Montana notes
Some thoughts after living here for two months
Welcome to Big Sky Country
Everywhere you look you witness the excellence of Mother Nature. You're surrounded by jaw-dropping valleys that sew the long sweeping plains together as far as the eye can see. The landscape gives the appearance that the sky is well… bigger.
For those who don’t know, my girlfriend Annie and I (and our two cats) are spending a year nomading around the US, staying in Airbnbs in different locations for one to two months at a time. Here you can find a map of the entire route for 2022 and 2023.
I’ll start by stating something fairly obvious: Montana is massive. If you go to Google Maps and pull it up, you will see just how large it is. It's truly wild here, and there are very few people—but there's an overwhelming sense of freedom that you feel and it’s unlike anywhere else I’ve been. Because Montana is so vast, everything you want to do is far apart, and so there's no other option other than driving. Uber and Lyft just aren't really things here.
Montana feels like a more rugged version of Oregon (where we’re originally from) but without the comforts and amenities we’ve gotten used to. Depending on the state of your life, Montana may strike you as a place that provides a deep sense of peace, or it may give you feelings of loneliness given how far away you are from everyone.
Our Airbnb was in a majestic valley outside of a little town called Anaconda. The valley itself was like something out of a movie reminding you of old untarnished America during the 1700s. Anaconda was a mining town and has the largest smoke stack in the US, which is the tallest surviving masonry structure in the world. It stands at 585 feet and the Washington Monument could fit inside of it.
Our “driveway” was a gravel road, and it took two miles to get to our place. We had solar panels for energy and Starlink for internet which ended up being quite fast. Our living space was a quasi-garage-turned-apartment unit. We lived right down the road from our Airbnb hosts, Danielle and Charles, who were about our age and recently purchased this 20 acre lot about a year ago. Like us they had spent two years driving around the country in an RV scouting locations to live and they settled on Montana.
They were previously living in San Francisco but the high cost of living drove them out. They were friendly and we developed a relationship (we actually had dinner with them a few times). On a weekly basis, they were supplying us with fresh bread that Danielle regularly made and sold at the farmer’s market, milk from their goats, and eggs from their chickens.
I can’t begin to tell you how good this bread was. The way we’d gobble it up is with slabs of Kerrygold butter and/or bowls of olive oil and salt. A loaf barely survived a few hours. We loved it so much, in fact, that she taught us how to make it. She passed on this wisdom to us and gave us some starter, which we were supposed to name, so we named ours magpie after a bird we saw all over the state.
Exploring
We arrived at an interesting time—it was August and the weather was all over the place. For the first few weeks, around 5-6 in the early evening, there would be a massive thunderstorm that would last an hour or two, sometimes going on into the evening. As Oregonians we don’t get thunderstorms so we were loving it.
One of the not so great parts of the adventure was a period of about three weeks where there was either some smoke or a lot of smoke from the surrounding forest fires. We did the best we could but at one point we were had the worst AQI in the country as all of the fires culminated in our region. But when it wasn’t smoky, we’d go on lots of hikes which is probably one of the coolest activities to do in this state. We went on many hikes where we didn’t see another soul.
We saw animals. Right down the road from our Airbnb we saw a family of moose. I don’t know if you’ve seen them in person but they’re gigantic. Annie also set up our cat cam outside of the front door and it captured the typical mice and deer, but there were several standout occasions. She had gotten footage of a bobcat and a porcupine! No, they weren’t in the same video hanging out with each other. The porcupine was a standout because they’re super rare way cuter than you’d imagine.
We went to Glacier National Park which is a couple of hours north of Missoula, and we experienced the beauty that is Montana. (Speaking of animals, we saw mountain goats and got luck enough to see a grizzly bear—I couldn’t believe it.) Glacier National Park is definitely one of the most underrated places in the country and we liked it more than our trip to Yellowstone. We camped out for a few days with Annie’s sister Claire and her husband Gerik, and we basically played in the lake and went on hikes. There was one particularly famous hike (the cover photo for this post) that looked as though you were hiking through the Himilayas. It was probably the coolest hike that I had ever done.
The cities in Montana aren’t big. Bozeman sits at a little over 50,000 and Missoula is just shy of 75,000 people. The closest larger-ish town to us was Butte, about 30 minutes away. This place looks like the wild west. They were actually filming the show 1923 with Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren while we were there and will be doing so through the rest of 2022. This is a sequel to Paramount’s 1883 and a prequel to Yellowstone, and it had brought some attention to the area—it was neat to walk the set in middle of town.
Culture
The people were friendly. Sometimes there'd be some slight apprehension and hesitation in many of their eyes and actions but I think that people like to keep to themselves before engaging in conversation. That said, there’s still certainly a warmth and a sense of community. There's so few people that you can't help but have somewhat of a small town vibe everywhere you go.
You feel more ‘country’ when you're out here. Blending in means wearing a hat, driving a truck, and wearing a flannel. People in Montana just like what they like. The state definitely skews red and is filled with guys driving trucks but not in an obnoxious way like you might find in places like Texas. There's just so few people here that no one is trying to impress anyone else.
There's basically only white people in Montana which I don’t love. I prefer some diversity, but because we didn’t interact with too many people in general, we got over it. Culture is relatively singular but can be found in some cities. Bozeman felt a little more diverse but still really white. We also don't hunt but this is very much a hunting state and routinely you can see and hear people shooting, which isn't great but it's not overly obnoxious.
There's definitely good food to be had in Montana but you really have to seek it out. There was a pizza joint in Anaconda that was run by a guy from New York City and it tasted legit. We got ramen in Missoula, and I oddly had the best chicken sandwich of my life there too (shoutout M-80 Chicken). There's also some food in Helena, but to be honest, you're not in this state to regularly eat interesting food.
We drove a lot, and one of the beautiful things about Montana is that we saw very few billboards. You're on these open roads where the freeway has speed limit of 80 passing massive mountain bluffs and valleys at every glance. Gas is cheap (mostly under $4) so expenses weren’t absurd.
As we drove to and from our Airbnb, we would pass a ranch entrance that had a sign hanging that said, "Don't California my Montana" which might be off-putting for some but I can sympathize with that POV to some degree. In such a pristine place where people are chill and want a certain level of stasis, there’s naturally some level of hesitancy to people coming in droves, driving higher prices, developing strip malls, cookie cutter houses, and parking lots. Regardless of your politics, I’m sure you can at least kind of relate.
We loved Montana
Maybe it was our Airbnb experience, or the peace and serenity we felt at all times, or the nature and wildlife—we loved this place. I could see myself living here if our family and friends were up for relocating. Montana offers lots of privacy and space, and there are enough amenities. If we did relocate, it would be to Bozeman as there's a great airport that flies to most places in the US.
We realized that we like having some access to an ocean where we can go and "escape" vs being landlocked. I think psychologically it's just nice to know that that you can go there if you wanted to. But I want to see Montana in the winter. There are peaks everywhere which means opportunities to hike up and get some skiing in, or if you have a snowmobile, ride to various peaks.
We loved Montana and we'll go back. There's a real sense of freedom and wonderment that’ll leave you wanting more. When you get the chance, book a place somewhere outside of Missoula or Bozeman and get lost exploring.