We’ll shy away from directing you to destinations; indeed, our counsel on the matter of tourism is that if one absolutely must partake, then once you or your friends or kin arrive, have them sit tight, hunker down, for as long as possible. Slow down.

1.  Please don’t toss your empty aluminum cans into the fire ring when camping. They neither burn nor melt. Aluminum’s burn-point is somewhere north of 1700 degrees Fahrenheit. We don’t know why campers do that. Slow down. Rinse it in the stream to rid the beer smell, crunch it flat, put it in a Ziplock in your pack, tote it home. For an experiment, try to burn it in your fireplace. Or recycle it, if you must.

2.  Bear spray. Carry it. Be situationally aware—wind direction, background masking sounds (i.e. rushing water, high wind); smell—listen for ravens squabbling over meat ahead. Note freshness of tracks in mud or snow and presence/freshness of scat. (If uncertain of your sleuthing abilities on the latter, it ages about the same as does a healthy fruit- or salad-eating human’s; you can deposit a test sample in your back yard and then study it each day over the next week, or month, or however long you desire, really, to note the aging effects.)

3.  Reconsider your relationship with birdseed—bears are drawn to it more than ever, with drought-stricken summers and autumns. Reconsider your relationship with cats, too, as Montana’s songbird population wobbles—thousands falling from the sky, day and night, warblers and thrushes, vireos and solitaires, like Nemo in The Matrix or the Terminators in Terminator: Dark Fare. Think of all those heavy, urine-sodden bags of kitty litter, heavy also with stinking little logs, one will no longer have to haul to the dump, or even to the trash can. Or at least please consider slowing down, on the kitten parade. If an old one passes, consider not being in a rush to replace it.

4.  Dogs: Don’t let ‘em chase deer. (There’s a law in Montana that a landowner who sees a dog chasing a deer can shoot the dog. They’ll do it, too. Teach them early, and if they won’t learn, keep them on leash—for everyone’s benefit. Be sure to travel with spare leashes in your car, and in your pack, and spare poo-bags. Think of Montana as a church. Neither your dog’s nor your own poo should be left along trails as offering or sacrament.

5.  Watch out for the rut. Those suburban whitetails will gore your butt and never think twice about it. I’d rather run with the bulls in Pamplona than wander the burbs in November. And frankly I start getting a little nervous along about Halloween.  When you move here, everyone’s always going on about the bears—lie down this, fight back that, look big, look away, don’t look ‘em in the eye, look ‘em in the eye—what if it’s a black grizzly, what if it’s just a blonde phase of a black bear, how long are their claws, do they have a hump, is the fur silver-tipped, do they have a dish face…Forget all that stuff (just have your spray ready and be practiced; the safety hasp protecting the trigger from inadvertent release (see Bear Spray Stories) can be surprisingly snug and hard to remove, particularly under duress. Please don’t bring pistols and hand grenades into the forest, into the woods, into the prairie. Save them for the shopping malls and churches of Texas, the universities, and all the other places where one typically sees them. Ice cream parlors. Nobody wants to see them on one’s day off, on the trail, or in the wilderness. They’re not aesthetically pleasing. (See Helicopters, military, and Tanks, military).

6.  (CAVEAT: rifle hunters—and everyone else: should you be fortunate enough to see a grizzly, and should it see you, it might stand up. This is an expression of curiosity and data gathering; if a bear was going to charge you, it wouldn’t stand up, it would already have decided. In addition to being a beautiful sight on its own, a standing bear should flood you with relief—it’s a Get-out-of-jail-free card. You made a mistake, getting too close, but you’re going to be forgiven. It’s a good thing. Don’t shoot.)

(If you are hunting, and a bear is coming hard, shooting at the ground in front of it—the sonic blast of the rifle—is often enough to stop it cold, send it in the other direction.)

(One of the things about bear spray is it casts an exponentially wider cast of deterrence than does a bullet smaller than a thimble flying through the air at 2500 feet per second.)

