5 Days in Montana: A First-Timer’s Guide

Our trip to Montana was a bittersweet one–a breathtaking journey through wild and desolate lands, punctuated by melancholic ruminations of my dear little brother, whose funeral we held the night before.

This trip was truly an adventure because I had no idea what to expect from it. The mental image I had of Montana was that it was dry, barren, rocky, brown, and (for some reason) hot. And apart from the weather, this was true of most of it. It’s not the sort of place I’d probably ever have sought out on my own. But it had a strange beauty to it nevertheless.

It didn’t take long to see my first cowboy hat; there was one sitting right at the gate as we deplaned in Helena. The Helena airport, by the way, with its three small gates, is quite the reprieve from every other airport I’ve ever been to. It’s actually relaxing. Even when my Pre-Check number somehow didn’t print on my ticket, going through TSA was almost completely painless.

We immediately left Helena and started driving through the Rocky Mountains towards a surprise (for me) destination.

“Flat, Except Where It Isn’t”

Someone once said of Montana that it is “flat, except where it isn’t”. As a person who hails from a land of rolling hills, this rang very true for me. The terrain of Montana is diverse and accentuated. And as we made our way north on 15 towards Fort Benton, we saw extreme changes in our surroundings. From jagged mountains through amber waves of grain as far as the eye could see, through wind and snowy peaks, it was a massive grab bag.

We stopped at as many historical points along the way as we could find. “When will we ever be here again?” we kept saying. There were all kinds of factoids about things like the Baker Massacre and Lewis and Clark. I saw my first prairie dogs (so cute!), magpies, and tumbleweeds. And after hours of driving through vast farmlands and fretting about where and how the residents went shopping or enjoyed any kind of social life, we passed through Shelby, a town with a population of under 3,000 with the motto “Stop. Shop. Stay. Play”.

In Montana, or at least in these wide-open spaces, people are so few and far between that when you pass them on the road, they wave at you. So that was nice. I’m not used to that. I had fun getting my hand ready every time a car came near (they really zoom by, because speed limits don’t seem to matter) and waving at all the people.

We drove through Cascade, where my boyfriend lived a lonely three years in a basement near a missile silo. (I wanted to stop and take a picture for touristy purposes, but we thought it best not to alarm whichever government entities were surely watching.)

Fort Benton

My surprise was the pleasure of staying in an amazing 140-year-old hotel in Fort Benton.

We slept in the master suite, where you can bet I made use of that double clawfoot tub!

This place was beautiful; I can’t say enough good things about it.

Downstairs in the saloon, I enjoyed a tandoori-spiced buffalo filet with green chickpea puree (I think it had apple butter in it), gochuchang glaze, and I believe some za’atar or maybe sumac on the side, by Chef Benjamin Thorpe. I must remember that combination of flavors because I never would have thought to put such things together, and they were so good. The wine, a Kompassus Red Blend from 2017 in Bairrada, Portugal, was also wonderful. Since I still don’t know how to talk about wine well, I’ll use the description from the menu: “deep purple color with mature dark fruits and mild aromas of dried spices; well-balanced structure with firm tannins and a smooth, long finish”. Yummy.

I think there were maybe only three or four other guests there at the same time as us, so it easily could have been the scene of a ghostly horror film, too. And despite the comfortable bed and great pillows, I actually did wake up a couple of times in the middle of the night, having heard demonic murmurs and felt a presence nearby. But I determined that it was my boyfriend talking in his sleep.

Glacier National Park

When the snow-capped mountains of Glacier National Park appeared in the distance, I decided I had to get out of the car on the side of the road to take a picture, because when was I ever going to see that sight again?

My boyfriend insists that I should have been able to tell by the little wind flag thing how hard it was blowing. But until you’ve been in that Montana wind (or the wind in another place like it), there is simply no preparing you for the fact that a strong gust could potentially both knock you over and blow a camera out of your hands. I stood my ground–barely–but I learned my lesson about going outside in wind like that.

I was fascinated by the mountains of Glacier National because they reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of Switzerland (where I have not yet been). I told my boyfriend I couldn’t describe the way they made me feel–almost as if I wanted to cry but wasn’t sure why.

This was also the first place I saw snow on our trip. We watched the temperature drop about 20 degrees as we rode through and then rise about the same amount on the way back out.

Whitefish

We stayed at the nice and cozy Firebrand Hotel in Whitefish. The Firebrand was modern and lovely, and we had a great stay there. But I do have to wonder what it is about newfangled modern hotels and the lack of privacy in their restrooms. This is the giant gap in between the doors to ours:

…I just don’t understand the point of that.

