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Position: 45°40’46.5″N 111°02’34.9″W
With the generous help of our friends Diane and Mark we spent the past month in West Seattle dog-sitting for Gus, and, at their insistence, exploring Bozeman, Montana. They sweetened the deal by letting us use their lovely houses in both places.
My history with Montana is limited. I passed through it when I was 13 on Amtrak’s Empire Builder. Over the next 40 years I did a couple more crossings by car while visiting family and national parks. Unlike Carol, I had never set foot in Bozeman until this year. It’s a cool place, figuratively and literally. It is where Mark grew up, and we felt like we should treat it with respect. Respect in the guise of doing as much as we could during the day and unwinding at night.
Montana’s is an outdoor culture. If you’re not working outdoors wrangling steers or sowing wheat, then you should be hiking, skiing, or riding horses. A skosh over a million people live there. That’s about eight people per square mile, or the 48th least densely populated state in the union.
You might wonder, then, given how few people live there, why is real estate so danged expensive? I asked AI to clarify. It told me inbound migration, particularly from costly places like California and western Washington, comes top of the list. Then, like dominoes, things fall into place. Lots of people with deep pockets move into an area with limited housing stock and high construction costs and, well the ol’ supply/demand curve ends up working against folks of more modest means. Essentials like petrol and beer are downright cheap compared with Portland or Seattle, but rents are high and that pushes young folks to look elsewhere.
Environs
The headwaters of the Missouri River form at the confluence of the Madison and Jefferson Rivers about 30 miles outside of Bozeman. Regardless of how excited you are about geography, imagine this: without the Missouri River carrying Lewis and Clark almost as far as the Continental Divide, America might not have stretched from sea to shining sea. Thomas Jefferson understood the British, via the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fur trading business, had established an economic foothold in the Pacific Northwest. Plausibly, the British might have leaned in and claimed the Oregon Territories for the Crown. Lewis and Clark’s survey confirmed the boundless natural resources of the region and galvanised political interest in making and keeping it part of the newly United States. As you recall, the signing of the Oregon Treaty in 1846 resolved the conflict.
Ten miles south of the headwaters, along a dirt road, is Madison Buffalo Jump State Park. Here indigenous hunters drove bison over a cliff. As an alternative to puncturing the beasts with spears or arrows, gravity proved much more efficient at providing dinner. Unfortunately, Montana’s state parks demand cash payments and we were out of cash. Weather courses through this low, dun and softly rounded valley. The wind kicked up dust and rippled the shallow waters of the Madison River. At Trapper Springs campground we boldly hiked into the teeth of 40 knot gusts and slashing rain. For almost a half mile. Then we turned around and skipped back to the car before we got soaked through.
Bozeman
Bozeman’s proximity to some of America’s most beautiful natural areas has helped establish it as a tourist destination over the past 200 years. Like a lot of western cities you can see the stepping stones of growth in its architecture. Many houses and notable buildings survive from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Anchored firmly in late Victorian gothic is the Holy Rosary Catholic Church, completed in 1908. Head east a half block and squint a bit at the Wells Fargo bank on the corner of Main and Grand and you’ll see echoes of Mies van der Rohe’s Chicago modern. Head east and you’ll bump into the Willson School, actor Gary Cooper’s alma mater. Formerly the Gallatin County High School, Fred F. Willson, a local architect, gave the original building an art deco makeover in 1936. Fred had a thing for art deco, and he designed a couple dozen government and commercial buildings that give downtown Bozeman an unexpected and welcome break from layer on layer of functional brick. Modern tract homes sit a couple of miles from the city centre, helping preserve its last century charms.
Recent immigration has refashioned shopping along Main Street. Signs of Californication are everywhere: from Athleta to Lululemon. Elsewhere, fibre-optic cables crank Internet service speeds up to 11. But this is also a university town and there are plenty of bike, hike, ski and hunting stores to serve the needs of anyone wanting to explore the great outdoors.
Bridger Bowl
An alliterative thirty minutes’ drive from downtown Bozeman is the Bridger Bowl ski area. Once there, you arrive at something vanishingly rare in America: a non-profit ski area. Opened in January 1955 and situated at the foot of the Bridger Range, Bridger Bowl gives you the chance to ski ‘cold smoke powder’ first thing in the morning and be back at your desk by lunchtime.
Whatever your abilities, Bridger Bowl has something for you. From near-vertical couloirs to leisurely green runs, it’s all there for $82 a day. Prices harken back to the days before season tickets started driving the industry’s business model at the expense of day trippers. For comparison, nearby mega-resort Big Sky, indisputably one of the world’s great ski areas, charges $275 for a day’s lift ticket, before taxes. That makes a $1,329 IKON season pass easy to justify, but a day’s outing hard to swallow.
