Well some of us had a few things going on the last several months and our blog posts kind of took a back seat! But we’re getting caught up now and we have a lot to show you! Bozeman is truly a location of its own in Montana. It reminds us of a more open and spread out Boulder, CO with a lot more to offer. The downtown area is excellent with some great shops and restaurants. The housing market is booming and there’s so much to do within an hour or two on a daily basis that you can’t possibly even attempt to do it all in 8 days. While we attempted to do a lot, more than anything we just wanted to spend time with our friends we hadn’t seen in a while. Below are some highlights.
Eating
We loved eating at Sidewinders. The food and drinks were excellent, and there is even a play area for kids with video games. We also loved having Gelato at Mavens in downtown Bozeman, which we enjoyed on more than one occasion in our time there. If you love Breweries like we do you also have to check out MAP. The food and beer are fantastic.
Favorite Things
We spent a quick minute in Big Sky and took the Tram to the top for a quick sight seeing view. The rest of the area was mostly shut down in between seasons so we didn’t get to see a whole lot. However, we were able to do a quick, easy, but pretty hike to Ousel Falls.
Some other area favorites:
Yellowstone….goes without saying, but be forewarned, you will be battling tons of people like Disney World.
The Bridgers, some of the best trails are in the Bridger Mountains and there are very few people around. We hiked up to Fairy Lake which was truly breathtaking!
STAY AWAY from South Cottonwood Trail. It’s basically an open Dog Park trail which smells terribly of dog poop with much of it on the trail as owners don’t clean up after their pets.
More than anything we enjoyed spending time with our friends, riding bikes, enjoying the weather, and exploring the city of Bozeman.
They are so good and they’ve even won an award or two. We’ve tried every single on on the list and have had them shipped to friends as well. Our favorite go to is the Blueberry White Chocolate Oatmeal….you won’t regret it. By the way the picture to the right is Flat Stella, she went everywhere with us on this trip. Flat Stella was a school project for our daughter. Stella had to go places with us and do things with us, and then my daughter had to draw the corresponding pictures. Funny thing though, this picture is real, but many of the Flat Stella pictures we took I had to photoshop Stella in because we forgot to take pictures with her!
It was so brutally cold that we were only able to complete 3 hikes all week. If you include the two times my wife and I woke up to watch the sunset from a rock on the Rough Ridge trail, well then that’s 5 hikes. As a family though we completed 3. The first hike was 
We decided to take on snowboarding at night after the kids were going to sleep at Appalachian Ski Mountain. Being that it was right around the corner from the resort made it a big plus. If you have to rent gear the process is a little confusing, but they have people standing around to help answer your questions. The wait was probably 45 minutes, which I didn’t think was too bad considering how many people were waiting. What was even better is once we got on the mountain there didn’t seem to be nearly as many people as we thought. We rarely had to 
wait to get on the lift and the last two hours or so there was no wait at all. It had recently snowed about 3 inches and they had a good base already from the man made snow. The staff was excellent, helpful, and polite. We will most definitely come back here again in the future!
during the holidays it is absolutely jam packed, too packed for my liking. However, there are so many neat stores, restaurants, a playground for the kids, free covered parking garage, and an excellent coffee shop. We highly recommend 
However, it did make for a great stopping point at the waterfall and a great way to stretch our legs.
it’s that she absolutely despises easy hikes. This hike is 1.4 miles out and back and there were no rocks or roots or heavy inclines. We were able to find two geocaches along the way, one of which was one of the types our kids love to find…geocaches with random quarter machine toys that other people have left behind. The falls weren’t the most amazing we’ve seen, but they were fun to walk around and the hike again was something to let the kids burn some energy.
apple sold comes from it seemed like. There were rows upon rows of Apple and Cherry trees. On top of that, the warehouses with all the apple crates outside were pretty neat too. Laura kept wishing she could have brought an apple crate home for an home decoration idea. On this day we stopped for lunch at the Naches Applewood Park. It was a nice little park with a lot of open space, a couple of playgrounds and a swimming pool. We enjoyed our picnic lunch before the rain came at this stop too. Before Naches we decided to venture to Oak Creek Wildlife area. Let’s just say in the summer, it’s pretty bare and the animals are pretty scarce as well. The road is not recommended if you have a minivan as it’s very rough. We drove for a mile or 2 before turning around. In the winter this is a designated safe zone for animals and it’s really helped re populate various animals. We ventured after Naches to Yakima, if you go to your local Publix in Florida you can buy Yakima Apples for a whopping $4 per pound whereas in Washington they are $.99 per pound. Quite a lot of transportation cost associated with those apples. There isn’t much going on in Yakima, it’s a pretty big city and had a nice little outdoor shopping center, but other than that we didn’t do much there. We then battled a heavy rain on the way back to Packwood.
the snow became too difficult. The hike itself had some really pretty view in the short distance. However, we did come to an area where we could not pass with the kids. It was what looked like was a usual slanted rock stretch heading straight down about 200 feet to the bottom. What made this difficult was the snow build up. It was just any snow build up. No, this snow build up had half way melted and had left what was essentially a hollow cave/bridge for you to walk over. It was probably at the most 18 inches thick, so walking across it was pretty dangerous. We chose not to bring the kids, and in fact I was the only one that kept going. I knew by looking at the WTA app that I wasn’t that far from the last waterfall, maybe 3/4 of a mile. I made it across and started jogging. Without a carrier and other baggage, it felt like I could run for days…that didn’t last long though haha. I eventually made it to the more difficult snow area and I just kept sinking down in the snow. It was actually pretty painful on my knees catching me off guard each time. The view was so well worth it though and if there was more time I would have kept hiking even further.
background. I was not driving through that area, even if it took us an hour out of the way, without seeing that. It was really amazing because it was absolutely pouring down rain when we got there. I tried looking at the weather radar and it kind of looked like in half an hour or so there may be an opening. So we drove past it and decided to look for a GeoCache. Though, that search turned out to be a DNF. The Cache was right off the road somewhere, it was pouring down rain, and the ground fell straight down off a cliff. 
They had Bloody Mary buffet so you could build your own. They bring your glass with Vodka in it (yes they have Bacon Vodka!!!) and you go up to the bar and pick your own ingredients and fill your glass yourself for your own custom Bloody Mary. Really quite a neat perspective and way to get people to try something unique. They had a really good tea that day made with mint, lavender and perhaps one other thing I can’t recall, but it was delicious. The food was good as well, several unique items to choose from that made it difficult to pick just one. All told, we highly recommend you give this place a chance.
