As I mentioned in an earlier post, Jess and I are going on a week long road trip. He mentioned a couple of months ago that he’s interested in seeing “Big Sky Country.” I’ve never been to Glacier National Park so we thought that would be a good place to start. From there we will have an adventure-in-driving and go where the road takes us. Jess and I had a great time driving together on our road trip in Germany last year and I’m looking forward to this one.
We started Sunday, getting up too early to fly to Kalispell. There we rented a car for the trip. We had the afternoon to kill and we found a really interesting mansion to tour.
Charles Conrad was one of those rags-to-riches tycoons, who eventually decided to build a mansion in Kalispell. The history of the mansion is given on the Conrad Mansion Museum web site. I wasn’t able to take many photos, but here is one I took before I was told not to.
As wanna-be woodworker, I was fascinated to see the woodwork in the house. Our tour guide explained that they did not have to touch it when the house was restored. It was finished with varnish and 7 hand-rubbed coats of beeswax, and it still looks as good now as it did 121 years ago!
And a couple that I copied from the museum web site:
Although the mansion stood unoccupied and neglected for many years, it is amazing that most of the artifacts in the museum are original to the mansion and the Conrad family. That’s one reason that the mansion is so interesting. It might be explained by the fact that Alicia Conrad, the daughter who eventually owned the mansion and gifted to the city, lived on the grounds in a trailer and had become a hoarder. I speculate that the good artifacts were probably buried among the trash in the house and rediscovered when it was restored.
Sweetie Pie the cat is the only permanent resident of the mansion. You can see her story and more photos at The Conrad Cat.