Bridger Bowl is more humane. Car parks are all within a short walk of the lower lifts. Look up at the summit and you can spot lines of skiers hiking from Schlasman’s lift to one of a dozen drop offs along the face of the mountain. If you’re going all the way up to the top, be sure to take your avalanche transceiver beacon. It is required. We didn’t attempt it but instead skied the soft stuff in the glades over to the right of the mountain. Several cafeterias dot the slopes, giving it a European feel. Kids here grow up skiing. From the chairlifts you can admire the locals’ skills as they dart through the trees or do back-flips off makeshift jumps.
We skied Bridger twice. Once after four inches of new snow had fallen and a second time when twelve inches unexpectedly fell overnight a couple of days later. There is something nice about waking up and looking out of the window at a fresh blanket of white muffling the city knowing you can be on the slopes in half an hour.
Nerding Out
All that fresh air might be good for you, but there’s nothing like a computer museum to get your blood flowing. Bozeman has one of the finest. The American Computer and Robotics Museum traces the history of modern computing from Ada Lovelace through to the iMac. Sitting in pride of place is an Apollo Guidance Computer that my late Uncle Hugh helped develop while working at MIT’s Draper labs. The Apollo section included a copy of Eldon Hall’s report on MIT’s involvement in with the Apollo missions. My uncle referenced it in his excellent book, “Left Brains for the Right Stuff“, indicating the report was factual, technical and lacking in the human element. A hole he plugged with his story. At the end of our tour, I mentioned his book to the docent. He took the details in anticipation of including it in the gift shop later in the year. Even Carol, somewhat unexpectedly, enjoyed our visit.
Drinks… and Dinner
Beer and college go together like ping and pong or keg and stand. With a largely captive audience, breweries in Bozeman have thrived. During our 10-day stint we walked to as many of them as we could. For our first après ski hour we popped into Bozeman Brewing, the city’s O.G. craft brewer. Founded in 2001, the ‘Bozone’ (sic) took over an empty warehouse down by the railroad tracks. One long bar stretches across the first floor with the warmth of a traditional pub. It was Pi Day and jammed. After ordering an excellent Hopzone IPA and a Haze Trip Hazy we pulled up our European undershorts and asked if we could share the six-top with the two guys sat there. Of course we could.
A bottle cap’s throw from the Bozone is Mountain’s Walking brewing and its New Hokkaido sub-brand. In addition to quaffable beer, this place has first-rate pizzas and snacks. Over by the university Bridger Brewing does great trade and rightly so. Given our imperative to experience as much as possible, we also tasted microbrews from nearby Livingstone, MT, during our trip to Yellowstone (q.v.). In the same way Grunge rescued rock and roll, the American craft brewing revolution rescued beer from the industrial cesspit that threatened to drown the industry[1]. Suffice it to say, there is no crap beer in Bozeman.
But! I hear you cry! But what about dining out? I am glad you asked. You will not be disappointed.
Shan
Aided and abetted by Diane and Mark we sampled two outstanding eateries. The first was Shan, a northern Thai / southwestern Chinese Asian fusion restaurant. It was both authentic and packed. Its authenticity was validated by us and our joint decades working and eating in Asia. The restaurant’s design is simple. More western than far eastern with pale green walls and varnished wood, complemented with large Pariwat-style collages of Thai city scenes. Sitting at the bar counter gave us the chance to chat with our server about our adventures and travels across Asia. He had never been, but offered to drag the owner over so we could compare notes.
Jarrett Wrisley, was born with an innate desire to see the world. After college he took off and wound up traveling and teaching in China for several years. A stint as a freelance food journalist brought him face to face with his life’s calling. He learned to cook, and with his wife established several restaurants in Bangkok and Hong Kong. None of which survived the pandemic. Battered by the experience they didn’t know what they were going to do next and returned to the United States. But Jarrett stayed true to his passion for cooking and the camaraderie it brings. Before long he and his wife opened Shan, won a James Beard award, and were back in business.
Little Star
Dinner at Little Star Diner was equally delicious and distinctive. Compact and busy, the décor is brightly modern with a garage door opening onto an al fresco patio in warmer weather. Again, sitting at the bar counter, we observed all the goings-on in the kitchen. The chefs were friendly and in their moments of downtime willingly answered our questions about the menu. Ravioli for me and mushroom pasta for Carol and it was delicious. Serving only organic wines, an off-menu taste of their only Georgian wine transported us immediately back to Tbilisi. In the end we opted for a bottle of Wabi-Sabi White from California. It paired our dinner choices perfectly.
…AND I WILL HAVE A PICKUP TRUCK
If you have the opportunity to visit Bozeman you should. And if you’re anywhere within 300 miles of it, take a detour and check it out. Stay someplace near the centre of town like the Lewis and Clark Motel or the Hotel Baxter. From there everything from coffee shops, hikes along the river, and great restaurants are within walking distance. With an endless supply of youthful energy courtesy of the university and all the weather you could ask for, it’s kind of perfect. If only we had had a dog with us…
[1] Grunge rock and beer are examples of “Americans eventually doing the right thing when every alternative has been exhausted.” Such innovation helps maintain my sense of optimism for the country’s future.
Another great virtual tour. Thank you!
Thanks Jenny! You are too kind!