Hiking the Rocky Mountain Front in Montana + our first time fly fishing!

After spending time exploring Glacier National Park, we made it to the Rocky Mountain Front, an area near central Montana where the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains meet the plains. It's a place that we had never heard of before until about a month ago when we got a comment from one of our subscribers named Aaron inviting us to the area. With the promise of less crowds, epic hikes, and the chance to learn how to fly fish, we were sold. So after back and forth messages and coordination, we drove the three hours from Glacier to meet up with Aaron and her husband Dan to see what this part of the state is all about. Before we start this adventure, we want to make it very clear that safety is our number one priority, and before meeting up with Dan and Aaron, we chatted with them about COVID to find out the precautions they had been taking and just to make sure we all felt comfortable about meeting up. We have been really cautious about being around people, especially like in close proximity, and we've only seen a handful of people since March. In this vlog, you'll notice that we weren't wearing our buffs or our mask when we were in the outdoors, but we feel really confident in what they have done to stay safe, and we feel really confident in the measures that we have taken as well. However, we did take all of our usual precautions when all together, including wearing facial coverings when passing strangers on hikes and grabbing takeout. We really want to set a good example of how to travel safely during COVID, and whenever we're not completely isolated in our van, which is where we're spending most of our time these days, we always wear masks around strangers, keep our distance, and wash and sanitize our hands as much as we can. We're really excited to share this adventure with you guys, so let's get started. Good morning guys, it's 5 30 a.m. and we are about to meet our friends Dan and Aaron for our first activity of the day, a hike to Headquarters Pass. We'll share a bit more about the hike in a bit, but first we wanted to give you guys a better idea of where we are. We've spent the last few days in this area of Montana near Glacier National Park, and we drove all the way down here to meet up with Aaron and Dan to drive into the Rocky Mountain Front where we'll be doing our hike. All right, let's hit the trail. There it goes. So we've met up with Dan and Aaron, our wonderful guides for the day. They're awesome, we're so excited. All right, so as we mentioned earlier, we're hiking to Headquarters Pass. It's about six miles round trip, and we think two thousand something feet of elevation gain, and just from the drive in, holy crap, it is beautiful out here. We haven't seen a single person yet or another car driving. We've been told it's a little bit less busy out here compared to Glacier, maybe a lot less busy, so we know we're gonna love it. We've just entered the Bob Marshall Wilderness, which by the locals they call it the Bob, and it's actually the fifth largest wilderness in the lower 48. We also read that it has like one of the highest percentages of grizzly bears outside of Alaska. That's kind of scary. All right, so I think we're about two and a half miles in. So far it's been amazing. It's been kind of uphill the whole way, but not bad at all. Even with talking the whole time, the scenery's just been incredible. There's mountains all around. There's these like cool little cave things in that one mountain. I don't know what they are, but they're beautiful. I think we forgot to mention earlier that we're hiking to the saddle of the highest peak in the Rocky Mountain Front, and I've been told pretty soon we're gonna have a really cool view. So that is Rocky Mountain. That's the tallest mountain in the Rocky Mountain Front. We're gonna be going somewhere up in there, you guys say? Yep, around this swoopy thing. We're gonna go around and up. Awesome. It's a ridge. Ridge. I personally like swoopy thing better, but it's a ridge. This hike is absolutely beautiful. Loving it. It's a nice cool summer day. Apparently it's abnormal for this time of year, obviously, for summer. So we're absolutely loving it being a little cloudy, a little cool instead of 90 plus, full sun. So perfect day. When you watch our videos, if you see a lot of flower shots and panning shots of flowers, it's usually always me taking pictures and photos of them for whatever reason. I just think they're beautiful, especially when they're in full bloom. And so we were talking about it, and Aaron had a little pamphlet of a lot of wildflowers in the Rocky Mountains. So we were trying to compare and find the names of all these. It's just fun to learn about the stuff of where you're at, the animals, the flowers, all that stuff. We think these are gentians. Gentians. Really beautiful. Now we're getting really close to the end of the trail to the saddle of the mountain. It's just up the hill up here. This hike has been incredible. Really beautiful scenery the entire time. Loving it. Wow. This is awesome. Right there. Rocky Mountain. Beautiful. For windy and blast us, but not yet. It's a little breezy, but it feels really nice because we're a little warm from hiking up. We're headed down from the saddle, the top of the trail here. But man, this hike is just incredible the entire time. It's been so incredible. We've seen a few more people now, but still nowhere near the crowds of glacier. Yeah. Or like a normal hike or trail. So it's been perfect. It's been absolutely beautiful. Got a little cold and windy at the top, but it feels really good now. It's like the perfect hiking day. The sun's not out. It's pretty exposed, so it'd be pretty warm if the sun was. But yeah, solid choice, Dan and Aaron. Finished the hike. We've made it back to the van, but man, it's been a lot of fun just hanging out with locals, kind of showing us kind of what their favorite things are to do. We would have never