Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/category/diversions/page/22/)
FISHTAIL — On a tour of the Tippet Rise Art Center on a rainy Wednesday morning, Alban Bassuet did not need to say much about the impressions made by monumental outdoor sculptures dotting the 11,500-acre ranch. Like Stonehenge, the Pyramids or the Eiffel Tower, the art installations at Tippet Rise speak for themselves. (more…) Continue Reading →
Jeremy Lundblad, a Montana Highway Patrol trooper who lives in Laurel, went on the first train ride of his life Sunday afternoon. It wasn’t a terribly long trip—Billings to Pompeys Pillar and back, in about two hours—but it was an enjoyable, memorable ride. “I normally work weekends because that’s when all the fun stuff happens,” he said. “But luckily I was off today.”
So were dozens of other law enforcement officers, firefighters, EMTs and other first responders and their families—about 250 people all told—who were guests of BNSF Railway. They came from towns all over Yellowstone County. Continue Reading →
An open house for This House of Books, a community-owned bookstore going into downtown Billings, is scheduled for Thursday, June 30. The event will run from 5 to 7 p.m. in the old Wendy’s restaurant at Second Avenue North and North 29th Street. Local residents and potential members of the cooperative bookstore will be able to have a look at the building, meet people involved in the project and sample some of the teas that will be featured in the store’s tea bar. Light snacks will also be served. (more…) Continue Reading →
Responding to requests from the public, the Montana Audubon Center is offering several new programs this summer, including weekly nature tours of Norm’s Island and monthly early-morning bird walks. Also new are Tuesday-evening and Sunday-afternoon events involving canoeing on the nature center’s ponds or taking self-guided tours with “Nature Knapsacks” full of activity suggestions and equipment for each activity. (more…) Continue Reading →
As a pre-event kickoff to the Montana Preservation Road Show that began in Red Lodge a little later in the day, a handful of visitors took a ranger-guided tour of Pictograph Cave State Park on Wednesday morning. I’d taken the tour before, many years ago, and had been back to the caves more than a few times on my own, but like Pompeys Pillar and a few other area landmarks, there are some places that we who live here should keep going back to, to remind us how lucky we are. (more…) Continue Reading →
Montana’s slow burn into summer has begun. And for those of us with a consuming fondness for the mini, the many-legged, the winged and wisp-like, it’s a welcome time, as the warm, lingering days compel troops of tiny creatures to materialize, as if magicked from the pores of the earth, to exploit the season’s riches for genetic ends. (more…) Continue Reading →
Tucked into a corner just inside the front door of the Western Art Forum, a new gallery in downtown Billings, is an elegant blue easy chair. Gallery owner Kira Fercho, an artist known for her vibrant oil paintings, designed the chair and said it represents the kind of art—slightly Western but also mid-century modern—she wants to display and sell at the gallery. (more…) Continue Reading →
A variety of back-roads history tours and talks on historic preservation are on tap this week in Red Lodge, which is hosting the third Montana Preservation Road Show. Organized by the Montana Preservation Alliance and numerous other partners, the road show debuted in Dillon in 2012 and continued in Lewistown in 2014. This year, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the Red Lodge road show is expanding from three days to four to accommodate more speakers and day tours. (more…) Continue Reading →
Director Ron Howard remembers seeing Ireland for the first time at age 4. His plane stopped at Shannon Airport for refueling en route to Austria, and the verdant greens of the Emerald Isle were instilled in his memory. Howard also remembers being on the set of “The Music Man” (1962), shot in the wide-screen Technorama format. “I recall huge, oversized cameras that took five or six people to lug around, and all day to set up,” he said. (more…) Continue Reading →
With all signs pointing to a busy summer in Yellowstone National Park—possibly even a record year for visitation—the best way to avoid the crowds will be to park your car and hit the trail. Which is exactly how Montana hiker and blogger Jake Bramante spent his summer last year. After 40 days of hiking, documenting and rating dozens of trails in Yellowstone in 2015, Bramante has released a comprehensive topographic map covering 65 day hikes in nearly every corner of the park. (more…) Continue Reading →
