Southwest Montana Blog
Uncategorized

I have a hard time thinking of September as fall. The days are still warm and sunny. Plants are still green, and the world has not yet been invaded by pumpkin spice masquerading as a legitimate flavor. But. Fall is coming. The crispness will turn to coldness. The leaves will turn to orange. You will …

It is still summer in Southwest Montana, but fall creeps closer and closer. This year I’m not at all looking forward to the shortening of the days and the cooling of the weather. If you like me, are lamenting the things still to be done this summer, take heart. Fall brings with it a host …

One of the best ways to explore a town is to go to its downtown area (unless you’re in Butte, in which case you should head uptown). Unique shops and delicious eateries buzz around downtowns like bees around a hive. However, sometimes, it takes a little bit of orientation to figure out downtown, and...

The first time we decided to walk through Helena’s walking mall, we found our way blocked by a complete lack of people. Dark storefronts blankly watched us as we wandered down the street, narrowly avoiding a street sweeping machine and a worker with recycling. The shopkeepers, citizens and tourists of...

10:00 am, mid-June, the present: Our intrepid blogger and wife leave the Helena Farmers’ Market, navigating the unfamiliar streets of Helena. 350 million years ago: A cephalopod dies. Its body drifts through the shallow sea, finally settling in the thick mud of the sea floor. The sea recedes. The...

Perhaps the best advice you will ever receive: When hiking, be sure to bring along a 17 year-old high school soccer player. This way, if you and your party choose not to bring water and then a mile into your hike realize how bad a decision that was, you can send said soccer player running …

People have been chronicling the doings of Montana for almost as long as Montana has been around.  Montana became a territory in May, 1864, before that, it had been part of the Idaho Territory.  By August of 1864, Montana had its own newspaper, the Montana Post.  According to the Montana Historical Society,...

Brian Dunning aired a piece on his blog Skeptoid discussing the Montana symbol 3-7-77. In it, Dunning covered much the same ground as anyone else who writes on the topic: the fact that the Montana Highway Patrol and other Montana institutions use the numbers in their logos, the five or so main theories, and...

May, 1889. The boisterous crowd at Churchill Downs went silent as two horses lunged for the finish line, well ahead of the rest. One was the massive Proctor Knott, a Kentucky horse, winner of the Futurity, and the obvious favorite. The other was Spokane, a much smaller horse, whom the Chicago Daily Tribune...

In my experience, the best way to predict Montana weather is to look at the calendar. Memorial Day and state track meets both mean rain. I hope that next week is absolutely beautiful, but if the weather forces you indoors, feel free to follow these links. Most of these sites don’t have much to do …...

Ok, I know that Missoula isn’t in SouthWest Montana, but last week the Editor-in-Chief of National Geographic came to the University of Montana as part of the Journalism School’s centennial celebration. For a blogger, that’s the pretty big deal. Nat Geo is the absolute pinnacle of travel...

So, pasties. A Butte staple. Delicious pie-pastry pockets stuffed with potatoes and meat. Sometimes topped with brown gravy. If you haven’t had one before, you should get one. Right now. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Pasties are sort of the Northern European version of a calzone and in Butte they are...