I feel like my life is a movie lately. The description of my last weekend probably won’t seem as magical to you guys as it was in real life at the moment. But, bare with me because it’s four days later and I’m still smiling at the adventures we had in Bozeman and Chico.
Amanda, Casey and I set out for Bozeman on Sunday morning after work. We had a literal written list of things we wanted to accomplish while we were there – most of them were breweries and restaurants with a museum and hiking trails thrown in the mix. I’ll just hit the main spots to save you all the mundain details of our twelve hour Sunday day o’ fun.
We started at MAP Brewing Co . It is this really cool log cabin type building that sits on this little lake with the mountains right behind it. The whole back side of the building is windows so the views are incredible. Beer was excellent as well! We then moved on to Mountains Walking Brewery . This one had food so we ordered a pizza, soy and ginger brussel sprouts and tator tots. The brussel sprouts were sooooo good. It was all good but the brussel sprouts were delish! Beer was awesome, atmosphere was awesome..it was all awesome. Across the street is Bozeman Brewing Company and this is where we picked up our additional adventure team member for the weekend. This place is great, it’s pretty small and to me, felt alot like The Roman Coin (in Milwaukee). I felt very at home here. We grabbed a beer and ended up buying matching hats – which we proceeded to wear for the next 24 hours, only taking them off to sleep. It was adorable if you ask me. Anyway, we ended up chatting a little bit with the bartender and decided to invite him out with us that night which eventually turned into us inviting him to join us the whole weekend including Chico. Here enters Brad into our lives. Turns out this guy is one of the nicest humans I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. Super genuine and down to earth guy. He’s also hilarious so that’s an added bonus. I’m honestly surprised he agreed to come along with us on Monday because Amanda, Casey and I were quite the act on Sunday night but I’m glad he was a trooper.
Moving on to Sunday night – Brad met us out after he got off work and we had a list of bars that a coworker had recommended. We apparently felt it necessary to hit every. single. one. of these places. I always jot down notes on my phone or paper of a list of events I want to discuss in my next blog post. This next event is one I wrote down while out on Sunday and it is very irrelevant to anything regarding the magic of this weekend but it was funny. In our very friendly state of mind we were walking down the street from one bar to the next and started talking to this other guy who had just come out of a work party. His name is Lovi. If this gives you any indication of the type of human he turned out to be. Long story short, we quickly found out this guy was THE WORST. Grade A Bro in the worst way possible. So we ditched him. At the end of the night he walked into the bar we were at and we had the pleasure of watching him get his ass kicked by a group of guys. Karma everybody, karma.
It was an all around awesome day. We got back to the hotel that night, raided the snack shop (seriously bought out the entire place, the front desk guy did not know what to do with us) and went to bed.
Monday morning we met Brad and went for a hike up the Drinking Horse trail. I was pretty under the weather for this hike and it’s not a bad trail but it was brutal when suffering from the irish flu and also altitude did not help. I like to blame everything on altitude when possible. The three of us girls were on a very real struggle bus and sucking air while Brad casually meandered up the trail. There were many instances where I was surprised he didn’t just run away. Nonetheless, we made it to the top – which I posted several photos of on instagram. It was so beautiful. I can not describe to you how green and colorful everything is here right now. I feel as though I am walking through a real life coloring book. The pictures I posted on instagram and below are hashtag no filter. It is SO GREEN!
After the hike Amanda, Casey and I went to visit the The Museum of the Rockies . I saw this while researching the area but would have totally dismissed it as a dumb kids place except everyone told us to actually go visit. Turns out it is awesome! Montana has had the most dinosaur fossil discoveries in the US. The majority of the museum is a display of all the dinosaur bones they have found. It is crazy!! We could not wrap our minds around the fact that they were real and also how huge these animals were! I definitely suggest going there if ever in Bozeman.
We met Brad for lunch in Livingston. Really cute little town! Afterwards we started our trek to Chico Hot Springs . Brad directed us down the backroads through Paradise Valley. There is a very very good reason why it holds this name. The drive was breathtaking to be quite honest. The pictures don’t really do it justice although some of the photos turned out beautiful. We were staying in a “rustic cabin” for the night. It was set on top of this hill overlooking all the mountains. Complete with a front porch! We immediately went down to the hot springs for a bit. This is a natural hot spring that flows down and the resort contains it in a pool area. There was a pool side bar down there and it was just such a relaxing atmosphere.
Around 8pm we got out of the hot springs, hopped in the car and chased the sunset for awhile. The lighting was so perfect this time of day as it reflected off all the mountain tops. The back road we were driving on paralleled the Yellowstone River so the combination of the light on the mountains and the Yellowstone was unreal. Before going back to the hot springs we visited The Old Saloon in Emigrant. It’s hard to describe this place without seeing it but we walked in and the crowd was older and about half of them wore cowboy hats. One guy walked through and was wearing cowboy hat, cowboy boots and legit spurs! It was so crazy to see. Anyway, really great place in the middle of nowhere USA.
We got back to the resort and went back down to the hot springs until they closed. We had an odd experience down there, one which I have not had before. The four of us were just sitting hanging out in this one area of the hot spring and a boy had been swimming around us. We were just friendly chatting with him and a few minutes later we heard his mom yelling his name from across the entire pool (this is a fairly large area) and then she started screaming “stranger danger.” It was odd – anyway the boy and his sister ended up going back towards their mom. The three of us were completely naive to the situation but Brad told us that it was most likely because a Native American boy was talking to four white people. I guess there is very much a divide when it comes to these races interacting. The Native American culture out here has been quite the learning experience for me. It is something I have never encountered and quite frankly don’t know much about. Along the way I have been researching different Native groups and their history as I run into different scenarios. Very interesting and very sad to be honest. It is quite awful how their culture has evolved. I recommend reading up on things like that at some point if any of you are interested.
Ok, moving on to the magical mystery tour. We left the hot springs and went back up towards our cabin. Down the road a bit from our place was a camp site of sorts that was not being used. We grabbed our bottles of wine, went down to this site and situated four chairs in the darkest part we could find. We proceeded to listen to Bon Iver, drink wine and stare at the stars. It was honestly one of the best nights I’ve ever had. This is like my heaven. The sky was beyond clear and it is so big! We actually watched the constellations move around us and had the pleasure of seeing so many shooting stars! At one point we were sitting at the edge of the world watching the sky and this large deer just came up and hung out right in front of us, ate for awhile and went up and over the hill. We sat outside until about 3am when borderline hypothermia forced us to go inside. I can’t describe to you how perfect this was. So many good conversations and being in the company of such good humans. It really felt like a movie. It’s so fun to be surrounded by people who so much appreciate all of this. It was just unreal.
I leave you with that. It was a beautiful weekend and one that was really, really good for the soul.
Pictures, as always, are posted below. I haven’t decided if I’m jetting off somewhere this weekend or not. I may just stay in Billings and relax. I think my body is wondering when I’m going to sit still for a second. But when adventure calls… We are still planning our next adventures but a buffalo ranch and ice caverns, Yellowstone, Beartooth Highway and Glacier National Parks are all in the works! 🙂
Shine on!
#teamshrivel
