GRISWOLDDAD
Parenting, Entertainment, and Travel Tips
Things to Do in Montana
*For Montana's top yearly events, click here.
Ever see the movie City Slickers and want to have that experience yourself? Yes, minus the bullies with guns, the dying worldly wise cowboy, or being a cow's midwife... Well, the best ranch experiences are in Montana. They're not just in one city though, they're all over the state. So, here are some notables: Working Montana Ranches
Glacier National Park
Glacier National Park is a wilderness filled national park near the Canadian border. Nature at its most beautiful, the park has "pristine forests, alpine meadows, rugged mountains, and spectacular lakes." Popular points of interest, besides the amazing hiking, are Cracker Lake, Chief Mountain, Grinnell Glacier, Triple Divide Peak, Rogers Pass, Bird Woman Falls, the Illecillewaet Glacier, the Nakimu Caves, and the Two Medicine Lake. The locals of the park are grizzlies and lynx!
Little Bighorn
The Battle of Little Bighorn, or Custer's Last Stand, happened here. You can go on tours of the battlefield, see the cemetery, the Indian memorial and "Custer's Last Stand" monument. There's also a great documentary in the main building/gift shop that is worth viewing.
Red Lodge
"The most beautiful drive in America" runs through Red Lodge, it's called Beartooth Scenic Byway. After you leave Yellowstone on the Northeast entrance, this road follows the border of Wyoming and Montana for a while before turning up to Red Lodge. There are some extreme curves on this byway. Some, it seems you'll be able to see the back end of your own car as you go around them.
Oddly enough, we saw a 70 mile per hour speed limit near the top of the mountain range, in between 25 mile per hour curves. It isn't just that I wasn't sure why you'd go that fast there, it was also that I wasn't sure HOW you would and get back down to 25 for the curve.
As you are driving around, take a look at the mountain peaks nearby...there's one peak actually called Dog Turd Peak...seriously. The summit for Beartooth Scenic Byway at Beartooth Pass, which is 10,947 feet high, is snow covered in the summer!
Pollard Hotel, in Red Lodge, is a hotel restored to its heyday from the old west. In that heyday, people like Buffalo Bill and Calamity Jane stayed here, now you can! The Pollard, being so old, is naturally one of the "haunted hotels" in the West. This isn't something the staff plays up, though, and we didn't see anything haunted while there.
The staff DOES play up the fact that the entire town seems to be filled with the friendliest people ever. We had our twin boys with us, so they gave us to great quality moose stuffed animals with "Pollard" shirts! There's a guy that takes people up and down the streets of Red Lodge in a horse-covered wagon all night, every night throughout the summer for donations. Seriously, everyone we met went above and beyond on the friendly scale. My wife began looking at real estate and still dreams of moving to Red Lodge to this day.
Beartooth Scenic Byway
Dog Turd Peak
Beartooth Pass Summit
Pollard Hotel
Virginia City and Nevada City and Bannack!
These were both once booming mining towns in the old west, but are now Ghost towns and have been turned into open air museums. Since they haven't changed since the old west, both are good, preserved examples of what towns looked like back then.
Bannack is a ghost town…that is supposedly full of actual GHOSTS! It is supposed to be one of the most haunted places in the US.
West Yellowstone
While part of the Yellowstone Park is in Montana, this is not part of the park. Yes, it's confusing. I guess it just means it's west OF Yellowstone. Either way, this town has the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center. This is a wildlife and educational center where you can see and learn about grizzly bears, gray wolves, birds of prey, and other animals.
