Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/category/diversions/page/32/)
Business Insider released its list of the 30 best hotels in the world this week, and if you scroll down through its gallery of photos it’s not hard to understand why most of the swank joints made the list. There are magnificent beachside accommodations in Indonesia, Maldives, Mexico and St. Lucia, luxurious digs in cities like Paris, Prague and Chicago, and castles and palaces in Ireland, Italy and Hungary. (more…) Continue Reading →
During a discussion about his new West End restaurant, chef Travis Stimpson talked about community almost as much as he talked about food. That’s because he wants his Local Kitchen & Bar to foster a sense of community and to be an important part of the community as well. He wants people to enjoy good food and drink grown and made in Montana, and he wants them to stop thinking that eating at chain restaurants has anything to do with fine dining. (more…) Continue Reading →
It’s hard to imagine now, but back when Todd Miller opened his coffee shop in downtown Billings, nobody in town was roasting coffee and probably half the small number of people who had heard of espresso called it expresso. “Coffee was whatever they slopped in your cup at the local cafe, and everybody bought their coffee for home consumption in two-pound red cans,” Miller said. (more…) Continue Reading →
I spent Labor Day weekend in Sacramento, Calif., helping my oldest daughter and her family move there from Minnesota. My daughter went to college in Minnesota after graduating from Billings Senior High in 1998, then ended up staying there to work and to earn post-graduate degress. And now she’s in Sacramento. (more…) Continue Reading →
“Bums,” they called them. “Lazy trash,” they said. I was standing at a railroad crossing in downtown Billings during a frenzied street dance when a slow-moving train passed by. Three modern-day hobos sat in one of the box cars—two young men and a young woman. The businessmen and women standing next to me that June afternoon apparently couldn’t help but comment to one another, as if reassuring one another that their lives were superior. Continue Reading →
Our neighboring, and often overlooked, state of Idaho is home to a nearly contiguous 3.4 million-acre area that comprises the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness and the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. The areas are not fully connected, but only because they are separated by a narrow, 10-foot-wide, 95-mile-long road known as the Magruder Corridor. The Magruder has been described as one of the most remote, wildest roads in the Lower 48. (more…) Continue Reading →
MEDICINE ROCKS STATE PARK — There is a double allure at this remote 330-acre park in the southeast corner of Montana. One—the obvious one that would seem to comport with the traditional notion of a state park—has to do with the rocks themselves. They are beautiful and majestic, in some cases haunting, wind-sculpted spires of sandstone or great hulking blocks full of arches, tunnels, caves and deep pockmarks. (more…) Continue Reading →
EKALAKA — In muddy badlands off Powderville Road southwest of Ekalaka, Nathan Carroll is on the hunt for amber. Don’t picture large chunks of bright, translucent amber. Most of what he finds is very small, not much bigger than a ladybug, and they are almost the color of a blood orange, nearly opaque. He and some volunteers have been filling little plastic jars with pieces of amber all summer, and he’s not even sure what he’s got yet. (more…) Continue Reading →
“Being Evel,” a new documentary about Butte’s most infamous son, works hard to capture Evel Knievel as he really was—a monumental daredevil and self-promoter who could also be a selfish jerk. The film presents abundant evidence for his having been a jerk. There’s talk about his pursuit of lowlife crime as a young man, and footage of a surly Knievel cursing at the press corps before his big jump over the Snake River Canyon. (more…) Continue Reading →
CODY, WYO. — If things seemed a little crowded last month during your visit to Yellowstone National Park, it wasn’t just you. It was the million other people who picked July to visit Old Faithful, Yellowstone Lake, Mammoth Hot Springs and the park’s other top attractions. (more…) Continue Reading →