thought to come to this hike. I mean, maybe if we had come through and spent a lot of time here, we'd get to it eventually, but it's just really fun to see the highlights of what people really like to do in their areas. So heading back out and it's about an eight or nine mile drive on a gravel road to get out here. So it's kind of a trek, but we're headed back out. We're going to go get some coffee and then go get something to eat because we are hungry. We have re-caffeinated. We've fueled up on delicious burgers, fries, and tater tots. And next up, we are going to try to learn how to fly fish. The key word is try. Before we actually try fly fishing, Dan is teaching us how to cast a fly rod. Thanks, Dan. So the three components we learned about the fly rod is this float line that's green. So it's pretty strong. And I guess you said it's green so you can see it easier. And then you tie another line on here called the leader, which as you progressively get towards the end, it gets thinner and thinner. Okay. Over here. And then it goes and goes and goes. And then the tippet is when you get towards the end of the line. And then there's your fly right there at the end. So Dan makes all of his own flies and they are so freaking cool. This one's an ant. This is a grasshopper. This is a pink pookie. That's my favorite one. And then this one is a fat Albert. Fat Albert, pink pookie. So I'm practicing false casting to learn how to do a true casting. And you're pretending to draw a straight line on a white board ahead of you. Yeah. Okay. It's not too bad. Not bad. Not bad, he said. We got a not bad over here for Adam. I haven't tried yet. I'm probably gonna get a huh. That's a different way to do it. So pretend that whiteboard's right in front of you. You always want to hold this right here to keep it kind of tight. Okay. So the straighter I can keep that line on your imaginary whiteboard or chalkboard. Okay. The straighter that line's gonna be in front of you. There you go. Whiteboard, whiteboard. I like this. This is good. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I got a little cocky there. You had about three that were just perfect. That's good. I got an oh that's good. You got a nice little tight loop in there. I don't know what that means, but I'll take it. All right, let's hit the water and catch some fish. We made it out to Nylon Reservoir. This is where we're gonna cast our fly rod. Get all of our fish. Catch all the fish in here. But the views. Look out over there. So many mountains. It's a beautiful spot. Oh yeah. Even if we don't catch fish, this will be enjoyable just because of the view. Here we go. So far, fly fishing is a ton of fun. Requires a lot of patience, but it's very relaxing. I just, I don't know if I'm doing it right, but I'm really enjoying just flinging it and throwing it and seeing if I get any fish. I learned a new cast. So typically you're the first one he showed us. You're, I guess like forehanding. Another one, you're flicking out with the backhand. Casting out backhand. So we're on this peninsula type deal and the water drops off on both sides. So now that I have both cast here, or two different type of cast, I can go that way a couple times, try it out, and I can flick that way. All right. I've always wanted to fish and especially fly fish, but I didn't even really know what fly fishing meant. So I'm really thankful that we came and met up with Dan and Erin. They could show us and because I feel like it's something you definitely need a guide for or someone to definitely show you how. And share their equipment. And share their equipment so you can give it a shot. So it's been awesome so far. Not too optimistic, but I'm going to keep giving it a shot for a while longer here and try to walk out with fish. Update. We have not caught any fish. It's getting really windy. We got like legit waves happening on this reservoir right now. There's some clouds moving in. So I think we may call it. Did you have fun even though? Yeah, I had a blast. I was really hopeful, but you know, conditions I guess maybe weren't right or whatever. But it was a lot of fun. Dan was saying that the water's warm and when it's warm they go deeper to get colder water. So we're gonna blame it on that. Not on our lack of skills. I think we did pretty good for our first time. I think I was getting the hang of it because I was getting pretty good distance. Maybe it might not have been landing very well because you want to land like nice and soft. But I think I was getting pretty good distance and it was getting out there. But I definitely want to try again. We'll get them next time. Something we forgot to mention is that we had to get permits to be able to fish here in Montana. I think they were 40 something apiece for non-residents. So make sure you do that if you want to fish here. It's definitely cheaper if you are resident. So it's kind of an expensive activity, but it was so fun to just be able to say we finally have gotten to do this. A huge thank you to Dan and Aaron for showing us around their area of Montana today. Taking us for a hike. Teaching us how to fly fish. Being patient with us. We weren't successful, but it was still an absolute blast. And they are honestly some of the nicest people we've ever met in our entire lives. And we're just so thankful for the chance to hang out with them and see this area of Montana that we very likely would not have stopped in or known anything about had they not reached out to us. So it was incredible. Yeah but we are pooped. We're gonna head to bed, but we'll be coming back at you tomorrow with a really cute fun adventure. We don't really vlog in front of people very often, so we're like super awkward. I'm sorry. Get to see how the sausage is made. Is that the the term? My favorite spin we ever did was in Hawaii at the Volcano National Park and my parents were like jogging behind us like trying to get out of it. It was super cute. You can see her dad like... There is no try, there is only do.