I really, really loved Montana. But for some reason I just didn’t take many photos. I think I was just burnt out from excessive photo taking from Glacier National Park. Most of these were taken on my phone. But first, the cockamamie route we took through the state of Montana:

Ok so not particularly cockamamie, I just like that word

After leaving East Glacier/St Mary, we went to check out West Glacier:

Which has an awesome bakery, observe here a S’mores cookie:

❤

On we drove to an adorable town called Whitefish. It had nice boutiques, independent coffee shops, bars and cool homewares stores.

If you say so…

We grabbed some frozen yoghurt, for it’s health benefits.

Lol

And settled in at our campground at Bigfork, near the shores of Flathead Lake.

Andrew bought this stubbie holder from one of those cool homewares stores in Whitefish.

That night after the rain we watched a truly amazing sunset over the lake.

Northern Montana seems to be known for huckleberries, so we tried some raspberry and huckleberry pie.

It was predictably amazing.

Cherries are everywhere around Flathead Lake too.

The next day we drove to Missoula, stopping at a National Bison Range along the way. Cue bison visuals:

Bison are hilariously front heavy. It’s an amazing gravitational feat that they can stay upright.

Fuzzy head

We also saw elk, deer and bighorn sheep:

Creepiest eyes ever.

Onto Missoula! A college town with plenty of character. In 1908 those rascally students at the University of Montana forged a zigzag path up Mt Sentinel carrying white stones to lay in an ‘M’ figure on the side of the mountain to celebrate their school. In 1968 a concrete ‘M’ was laid and still remains today. Hiking up the ‘M Trail’  is still a hugely popular activity today.

The view over Missoula was pretty great.

Can you tell its an ‘M’?

M

We saw another fantastic Montanan sunset, it’s no wonder why people are always banging on about the sky here:

We went to a downtown music/food festival held every week in summer and ate delicious bbq pork buns:

Followed by a huge Mexican dinner that almost saw both of us explode. It wasn’t pretty.

Convinced that we’d fallen in love with Missoula and wanted to move there asap we drove onto Bozeman, which turned out to be even better. From the retro architecture:

To the bars, boutqiues, cafes and shops. We ate at the bar of a fantastic diner called Western Cafe:

I experienced my first biscuits and gravy breakfast:

The brown mush is biscuits (scones) covered in sausage gravy with bacon and poached eggs on the side

We reluctantly left Bozeman and drove to Virginia City, yet another ye olde pioneer town. Gold was discovered there in May 1863 and within weeks a town sprung up. It’s now a National Historic Landmark and operates as an open air museum.

Vigilante HQ

Hey cowboy

As with most gold rush era towns, the place has an amazingly colourful history. In 1864 vigilantes rounded up 5 men whom they found guilty of crimes from murder to robbery to cannibalism and hanged them from a supporting beam in an unfinished building. The building is still there today, so too are the graves of the men atop Boot Hill.

SAMSUNG CSC

One of the men, named Clubfoot George, was dug up in 1907 when locals began to wonder who was buried where. They exhumed his body and his clubfoot is still on display at the museum… I’ll spare you a photo.

Curiously, just near the foot, is this on display at the museum:

Delicious

Don’t rotting feet and century-old cakes just make you hungry?! Luckily there is an ice cream shop just doors down from the hanging building.

We shared a sundae of traditionally churned ice cream with hot fudge.

Amazing

Which gave us the strength to drive to Wyoming to Yellowstone National Park.

Thanks for a great time Montana!