by Dan Austin

Here’s a bet you’re bound to win – ask someone for Montana’s state motto.  Even if they’ve visited recently, to climb mountains, raft rivers, bike or hike or to experience Yellowstone National Park, you can bet them ten to one and still win a bundle.

Some will smile knowingly and take your wager, thinking “Big Sky Country” is the answer.  And boy does that moniker fit.  Travel the state from its green eastern prairies to its western white-capped peaks (a distance of some 500 miles!) and you’ll marvel at the immensity of open space and the big blue sky.  But no matter the popularity of the nickname, and even its presence on some highway signs, your bet’s still safe.

Another friend might come up with “The Last Best Place,” which has gained in popularity of late as everyone from recent college grads to the just-retired look to live where they can have an active outdoors lifestyle while still enjoying the culture and convenience of big towns and small cities.  When everywhere else with all these attractions seems to be full or quickly filling up, it’s no surprise that Montana’s wide-open spaces  have brought it the more recent nickname of last of the best places.

So what’s the real answer? You’re going to be surprised, for it isn’t in English, and unlike so many states’ mottoes it isn’t Latin either.  It’s Spanish – Oro y Plata ” – which translated means “Gold and Silver” (apparently early Montanans came up with the motto and then liked the “ring” of it in Spanish). It refers to what first brought American pioneers to the Montana Territory back in 1860, when gold was discovered. Until then, Montana was nearly entirely occupied by Native Americans – descendants of tribes like the Kootenai, Crow, Blackfeet, Flathead and Sioux – who had enjoyed the place all to themselves for some 10,000 years.

Think about that.  More than half a century after Lewis and Clark had traipsed in both directions across the state (1805-06) and reported glowingly on what they’d discovered, it was still inhabited almost exclusively by Native Americans.  Then gold was found and, a single decade later, 20,000 miners and merchants had arrived (a century and a half later Montana’s population is still under one million).  Their nickname for the place?  The Treasure State.

Montana was a treasure as well for the next batches of newcomers – the men driving cattle, the gangs laying rail, the tough ranchers and loggers and the families who came to settle the land. That last bunch is still around in big numbers, for today, agriculture is Montana’s biggest industry. Timber is the biggest “industrial activity.” The nation’s largest storehouse of coal is here, and oil, and natural gas.

But best of all, in most places, the state still looks the way it did way back when. A century and a half later, our population is still less than a million! It’s no wonder travelers looking to get away come for weeks at a time to get their Big Sky fix. Nearly two decades ago, I was one of those travelers – only I fell in love with the Oro y Plata State and never left!

If you’re considering where to go this summer to get away from it all and have some fun and a Montana vacation is on your radar, I invite you to accompany me for a few paragraphs as I describe the “loop” our signature Montana adventure follows – one of geologic wonder and of flora and fauna beyond compare. It’s my absolute personal favorite loop. Only a few hundred miles in length, it contains much of the best this state has to offer. Sensory overload I always call it.

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We begin in Bozeman, a hip Western college town that sits in the Gallatin Valley at an elevation of almost 5,000’, with mountain ranges (the Madison, Bridger, Gallatin, Tobacco Roots…) in view in nearly every direction.  Main Street is lined with attractive brick buildings which, to Eastern eyes, have a bit of the Dodge City look.  It’s named for John Bozeman (who laid out the Bozeman Trail in the 1860s), and it is comfortably small – fewer than 35,000 people.  But the county it sits in is larger than two states!

Our loop takes us south out of town on a winding rural highway along the Gallatin River, through a canyon the river has carved over eons as the snowmelt and summer rains from the mountains rushed to lower ground.  You’ll see high peaks, lush forests, roaring rapids, and soon will come to Montana’s most famous ski resort (fun in any season) – named, of course, Big Sky.  In summer you can reach the highest mountain (Lone Peak – over 11,000’) by foot or, in four minutes, by tram.  But either way the views are surreal.

Whether you’re catching your breath from the hike or just enjoying the panorama, this lofty spot is perfect for thinking about how these mountains came to be.  As with the rest of the Rockies, it’s believed this range was created by a tectonic smash-up of unbelievable proportion, one massive “plate” shifting into and onto (or under) another, causing that neighboring piece of the broken eggshell to rise or fall.

This rumpled part of Montana is the piece that rose skyward, and which avoided the scraping, leveling action of later glaciers which, during successive Ice Ages, planed the eastern, green- and gold-brown prairie part of the state flat.  Or at least much flatter.  Farther south, as we near Yellowstone, we’ll come to evidence of tremendous volcanic eruptions and resulting magma flows.  Eons of erosion from wind and rain and snow carved this formerly molten rock, even as geologic uplifts fought back to form new plateaus.  Understanding the terrain here takes effort, for you are looking at dramatic action frozen in time – at least for now.

There’s nothing better than spending the night at a Montana guest ranch along the Gallatin River. From your cabin porch you’ll see fishermen plying the fast-moving waters for fly-wary trout. Stop early enough in the day for a horseback ride, get back in time for a barbecue. Tough life. Then, sleep soundly in the cool night air (even in summer!) and awaken to another day in something close to paradise.

