The calendar says we were in Bozeman for a month, but that’s not exactly how things happened – Tracey ended up being gone for three weeks with a family emergency and Brian was gone for a week. There was so much we wanted to do there and didn’t have enough time – Museum of the Rockies, Yellowstone….
It’s unfortunate we missed so much because it (mostly) seems like a cool town. What we observed was a study of contrasts: so many broken-down, busted RVs scattered throughout the city, housing those desperate for shelter, alongside grocery stores that casually stock Opus One like it’s boxed wine. The dining was amazing (but parking downtown felt like an extreme sport.)
Brian met up with our friends Dave and Sonja while they were visiting the area and did some hiking, followed by well earned beer and food. Bozeman has trails that connect right from the city into the nearby mountains. Some locals actually commute to downtown by hiking through the peaks.
We did have one weekend day together to explore and spent it at the American Computer & Robotics Museum, enjoying their collection of vintage tech (the “vintage” part hurt a little, considering how many of the items they had that we had either owned or used). Some of the coolest items on display were an original Altair (arguably the first personal computer, for you non-nerds), an Apple 1 signed by it’s “daddy”, Steve Wozniak and the last surviving Apollo 11 mainframe, which probably has less computing power than the phone we used to take selfies with it. They also have a working IBM with a text only monitor running the original Oregon Trail game, where you can fondly die of dysentery like the good old days. They had an incredible collection of old Macs, including a Lisa and their first laptop, the Mac Portable (although 16 pounds, the term “portable” may a bit of a stretch). It was also interesting to see the evolution of storage, including multiple size floppies (but no cassettes like we used in the Commodore 64 era). Their collection is small but an employee we spoke to said they have a whole warehouse of uncatalogued stuff but they’re limited by their current space.
Where We Stayed: Bozeman Trail – This RV park was one of the worst we’ve experienced. The sites were packed on top of each other and the ground was all rocks, no grass in sight. That said, the customer service was exceptional. The manager Tammy went out of her way to allow us to stay in a site with Starlink when we discovered the T-Mobile service just wasn’t adequate for our work, despite our original request for a grassy spot. The dog park was small and hilly but the pups made the best of it.
Where We Ate:
Fresco Cafe
Montana Ale Works
Tarantino’s Pizza
Bacchus Pub – very cool historic pub built in 1929