Bad Rock Bed & Breakfast, set in a quiet spot west of Montana 206, offers a grand first impression with its landscaped grounds, log-and-river-rock main house, cabins and guest house.

It’s all set on 30 private acres with sweeping views of the Swan Range and the Flathead Valley.

But even though his establishment has all that a traveler can expect in classic Northwest Montana lodging, proprietor Mark Jackson has added to the charm with amenities that eliminate unplanned hassle and expense for visitors.

Jackson has stocked a closet full of bear spray and other hiking gear, which he lends freely so visitors don’t have to stuff their luggage full of hiking paraphernalia or purchase a $40 can of bear spray for a few days in Glacier Park.

The library in the main house has 1,300 books, including numerous local travel guides and books on CD for drives through the park. In each room there’s also a copy of the “Bad Rock Bible,” 70 pages of comprehensive information, recommendations, maps and driving instructions covering local attractions and activities.

Jackson built outdoor entrances to all of the rooms so visitors can come and go without traveling through the main house lobby — eliminating the principal problem Jackson says many men have with staying in bed-and-breakfast establishments.

“Most men feel like they’re disturbing people,” Jackson said. “Private entrances takes away any objection.”

Jackson and his wife, Serena, both from Tennessee, purchased the bed and breakfast in 2004. They both have science-career backgrounds, creating and selling three scientific instrument companies.

In their last positions, they worked with GE Healthcare designing and completing PET chemistry laboratories for cancer diagnostics and research.  Serena, who is not as involved in the day-to-day running of the bed and breakfast, works at Kalispell Regional Medical Center as a clinical laboratory scientist.

It had been a longheld dream for Mark Jackson to run a bed and breakfast.

When he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, his doctors told him he should no longer travel, something he did extensively during his science and health-care career, and needed rest time each day.

The bed and breakfast offered a perfect “retirement,” Jackson said, giving him four months of solid work and eight months off, though he spends many days in the off months on enjoyable carpentry and remodeling jobs. Jackson does the breakfast cooking and the maintenance during the summer, but he hires a staff to do his cleaning.

Jackson won’t lead any sessions at the upcoming Montana Bed and Breakfast Association state convention in Whitefish (see related story) but he is an active member and was on the board for a while after he first purchased Bad Rock. He believes strongly in the group and its mission.

For one thing, he said membership requires that a bed and breakfast be held to a higher standard than what the state requires.

Details such as offering reading lights on both sides of each bed and serving guests their breakfasts on real china or stoneware are included in the standards, he said. It’s the way state bed-and-

breakfast associations commonly operate, he said.

“If you book off any state association, you will get a high-quality stay,” he said.

The bed-and-breakfast community also focuses on cooperation rather than competition. Jackson said he has a reciprocal relationship with nearby Gentry River Ranch, for example, and they send overflow guests back and forth regularly.

Visitors typically find Bad Rock through its website, Trip Advisor or AAA. He said the inn is fully booked “from the day the [Going-To-The-Sun] road opens to the day it closes,” he said. With two million visitors traveling to the park each summer, he needs only a fraction of those visitors to fill up the rooms.

Bad Rock guests are largely retired or well-established professionals, he said. One morning he discovered that everyone was either a lawyer or a judge at a breakfast table of 10; none of them knew each other beforehand.  

“The man who bought my first lab robot was at one of my tables one morning,” he said.

He said that because few of the guests are robust outdoorspeople, he usually ends up steering them to the common hiking hot spots in Glacier Park — Avalanche Lake, Hidden Lake, St. Mary Falls.

The presence of bears in the park is adventure enough for some visitors, he said.

“There are people who are scared to death of going into that park” because of bears, he said. “Some won’t even get out of their cars.”

Business reporter Heidi Gaiser may be reached at 758-4439 or by email at hgaiser@dailyinterlake.com.