For dinner, we went inside Casey’s in the hopes of trying the duck fingers on their menu, but they no longer had them available. I was also disappointed not to see elk burgers, moose burgers, or huckleberry pie on any of the menus in the area. I searched for them for the duration of our trip and never did get to try any of them. However, I had huckleberry in various other forms–several chocolates, a smoothie, a seltzer, and whiskey. So I felt like I got as good an experience with them as I could, considering they were not in season. And the elk chili I got from Casey’s was delicious.

We checked out a park, an art gallery, an antique store, and a used bookstore (with more chocolates in the back!). And in the morning we had some pretty amazing crepes. Mine had smoked wild pacific salmon, fresh spinach, and dill cheve sauce.

John Dunnigan

There was live music from John Dunnigan in our hotel bar that night, and I sat at the table to enjoy the performance until the end. He had a wonderful voice and made me laugh, and I loved his harmonica. He had great renditions of Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” and Billy Currington’s “Like My Dog”, neither of which I had ever heard before, but thoroughly enjoyed.

When John asked for requests, I thought about asking for “Take Me Home, Country Roads” in honor of my brother, who claimed it as his favorite song, but couldn’t bring myself to get out of my seat and do it. Since I don’t typically listen to country, I had never actually heard the song before. But when a few minutes later, John started singing about the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah River, I smiled, thinking of home, before realizing what song it was. Then I started bawling.

Due to my emotional experience and the enjoyment I took from John’s performance, I went up to meet him afterward and made his newest album my first souvenir of the trip. (Except, of course, for the exorbitantly-priced airport chocolates that I am still ashamed of.)

Whitefish was a pretty cool town and I’m glad I saw it, but there comes a point when every tourist town starts to feel like every other tourist town, so as a whole, I can’t say it was my favorite part of the trip.

Philipsburg

Philipsburg is basically a single strip that looks like a town from a western film, with a bunch of houses on the hill overlooking it. It has (as of this writing) a population of 937. I loved it–to visit, not to live, as my boyfriend did for three years. I’m a social butterfly; I could not stand to be so isolated. But it was really cool to see. My boyfriend and his friends only recognized one person in town, as it’s been several years now since they all lived there. “Even the geezers are new!” one of them said.

In or near Philipsburg–I’m not really sure which–we drove over Fred Burr Creek, where I noted that someone had taken a sticker with the letters “ic” on it and covered up the “ee” on the sign to read “Fred Burr Crick”. Back in town, we stopped in a brewery and found ourselves surrounded by more people than I thought would even fit in Philipsburg, dressed in fancy hats for the Kentucky Derby. I enjoyed the hats immensely.

That night, we stayed with two other couple friends in an AirBnB that looked way bigger on the inside than the outside. Our view overlooking the town was stunning. And still more friends had us over for drinks and snacks in their beautiful home, where I tried French whiskey for the first time (Brenne 12-year–I’ll have to pick up a bottle) and discovered that goat cheese and wasabi rice crackers are a fantastic combination.

At a gift shop in town, there were lots of gemstones for sale, and I told my boyfriend that when I was a kid, anytime I went to a museum with a gift shop, I had to bring home a colorful rock of some sort. Years later, it turns out, that fascination has not left me, because I brought home a perfectly palm-sized, polished piece of labradorite that appears to glow blue at certain angles and reminds me of something out of Labyrinth. I had to have it. The girl at the counter commented that mine seemed to have more blue in it than most of the ones she sees, which I had noticed, as well. All the “glowing” bits are blue except for one tiny rainbow spot.

Some miles from Philipsburg, after driving through some snow, I saw a bald eagle fishing on a frozen lake. But I completely missed the bear that someone else saw on the side of the road.

As I write this, I am ruing the fact that we somehow forgot to go inside Philipsburg’s famous old-fashioned candy store! I only just realized it. We discussed it before the trip and I was looking forward to finding horehound and some possible new (to me) treats.

Homesteader Houses

All throughout Montana, the landscape is dotted with ruined homesteader houses from the original settlers. These houses are still standing because the air is so dry they do not rot. They are eerie and fascinating; I couldn’t get enough of them. They reminded me of the frozen corpses you hear about that line Mount Everest–haunting remnants of the past and the people who came before.

Hilariously, my memory decided to crap out on the name “Everest” for about 15 minutes until I finally gave up and begged my boyfriend to tell me the name of it. The corpses, it turns out, do not sit atop Mount Rushmore, as my memory initially informed me. Nor do they rest on Niagara, Pikes Peak, or the Serengeti, as it tried to persuade me after I dismissed Rushmore. But no matter how hard I pushed, I could not seem to get past whatever mental block stood between Everest and me. I suppose it’s a common problem.

