Gardiner and Missoula, Montana
A quick drive through Montana - end of June and beginning of July 2023
After spending a couple of months visiting with family, we started our trek to the Pacific Northwest. Our travel day from Rapid City to our next stop was spent trying to avoid storms, floods, and wind. We were successful in avoiding everything but the wind and some rain. We spent the night in Ranchester, Wyoming at a small, but nice campground just off of Highway 14. It’s next door to a local coffee shop and bakery and was a good location for an overnight stay. The next morning we checked out the coffee shop and bakery. There was quite the wait for everything, as we seemed to have timed our visit at the height of their busy time, but it was worth the wait!
From here we drove to Yellowstone’s Edge RV Park, just south of Livingston, Montana. Our stay here was short and it was such a beautiful area! We spent one day exploring the town of Gardiner, viewing the Roosevelt Arch at the North Yellowstone entrance, and enjoying the different views of the Yellowstone River and surrounding mountains. The campground also had gorgeous views of the river and mountains. One of the evenings we got together with friends that had recently moved to the area.
After a couple of days along the Yellowstone River, we made the trek to Missoula for a 10 day stay. A few views from the road -
Jim and Mary’s RV Park in Missoula is a great place to stay and just relax. It was also where Tracy wanted to spend his birthday, as we had stayed here with our first RV in 2012 and had really enjoyed our stay. The campground is just as beautiful and well maintained as we remembered.
While in Missoula we accidentally stumbled upon Highlander Beer’s brewery. We were just looking for a quick lunch and ended up liking the atmosphere so much that we went back a few different times. Their menu is a rotating menu of pizza slices with a few appetizers (and of course beer), but it’s just a laid back type of place where you can hangout while you enjoy your drinks and/or food. We also found decent BBQ at Notorious P.I.G., ice cream at Big Dipper, and while Drum Coffee has great coffee, I loved that you can cast a vote for different local charities for them to support (it reminds me a lot of Target’s Circle Community Giving program for those that do that). We also checked out the Farmer’s Market in the downtown area and explored Fort Missoula.
The Fort was originally was built to be a military post and major outpost for the region in 1877. During WWII it was turned into an Alien Detention Center (ADC) that housed mostly Italian non-military seamen who were not granted passage home and Japanese resident aliens. The ADC held foreign nationals and resident aliens, unlike War Relocation Act camps that held Japanese Americans. There is a large exhibit devoted to when it was a detention center that I found to be very informative. While several of the buildings on the fort are original to the fort, some buildings, like the train depot, were moved here to save them from being torn down. To learn more about Fort Missoula, check out their website here.
After Missoula we started our 13 week journey exploring Washington and Oregon. Our first stop, and the subject of the next post, was in Liberty Lake, Washington.