Most of Montana's small towns are overlooked by travelers rushing to Yellowstone and the state's other Great Outdoors attractions. Lying right at the edge of the Flathead Valley, with Glacier National Park in the background, Whitefish is one small town that is worth stopping by.
If you're heading elsewhere in Montanta for Labor Day, the weather should be just about perfect this time of year to check out this quaint little valley town for a day. And why not? You've got that extra day. Here's what the Whitefish tourist board has to say about the place:
Ask about any Canadian in Southern Alberta and you'll get some kind of story about their adventure in Whitefish.
OK, not sure exactly what that means, but apparently Whitefish has become Montana's Tijuana. Count us in!
The powder paradise of Bridger Bowl Ski Area is but a twenty-minute drive from Bozeman, Montana. Even better, the town's nearest airport, Gallatin Field Airport, is just eight miles away.
Bridger's average annual snowfall of 350 inches buries the area's 71 trails, which are split pretty evenly between beginner, intermediate, advanced and extreme. If you feel like flexing that health insurance, hit up the extreme trails' 8,700-foot elevation, steep chutes and rocky cliffs. Or, if you enjoy skiing on trails that don't require the use of an avalanche transceiver, take one of Bridger's seven lifts to the area's less daunting pistes.
While Bridger can help guests find lodging, it's not the traditional resort. It's a non-profit mountain, so lift tickets are a reasonable $43 for a full day. You can also get in on some package deals. The PowderHound Package includes four days of skiing and four nights at one of the area's vacation rental homes for the price of three.
Urgh, how can we even think about traveling at a time like this? We've barely made it back to where we belong, but our need for celebrating goes unsated, and since travel's what we do, follow along on the Fall Festivals Map.
Nostalgic for the eras or latitudes where winter begins on Halloween and lasts until May Day? Hie thee to Bozeman, Montana for this weekend's Bozeman Ice Festival.
Kick off the ice climbing season (we bet you never knew there was a season) with demonstrations, master classes and, on Saturday, the Grivel North American Ice Breaker Climbing Competition. Compete for a $3,000 purse by climbing as many routes as possible, or attend an open climb to get some pointers from the pros.
Just promise us you won't forget to pack in layers--polypro or fleece, never cotton. And hand and toe warmers wouldn't be a bad investment either.
Contribute your R2D2 mailbox locations by uploading your photo, with mailbox address to the Jaunted Flickr Photo Pool, or sending us the photo and street address via email.
Jaunted tipsters in Montana spotted an R2-D2 mailbox, pulled over, shot it, and sent it.
We were just driving by Montana's University in the city of Missoula & we saw the R2-D2 mailbox.
Please take this online promotion to the next level. When we read on your tourism website that we could send a personalized message from the governor to any of our friends, our hearts jumped. We thought it was going to be like those Snakes on a Plane and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter promotions, where you could order up personalized calls from Samuel L. Jackson and Fabio, respectively. We would have loved nothing more than to surprise our hard-core urbanite friends with a cheesy greeting from the governor of the Treasure State. You could have even taken it to the next level and had the governor and his family do some singing and dancing. But this letter is a cop-out and no treasure at all. Please consult us next time you plan your digital marketing, and you could have a hit on your hands.
If you've ever driven cross-country and are a coffee aficionado, forget it. You will get midway and begin to see that coffee found on the road tends to be everything from weak to sour to too bitter to sludgy.
Next time, make sure you hit up Missoula, MT, home to U of Montana and also filled with coffee 'huts'. Apparently, these folks haven't yet sold out to Peet's, Starbucks or Au Bon Pain. They are still true individualists:
a gaggle of cheerful, idiosyncratic, free-standing coffee huts. We found them on side streets, in mall parking lots, next to gas stations and grocery stores. They had distinct personalities and funny names -- our local favorite was the Grizzly Bean, though on the road we were charmed by Pony Expresso. Some had been creatively converted from old rail cars or trailers, and they were decorated for Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas
No one there thinks anything of them, except they've got awesome, inexpensive coffee and are roadside convenient with a whole lot more character than your average barista.
Just imagine Kevin Costner, David Letterman, Meg Ryan and you....sharing the same open spaces in Big Sky country, a.k.a. Montana, the Treasure State. They have all caught on and own homes there. We bet after you check it out, you'll want one too. This week's Daily Candy travel heads to Montana and can't seem to get over the "thousands and thousands (and thousands) of acres of it."
From Pony (year-round population 75) to Bozeman Montana has tons of space and activities (fly fishing) and food (white huckleberry bark candy anyone?) to offer. Meg will have to wave to you when she passes you on that lone two-lane road.
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by BS