The Berkeley Pit

We drove through Butte to see the historic downtown and decided to check out the Berkeley Pit while we were at it–what Montanans call “the inverted mountain”. The Berkeley Pit is a former copper mine filled with toxic liquid that kills the birds that land in it. It’s oddly pretty. We were having fun reading reviews on Google, where it had an average four-star rating on the day of our visit. Here were some of my favorites:

The Pit was closed that day, so we could only walk up as far as the fence, on a fairly steep hill. Fun fact about me is that even though I grew up running around on hills everywhere, after so long in Florida, I started having recurring nightmares about being stuck on hills and not knowing how to climb up or down them. I no longer know how to do it. So I paused briefly on the way up, foreseeing a problem, but decided I would deal with it on the way back down. I had to see the Pit, after all. And, logically, there must be some way to get back down.

As soon as we turned around to walk back down the hill, I had a mild panic attack. The boys were already back down the hill and nearly to the car, and I hadn’t moved a step. I was just frozen stiff in the falling snow, unsure of what to do. I started to whimper. Our friend, who had apparently glanced behind him and noticed I wasn’t there, took in my dilemma and chuckled but talked me through it. It was just one step after another, he pointed out.

I didn’t want to ruin my pants by scooting through the snow and mud as instinct was urging. So I settled instead for dirtying only my hands by lowering myself down and crouch-walking to the bottom. “This is what 23 years of living in Florida will do to a person!” I explained.

Speaking of toxic pits, I have to talk about the public restrooms throughout Montana. At what seemed to be the majority of rest stops in the state, the restroom was nothing more than a hole in the ground surrounded by four walls. I did not use one. I did not even set foot inside one. I just did not need to know. No, thank you. I’m good.

I did hear lots of stories from locals about people dropping their phones into them, and even this terrible tale of a woman who fell into one after dropping her phone into it, mere days before our arrival in the state.

The Farm

We went to visit some of our friends on their farm. It started to snow on our way there, and then it started to stick. So I got to run around and play in it like I did as a kid, stomping around in the white fluff, catching snowflakes on my tongue, and picking them off my coat and squashing them between my fingers. Not only that, but I got to do it with cute animals! There were dogs and chickens and horses and–our favorites–some adorable, friendly goats, one of which seemed to like me best, and one of which liked my boyfriend best. We each got a goat to follow us around.

There were some silly sheep, too–four of them who were all feral and wouldn’t come near us. Apparently the first two they got were super friendly, but they got two more, one of which was feral, and that one turned all the others. So now they run around together and stare evilly at everyone from a distance like Stephen King children. They just watch and plot like a bunch of psychos.

Those goats were great, though. The one following me around was walking downhill (a much less steep one than at the Berkeley Pit) alongside me. I would stop and it would stop with me to be petted, and then I would say, “Come on” and we would continue walking. I wanted to hang out with my new goat friend all day and steal him away home with me, but it was not to be. We were off to Helena, with one quick stop at a stable on the way to feed some horses.

Helena

In Helena, one of our friends drove us around to show us his favorite historic homes in the area. This is one of our favorite things to do, so we were delighted to drive through the neighborhoods high on the hill during a beautiful sunset, taking in all the artful Victorians.

The next morning, we stopped inside the Cathedral of Saint Helena.

Then our friends gave us a tour of the State Capitol building, which was designed to look like a train station inside.

As you can see, both buildings were absolutely gorgeous.

At a restaurant called Jackson Creek, I tried the JC Burger, which was far and away the best bison burger I have ever had (not that I’ve had many, mind you).

I liked Helena; it felt the most like civilization to me. Though with a population of under 33,000, it was still much smaller than it felt by comparison to every other place we saw.

In Conclusion

As stated above, I probably would not have chosen to go to Montana on my own. Country/western has never been my aesthetic, and I like my lush, rolling greenery. But this gigantic, underpopulated state of friendly people is not to be dismissed. There are so many unbelievable and vastly different vistas to behold. There’s a lot of history and some amazing old towns. While I could never live there–too isolated, too many terrifying dirt roads on cliffs, too high a ratio of holes in the ground to actual plumbing–I’m really glad I got to go. And I was so fortunate to have an expert guide who was knowledgeable of not only the touristy spots, but also the secret and hidden gems, to show me around.

More Roadside Views

We spent a lot of hours in the car, and most of my photos were taken through the window. Here are just a few.