A few years ago before COVID was a consistent presence in our lives (in fact, before we had even heard of COVID) Ryan and I (The Two Tones) headed out west on an adventure. Our plan was to visit my uncle and aunt and also spend some time in both Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. Even though this was several years ago, I am writing this now to help me organize my travel memories better where I can find them (as opposed to searching back on social media).
Let’s start with our adventures in and around Bozeman.
My aunt and uncle have a condo in Bozeman, which is where we stayed during our time with them. But they also have a house that they built themselves up in the mountains. It’s pretty impressive! Difficult to deal with during the snow, though, hence the condo in the city. We spent some time at the mountain house on our first full day in Montana, hiking around a bit, bird watching, and just enjoying the atmosphere. On the way up to the mountain house, we came across a neighbor of my aunt and uncle’s (neighbor is a relative term here) who had a wolf pup with him. I guess he rescues wild animals…I don’t quite remember the back story there. But we saw the wolf pup up close from the car. So that was pretty neat.
Back in the city, we were able to walk pretty easily from the condo to the main street area. On arrival, one of the first things we did was visit a local cider house, where of course we purchased some different ciders to bring back home! We ate a home-grilled salmon dinner at the condo, and then got to walk around the park-like setting, enjoying all the scenery.
After our visit to the mountain house, we returned to the cabin and walked to downtown. We walked up and down the main street, stopping in at a few shops, but at one point, it did start to rain. It was pretty easy to catch a bus back in the direction of the condos. Then when the rain stopped and our bellies were getting hungry, we headed back downtown for dinner at Burger Bob’s. Their huckleberry milkshakes really hit the spot after a busy day! I’m not sure why I don’t have a photo of the milkshake though…anyway, we soon learned that huckleberries are pretty much the official berry of Montana and we would find huckleberry products everywhere. We learned a lot more about huckleberries when we headed up to Glacier National Park later in the week…more on that later.
We stopped back through Bozeman again between our times in Yellowstone and Glacier. At this time, we joined my aunt and uncle for a community potluck that their retirement community does regularly. While we were definitely the youngest ones there, it’s really neat that their community has events like that to bring the neighbors all together, and it was fun to meet all their neighbors.
After our time in Glacier, we had one more visit to Bozeman. We went out for pizza at MacKenzie River Pizza, a favorite of my aunt and uncle. I remember going there on my first visit to Montana back in the 90s when I was in middle school. For some reason I neglected to take a picture of my food there, as well as breakfast the next morning before our flight. I don’t even remember where we had breakfast, but I know I got something with bison sausage, and it was a delicious and extremely filling meal. The final thing we checked out while in Bozeman was one of their local bookstores, Country Bookshelf. We like finding different bookstores when we travel. Unfortunately we didn’t have a lot of time to explore this one as they were getting ready to close, but I still managed to pick up one of their “Blind Dates with a Book” and Ryan found a book as well. The rest of our time in Bozeman was spent “porching,” an activity that is not as pleasant in the humidity of Kentucky as it is in the much dryer, cooler climate of Montana, and discussing life and politics. We had a great time visiting with my aunt and uncle and really appreciated their hospitality as we hopped between parks.
In the next couple of posts, I will discuss our time in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks.
Tracy Travels & Teaches 
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