Visit Montana

The festival features hundreds of performers and craftspeople with music and dance

Put together your bucket list and share it for a chance to win it.

This is Montana’s only guide to the arts that is state-sanctioned, and distributed statewide.

I was lucky enough to be going fishing during the warmest month of the year in a place so full of beautiful water and big trout that I daydreamed about it for weeks. Floods, storms, grizzly bears, and even a warning from a mentor were not going to get in the way.

There’s only one way to ever really find the real Montana–Get Lost. Plunge down dusty backroads, peer into small towns, tromp into the wilds and shake hands with local characters through the pages of Get Lost in Montana–The Magazine.

A 1.5-million-acre preserve with no roads and only a handful of permanent structures, the Bob encompasses some of the state’s most spectacular scenery. The only way in is by foot or horseback, which means the huge number of visitors that overwhelm most national parks, including Yellowstone, just 300 miles to the southeast, does not exist here.

The flagpoles lining the inn’s roof were taken down as part of the first phase, Galindo said. Inside a copper ball topping on one of the poles was a note from one of the workmen. The note had survived since 1911 and was even readable, saying something along the lines of "Hope you enjoy this building as much as we do," and was signed, "See you in heaven."

I had a great trip. Not because I got lost on my way to the last best place, but because I know the real Montana is found in the last best people.

You’ll be grateful you made the trip.

Grizzly bears, elk herds, the Old North Trail and a warm community offer plenty of reasons to visit Choteau. The town of about 2,000 is located 52 miles northwest of Great Falls and 72 miles southeast of Browning.