Road Trip Yellowstone

by Dina Mishev

  Q: Have Bozeman and the other gateways you know changed?

  JJ: Bozeman has clearly had a facelift and looks completely different than it did 20 to 30 years ago. But West Yellowstone and Gardiner and even Livingston—to some degree they’re pretty much the same. Same motels, and same signs, and lots of family-owned businesses. Lots of places selling the same trinkets. You go to Banff [in Alberta] where there are Gucci stores and world-class merchandising and here people hang T-shirts on metal hangers in their window. I think that kind of Montana family charm is unique and steadfast.

  Q: During your time living and climbing in Canada, you traveled to some of the far corners of the world on expeditions. How does Montana compare?

  JJ: I’ve been to some amazing places and the single most beautiful canyon in the world is up the East Rosebud drainage [in the Beartooth Mountains]. And it is my home. I spent every summer hiking up that drainage when I was a kid. My family has a cabin there that my great-grandfather built.

  Q: What made you decide to write a guidebook for climbers?

  JJ: I have a guidebook brain. I have an attention to detail that is not common and an ability to obsess over [details] that not many climbers do. I could probably have been a really good accountant. A lot of guidebooks focus on the climbing itself and how fun and cool it is, but neglect stuff like how to find the climb. I tell them how to get there from the car to the base of the route and how to get off the top of the route. I give them a notion of what to expect on the climb, and then let them have an adventure.

  Hyalite Canyon

  Hyalite Canyon Recreation Area is the most heavily visited recreation area in Montana. Its proximity to Bozeman—15 miles south of town off South 19th Avenue—has little to do with its popularity, but people (and their dogs) mostly come to Hyalite because it’s freaking gorgeous. There are 10,000-foot peaks, waterfalls, alpine lakes, and wildlife from eagles to moose and grizzly bears. In summer and fall, it’s hikers, hunters, campers, mountain bikers, paddle-boarders, and runners who play in Hyalite. In the winter, Hyalite Canyon is unique in the entire country for its reliable and concentrated collection of natural ice climbs; there are over 225 identified ice climbs and there are still areas waiting to be explored. Nowhere else in the United States has anything like it. There are also groomed Nordic skiing trails and backcountry alpine ski terrain accessible to those with the proper experience and equipment. But winter access to Hyalite is a relatively new thing, and only came about after locals fought for it.

  Hyalite is accessed via a Forest Service road. Hyalite Reservoir is about 10 miles up this road. The road itself is about 13 miles long and dead-ends at a trailhead. Until 2007, to the dismay of ice climbers and backcountry and Nordic skiers, it was not plowed during the winter. Not that that stopped adventurers from driving it. “We used to call it the Hyalite Rodeo,” says ice climber Joe Josephson. “It was a pain in the ass getting back there and chances were you’d get stuck on the way.”

  But in 2007, the Bridger Ski Foundation got permission to hold an event near the reservoir and obtained a permit to have the road plowed. “By mistake, the county plowed the road all the way to the end, where the ice-climbing trailhead is,” Joe says. “The genie was out of the bottle after that. The next day was like a Hyalite love fest. Hundreds of people were up there and loving it. It was a whole new world.” Since then, the road has been plowed every winter. The road has the distinction of being the only federal road in the country plowed purely for recreational access.

  Hike to the top of 10,299-foot Hyalite Peak and you’ll find incredible views at the top, and all along the way. The trail, which is 7 miles one way, passes ten waterfalls. The falls are almost beautiful enough to distract you from the work of climbing 3,300 feet to the peak’s summit. But not quite. This trail definitely tests your fitness. Follow Hyalite Canyon Road to the trailhead near the Palace Butte campground. The trail starts here. Montana is the only state in the Lower 48 that doesn’t border a state that has a city of 1 million.

  Shortly after the road started being regularly plowed, Joe had the idea to found a nonprofit advocacy group for the canyon. Friends of Hyalite was born. “We work to increase awareness of the area and have cleanup days twice a year,” Joe says. “We pack out 4 to 7 tons of garbage each time.” In addition to trails, rides, and climbing, there are three Forest Service campgrounds in Hyalite Canyon. www.hyalite.org

  The LARK

  The building that is today the LARK was thrown up hastily on Bozeman’s West Main Street in 1964 as one of the many motor lodges of the Imperial 400 chain. In the 1980s, when the Imperial 400 brand was dissolved, a private group bought the motel and ran it as the Imperial Inn. It slowly declined until it was closed for good in 2009. And then it sat vacant for 4 years.

