ESSEX, Mont — My son Cooper has been a train buff as long as he can remember. He shoots videos for his YouTube channel Tacoma Narrows Rail Productions.
During Spring Break, in the first week of April, we went on a 17-hundred mile railfanning excursion.
We caught trains creeping along on sky-high trestles in Montana, crossing bridges over an ice-cold lake in Idaho and blowing through old farming communities at top speed in Eastern Washington.
“You get a whole lot of variety with trains,” Cooper said. “Different locomotives, different types of trains, and it's cool just seeing what comes towards you”.
We saw a lot of snow coming towards as we arrived at the Izaak Walton Inn in Essex Montana, just outside Glacier National Park. It’s a mecca for railfanners, even during record winters.
The Great Northern Railway built the inn in the 1930s to house the dozens of men who kept the country's northernmost transcontinental railroad open during Rocky Mountain winters.
The Izaak Walton Inn made for a perfect father and son adventure
Photographs of avalanche slides and derailments cover the walls on the bottom floor of the inn, which was purchased in 2006 by Brian Kelly.
“We have done a lot of renovations and upgrades,” he said. “But we wanted to keep the charm and the nostalgic feel that the Izaak Walton has”.
Best of all, we stayed in one of the cabooses overlooking the tracks and the inn. Each one comes with a kitchen, and Cooper even got his own loft with a bed and a window to spot trains.
Cooper's review? “Our room is awesome.”
During the winter, the Izaak Walton Inn hosts a lot of cross country skiers, but summertime is peak season.
It can take 13 hours to drive to the inn from Seattle. But Kelly suggests taking Amtrak, “Going by rail is very easy because you can literally get on in Seattle and be dropped off at our door.”
It was a father-son road trip that made a lot of memories, we will never forget our stay at the Izaak Walton Inn.
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