But back to the real danger: all those suburban deer, entitled to the max, secure in the knowledge the most dangerous thing they’ll encounter is black ice on the streets they wander—around mid-November, the bucks will be in rut, chasing does that have come into estrus. (There’s often a secondary rut a month later, but it’s less intense). You know to not get between a mother grizzly and her cubs, and similarly a cow moose and her calf or calves; but the real danger is getting between a buck and a doe in the rut. Or being perceived as in-the-way by one of those big-antlered suburban whitetails.

7.  And those deer that don’t get you in the suburbs will be waiting for you in the dark. Nighttime is such a dangerous time to drive in Montana. You’ll likely survive a deer-car collision but your car will likely need significant repairs that usually come in just a dollar or two below the deductible. The insurance companies aren’t going to lose money on this. They probably have charts showing the average weight of deer in any month on a county-by-county basis. Slow down.

(Traveler’s tip—AAA Premium will provide two tows of 100 miles and one tow of up to 200 miles each year. So many Subarus, so many deer. You can thank us later).

8.  Cell service in Montana sucks. Sorry. (But only a little).

9.  Remember the part about bird feeders? Similarly, pick up any apples you might have lying around in the fall. More and more each year, as climate change skews all living things cattywampus, apples are bear magnets down in the lowlands. Grizzly bear advocate,the legendary Dr.Chuck Jonkel—who helped invent bear spray—was famed for roaming the sidewalks of Missoula with a giant bag, picking up fallen apples—a reverse kind of Johnny Appleseed. (See Western Cider in the Things We Like of this website).

10.       Things to carry in your car or truck if you are to venture beyond Bozeman: tow strap. Sleeping bag or blanket. Gloves. Ski cap, except in August. A lighter. A flashlight. A saw, for when a tree falls across the road and you don’t want to have to wait for someone else to come along (or not come along) with a saw.  Battery cables. I favor one of those little pre-charged battery jumpers because I’m so often in a place where there are no other cars. (“And what place would that be, Rick?” “I’m not telling you.”)

11.       Seriously: the passes. Learn to be mindful of cresting them and knowing where the north slopes are, or the shaded slopes. There are so many treacherous roads and corners in Montana. Beauty lies always just around the next bend but so too often does black ice. Practice thinking about it in summer—practice anticipating, when you crest a hill and start downhill a bit fast, and into a bit of a turn. When you cross a bridge. Snow’s an annoyance—well, a danger—you might want to consider not wintering here—but freezing rain is a sure-enough killer. The interstate just east of Bozeman, particularly between windy-as-hell Livingston and rich-as-hell Bozeman is notoriously, literally, a killer. So too is Highway 93 north-south to and from Glacier—Evaro Hill, just north of Bozeman, also on 93.

Tell us again just exactly why it is you’re here?

12.       Also, there is a law that requires you to pull over to the side and let the cars behind you pass if four or more cars are stacking up behind you. We’re looking at you, Sunshine State RV, and you too, Hoosiers. It’s fun to experiment with manners.

13.       Also seriously: don’t wear denim or cotton when you hike. Even if you plan to be gone for only a three-hour cruise. Just break the habit now. Some future tourist in the Goodwill store will thank you. In your day pack, good small lightweight things to have include: a lighter, flashlight, a ski cap, a poncho or rain gear. Flashlight batteries of course are notorious for dying or weakening; for peace of mind you might want to consider one of the little hybrids that can work by wind-up if necessary. Many Montanans have been known to take down trail signs and not every trail is all that distinguishable from a game trail. You will get lost. And not in a good way. Well, if you survive, every way of being lost is a good way. But you will get lost.

These things might not even weigh a pound in the cumulative but are the pound that can save your life. This sounds silly to say, but we really care about you: don’t assume your phone will have service or will even hold a charge. It’s a wilderness out there. Slow down and think, before you head out. The vast majority of hypothermia deaths occur between 30 and 40 degrees. If you get wet, you can die. We’re different from Houston, that way.

14.       Finally, a restaurant tidbit: the best cappuccino in Montana is rumored to be in McCammon, Idaho.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g35527-McCammon_Idaho-Vacations.html

It’s on the way to Salt Lake City.