  In 2013, Bozeman-based ThinkTank Design Group, co-founded by Brian Caldwell and Erik Nelson, began the process of transforming the dingy, dilapidated space into a decidedly non-dingy dilapidated space. The LARK, named after Montana’s state bird, the meadowlark, opened in April 2015 as Montana’s first retro boutique motel.

  “We wanted to basically look at adaptive reuse,” says Brian. “We were history-wise, so we were looking to upcycle this vintage motor lodge into something that wasn’t a detraction but a gateway into our downtown.”

  Caldwell and Nelson first met and became friends as architecture students at Montana State University. They worked with about 200 other locals to transform the space. A team of ten artists, including the former art director at the Museum of the Rockies, an art teacher at Bozeman Senior High School, and an oil painter who founded a furniture and art gallery in a former mill, ensured that each of the thirty-eight rooms is unique. When asked if he had a favorite room, Brian said, “I’d compare asking that to asking someone their favorite song. Typically, it’s going to be associated with a mood or a certain aspect of the music they enjoy. I appreciate some rooms for my favorite info-graphic art piece or the barn door graphic, some I appreciate for the amount of space or light, some for their position in the building.” Many visitors favor the map room for its collection of USGS maps and ceramicist Patrick Hoffman’s wood-fired ceramic forms that can be rearranged into different compositions. Hoffman is an art teacher at Bozeman Senior High School. 122 W. Main St., (406) 624-3070, www.larkbozeman.com

  LOCAL LOWDOWN BRIAN CALDWELL, Architect and Principal of ThinkTank Design Group

  “Like any good architecture student, I made a graph with ski resorts on the left and architecture programs on the right,” says Brian Caldwell (left in the photo below), a native of Grand Rapids, Michigan. “Big Sky and Bozeman’s architecture program came together.” Caldwell moved to Montana in 1992 and never left. He and fellow Montana State architecture student Erik Nelson started ThinkTank Design immediately upon graduation and their partnership is still going strong.

  Q: How has Bozeman changed in the time you’ve lived here?

  BRIAN CALDWELL: When I moved here, Bozeman was in its first burst of attention after A River Runs Through It had made it nationally known. Bozeman started off as an agricultural community centered around ranch life and being a small college town, and it’s been steadily growing with the university being the primary driver. It’s changed quite a bit, most of it for the better. There are those who lament the past, but I think the future of Bozeman is on the up and up.

  Q: What hasn’t changed?

  BC: Two million acres of Forest Service and state land being so easily accessible from town is the same.

  Q: Is there anything about the change and growth that worries you?

  BC: I think it’s really important that Bozeman maintains its sense of place and character as a community. Everyone is afraid of becoming like Aspen and affordability is already a big deal. Bozeman already has a bad rap for being only 20 minutes away from Montana.

  The Museum of the Rockies

  Jack Horner was the curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies (MOR) for 33 years. During his tenure, he was responsible
for growing the museum’s dinosaur collection into one of the biggest in the country. He also discovered the first evidence of parental care among dinosaurs and was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship “genius grant.” Perhaps that is why Horner was the inspiration for Dr. Alan Grant’s character in all of the Jurassic Park movies. There’s no denying Horner is a big deal, but he’s not the only interesting person associated with MOR. The other candidate: Dr. Caroline McGill.

  Dr. McGill, working with history professor Dr. Merrill G. Burlingame, founded the Museum of the Rockies after she retired at age 76. But before founding MOR, Dr. McGill was a family physician in Butte.

