs… kind of terrifying actually… then there was what I can only assume is the owner’s dog… and older bird dog who spent the entire night stalking the little birds that would land in the yard for pizza crumbs… although he stalked birds all night… he did not catch any.

That’s really it about Polebridge… little house with picnic tables in the front yard, pizza, live music, whiskey drinks in mason jars… Oh and the Mercantile… the Mercantile was great. It was a legitimate store for supplies. They had a little of everything… You want sour cream chips… sorry, this week we have three bags of bbq… that’s it. Tara was persuaded to purchase one of their famous Huckleberry Bear Paws… There were so many huckleberries that I told Tara I was no longer hiking with her in the morning… she smelled of huckleberries… a bear favorite… She survived… no bear attacks…