Thursday, February 24, 2011

More thoughts...

One thing that we tried to do this trip that we haven’t done in the past is eat our meals at different places. In Bozeman we eat at our favorite places which I was more than ok with. Bozeman has some great little places and whenever we have gone we have stuck with the places that we know and love. In Bozeman we ate at the Pita Pit which is my favorite place in the whole world was on the top of the list, We ended up eating there 3 times total for the trip. I love that place, the pita sandwiches are just awesome and the place itself is a ton of fun. We also ate at the Montana Ale Works and MacKenzie River Pizza place. We discovered MacKenzie River 4 years ago when we were in Whitefish Montana. It is a great place and we enjoy going there.
While we were in Big Sky we decided that we weren’t going to eat our main meals at places we normally eat at. So we started asking the locals for places to eat and as usual the locals were on the money. Here is the list of places that we ate at. Both Melissa and I enjoyed the food at each place.

The Lotus Pad – Fusion Thai Food, really good.

Choppers Pub and Grub – A cool place down in the meadow area. We had a nice lunch there.

Cinnamon Lodge – Awesome spot outside of Big Sky on the way to West Yellowstone, gourmet Mexican food. We ate here on Valentine’s Day and had a great meal.

Bullwinkle’s West – A little bar in West Yellowstone with great burgers.

Wild West Pizza – West Yellowstone – Awesome pizza, a little pricey but well worth the money.

Bucks T4 – This is the place we stayed but the restaurant there is actually one of the best in Montana. We had a very nice light dinner there.

Lone Peak Brewing Company – An awesome little brew pub that is all locals. We had a blast there. They had great food and good beer.

Once again this trip was a little different than others we have had to Montana, since we could not ski a couple days we found other things to do and really had fun doing them. I will say I did miss skiing every day, but we filled our time wisely and did some really cool stuff and had some other great adventures. One thing that I really enjoyed was using the beacon parks in both Bozeman and at Big Sky / Moonlight Basin. Melissa and I bought and wore avalanche transceivers for this trip, we were planning on skiing a lot in the trees and also on the south face of Lone Mountain. We did a lot of tree skiing but didn’t make it to the south face sadly. But any way the beacon parks are a place you can practice your search and probing skills in a controlled environment. In both beacon parks they had a number of beacons buried and a control box to turn them on or off. Melissa and I took turns, turning a couple beacons on and then using our beacons in search mode to find the buried ones. Once we got close using our beacons we would probe for the beacon under the snow. The idea is to simulate searching for a buried victim. We both had a blast practicing searching and probing at the beacon parks. While we are in no way ready for backcountry skiing we learned a lot about searching with beacons and how that all works. We agreed that we it was a good skill to have and that it was fun to learn.

It is hard to be back. It is nice to see my friends at work but during the day my mind seems to drift to the quietness of the snow covered nooks and crannies of Lone Mountain. I miss being there.

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