  LOCAL LOWDOWN SHAW THOMPSON, Misco Mill Gallery

  Bozeman’s Main Street is full of art galleries, but Misco Mill Gallery isn’t one of them. This gallery is in northeast Bozeman, in a grain elevator built in 1933 and renovated by two brothers, Shaw and Nate Thompson, and their dad, Sam, starting in 2001. The gallery exhibits pieces by Shaw and Nate as well as a handful of other Montana artists. Shaw is in the gallery most days but recommends calling first if you’re planning to stop by, “just in case I’m running out quick to do an errand,” he says. His wood shop is in the grain elevator too. “We were looking to buy a live/work space, but this building was way more than we were envisioning,” Shaw says. “We all spent a lot of time working on it. And it’s still not finished.” 700 N. Wallace Ave., (406) 586-6833, www.miscomill.com

  Q: Is Bozeman an artsy town?

  SHAW THOMPSON: [Yes.] Especially our neighborhood, which is the old industrial area. We’ve got a really nice little coffee shop directly across the street, Treeline, and a good bakery, Wild Crumb, two doors down. There are always art shows in both.

  Q: What inspired you to create art for a living?

  ST: I’ve been into art since [I was] a kid. In college, I majored in painting and drawing, and I started making furniture. A friend of a friend asked me to build a desk for them. We had always been a hands-on family—my dad built houses before he went into the Army—and I got excited about the prospect of building a desk. I built it in the backyard of the house I was renting. Since then, I’ve done furniture along with my painting.

  Q: How would you describe your artistic style?

  ST: I have a constant battle trying to loosen up and go more abstract. I keep getting pulled back to architectural paintings that are pretty linear, so I’m struggling with breaking free from that. A lot of my subjects for the last few years have been grain elevators. What we’ve done with ours has opened a lot of doors for people in the area—they see what they could do with one. I think they are beautiful structures. Beautiful proportions.

  Q: And what about your furniture?

  ST: I use a lot of reclaimed materials, but do it in a contemporary design. I try to keep it super, super clean and let the elements speak for themselves.

  Q: Your younger brother, Nate, is also an artist. Is Nate’s style very different?

  ST: Truthfully, we have kind of the same style. He has a similar aesthetic.

  Q: You’ve been working as an artist in Bozeman for some time now. How has the art scene changed?

  ST: There is much more appreciation for contemporary lines and a modern style. That’s almost becoming the norm now. In the beginning, it was all rustic furniture. I never did log furniture, but that’s what was popular. I use more steel now.

  Dr. McGill moved to Montana in 1911 at age 32 to work as a pathologist at Butte’s Murray Hospital. At the time, Butte had 275 saloons, a large red-light district, and stabbings and gunfights were regular occurrences. Dr. McGill wrote to her family: “I’ll tell you right now I am making the biggest fool mistake to go . . . but I’m going. Feels sort of funny to stand off and serenely watch myself commit suicide, [but] I’ll just have to let her rip.”

  Dr. McGill was the first pathologist in Montana. She had earned a doctoral degree in anatomy and physiology from the University of Missouri, where she was the first woman to be granted a doctoral degree by that university. She paid her way through college by chopping firewood and teaching. She earned her first teaching degree when she was 17.

  After 2 years in the pathologist position, Dr. McGill left Butte to attend medical school at Johns Hopkins. Two years later, she planned to return to Butte with her MD, after a short stop over in Rochester, Minnesota, where she worked with the Mayo brothers at their clinic.

  Back in Butte, Dr. McGill opened her own clinic across from Murray Hospital. It was at this point that she began collecting the artifacts that inspired the founding of MOR. Many of the smaller items in her collection were given to her by patients as payment; knowing these patients didn’t have the money to pay, Dr. McGill was fine with bartering. Dr. McGill assembled a significant collection of porcelain from the Chinese patients she treated. She also scoured Montana’s secondhand stores for pioneer artifacts. A memo she wrote found after her death titled “things to put in the museum” included thoughts on why a Montana museum was so important: “Much is being lost or taken out of state by collectors,” she wrote.

  In 1956, the then–Montana State University president dedicated three World War II Quonset huts for McGill’s museum. She slept on a cot in one of the huts while she organized and catalogued her collection, which she had donated to the university, for display. The first iteration of the MOR, which was actually called the McGill Museum, opened January 4, 1957. McGill was the museum’s first curator and continued to work with the museum until her death in 1959 at her ranch, the 320 Ranch (read more about this on page 257), in the Gallatin Canyon.

  In 1965, the name of the museum was changed to Museum of the Rockies to better reflect its expanding collections. Today the museum’s collections include more than 300,000 objects that cover more than 500 million years of history. It is home to the largest collection of dinosaur remains in the United States, the largest Tyrannosaurus skull ever discovered, and a T. Rex thigh bone that contains soft-tissue remains. Its hands-on Martin Children’s Discovery Center is based on science in Yellowstone and is geared toward infants through 8-year-olds. See a miniature version of the Old Faithful Inn, fish from Fishing Bridge, and get a geyser to erupt by using a pump. In 2005, it became an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institute. And we can thank Dr. McGill for getting it started. 600 W. Kagy Blvd., (406) 994-2251, museumoftherockies.org

  Rialto Theatre

  The Rialto on Main Street opened as a post office in 1910. “Then it was a tobacco store, then a business college, and was then turned into an agricultural implements store. And then in 1923, it became a theater,” says Brian Caldwell, an architect and principal at ThinkTank Design Group, which is bringing the Rialto back to life. It has been shuttered since 2005.

  The extensive remodel brings a tapas restaurant to the second floor. “It overlooks Main Street with a glow of the historic Rialto sign that we’re bringing back to life at the full scale of the original Rialto,” Brian says. “It’s a pretty cool tribute to our past.” There are also spaces for community events and shows. 10 W. Main St.

  ROAD TRIP 3 TETON VALLEY TO WEST YELLOWSTONE

  It used to be that people stumbled upon Teton Valley, Idaho—which includes the towns of Victor, Driggs, and Tetonia—when they were either looking to get into potato farming or they couldn’t afford to buy or rent in Jackson Hole. Nowadays, it’s because Teton Valley (population around 10,000) is an eclectic, laid-back community of artists, entrepreneurs, ski bums, farmers, and even the occasional billionaire or two (not that you’d ever be able to pick the latter out of a lineup). It just so happens to be surrounded by mountains and streams perfect for outdoor adventures of all sorts. Welcome to the quiet side of the Tetons, with some extra credit excursions between Teton Valley and the park’s West Entrance at West Yellowstone, Montana.

  The Spud

  Drive-in movie theaters are rare in the 21st century. So when there’s a drive-in that is overshadowed by something parked in front of it, that “something” must be pretty spectacular, right? Meet Old Mur
phy, a 1946 Chevy truck with a two-ton potato sculpture on the back. The potato is really a potato-shaped frame covered in concrete and painted to look like a potato. Old Murphy is parked in front of The Spud Drive-In, which is just south of Driggs. The drive-in opened in 1953 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Sites and the Idaho State Historic Registry.

  In recent years, the fate of The Spud has been uncertain. It almost closed in 2011 when Hollywood studios made the switch from traditional film to digital. At the time, the manager of The Spud found a used digital projector for $33,000 and sold T-shirts—“Save The Spud”—and advertising on fences around the drive-in to afford it.

  While the projector has been modernized, the drive-in’s Snack Shack is wonderfully frozen in time. Vinyl records cover the ceiling. Walls are plastered in record covers. The floor is a black-and-white checker pattern. You’ll want to order a Gladys Burger—on the menu since Gladys and Leo Davis ran the theater from 1967 to 1987—or Spud Buds, also known as Tater Tots. 2175 S. Hwy. 33, (208) 354-2727, www.spuddrivein.com

  Pendl’s Bakery

  When Martha Pendl opened Pendl’s Bakery in 2003, she did so with a lifetime of training under her belt. She grew up in her father’s Konditoreien (the German word for pastry shops), Poor Richard’s, and then Pendl’s Pastries. Fred Pendl, Martha’s father, was born and raised in Kitzbuhel, Austria, and began his bakery apprenticeship at the age of 14. He went on to work in London, Holland, and Munich before coming to Sun Valley, Idaho, to run a Konditorei. Fred and his wife, Edith, arrived in Idaho in 1966. Poor Richard’s Konditorei opened early the next year and was soon one of the town’s most popular après ski spots. In 1979, Fred opened Pendl’s Pastries, also in Sun Valley. Both pastry shops were staples of Martha’s childhood. You can see a photo of a very young Martha helping out with cookies on the Pendl’s Bakery website.