As you continue heading south along the Gallatin, through national forests on both sides of the road, you’ll notice the canyon getting wider as we close in on the town of West Yellowstone.  A shock to the senses after all the quiet natural beauty, it’s also (I have to admit it) – fun.  Everything a tourist’s heart desires, from cotton candy to an Imax Theater, from museums and a park visitors center to backwoods survival gear, is here.  Knock yourself out.  For it’s another – an other – world once you turn east and enter our nation’s very first national park. OK;  technically the majority of the Park is in Wyoming, Montana’s close cousin to the south, but a little creative license needed here. As you’re about to discover, it was first for a reason, and after the scores of parks I’ve visited it’s still my favorite by far.

But then, why wouldn’t it be?  There are ten thousand geo-thermal wonders here, half of all that exist in the entire world, a greater single collection than anywhere.  Yellowstone is “the largest sanctuary for western large mammals in the lower forty-eight states,” with two thousand buffalo, twenty thousand elk, griz and black bear and moose and bighorn sheep and…, well, you’ll have to come and see the rest yourself.  It’s a zoo that’s more than twice the size of Delaware – without any cages.

Wait – there’s more.  A waterfall twice as high as Niagara Falls, the largest log structure in the world (the enormous Old Faithful Inn), the largest mountain lake in all North America (Lake Yellowstone), a live Tyrannosaurus Rex….  Okay, I’m kidding about the dinosaur.  But all the rest is true.  As is the magma you’ll be seeing soon after you enter the park from the west, evidence of “catastrophic volcanic eruptions” which spewed out so much molten rock that it collapsed what is now the center of the park, “forming a 28- by 47-mile caldera, or basin.”  It is this still-boiling cauldron just below the surface that powers the mud pots, fumaroles, hot springs and shooting geysers which we all come to see.

I don’t want to, and you won’t want to, but it’s time we continued our loop north out of the park.  (Hey, you can always come back.)  Once you’ve torn yourself away from the appropriately named Mammoth Hot Springs (where the elk walk calmly outside the hotel and past the stone buildings of Historic Fort Yellowstone), you’ll exit through (Theodore) Roosevelt Arch, dedicated in 1903.  The wonderful words chiseled elegantly into the massive stones say it all:  “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.”

But the beauty doesn’t end, for we exit into the wide, glacier-carved and again correctly named Paradise Valley, running north between the high Gallatin Mountains on your left and the lofty Absaroka range on your right.  You’ll have marveled at the falls of the Yellowstone River inside the park; now you have the opportunity to raft its whitewater rapids.  What a thrill!

Once back on the road you’ll see why the Hollywood hit movie “The Horse Whisperer” was filmed here.  Those stunning skies, the mountain vistas, and the windblown waving fields of wheat which filled so many scenes were not computer-generated or created in a studio.  That was Mother Nature at her best.

Lodging at its best, Montana-style, is here as well – at Chico Hot Springs Lodge (added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999).  For more than a century visitors have been soaking in the hot-spring-fed pool, gathering in the Victorian-era lobby before and after an excellent dinner, and sitting in the porch swings wishing time would stand still, at least for a while.

But it won’t.  And maybe it shouldn’t.  For we still have to complete our loop back to Bozeman and begin thinking about returning next year to see another beautiful piece of this big state.  Glacier National Park?  Flathead Lake?  Oh, the choices!

Maybe it’s time to vote on a brand new motto for Montana.  Put me down for The Toughest Part is Going Home!

If you’re not already an Austin-Lehman Adventures traveler, you may not be familiar with our approach to active vacations. At ALA, we’re no strangers to multisport adventure travel. In fact, we’ve been blazing new trails that help our travelers enjoy some of the world’s most beautiful places in the most exciting and invigorating ways possible since 1985.

An active vacation is a natural antidote to the monotony of everyday life. But take a look at the itineraries offered by most adventure travel companies, and you’d think that they’re trying to bore you with a dauntingly monolithic schedule of biking day in and day out. To truly get to know a place, sometimes you’ve got to get off the beaten track. And that usually means slowing down and getting yourself of out toe-clips. Sea lions and otters look way cooler up close from a kayak, and exploring glaciers is more comfortable (not to mention safer) on two feet rather than two wheels. 80-mile bike rides every day of your vacation isn’t the way we like to do things at Austin-Lehman. That said if you’re into that sort of thing, our guides are happy to help you peddle to your heart’s content!

At ALA, variety is the name of the game. Most of our trips are organized around two activities that our travelers love most: hiking magnificent trails through unspoiled nature and biking some of the most spectacular byways you’ve ever seen. But the fun doesn’t stop there. Depending on your destination, we add other activities that allow you a true taste of the local flavor. From paddling your way around the Galápagos Islands and the waters of Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, to safari excursions through the Costa Rican jungle or savannahs of South Africa, you can’t get any closer to the action than traveling Austin-Lehman style.

We us the term “adventure” loosely here at ALA. To us, an adventure isn’t necessarily something that sends adrenaline coursing through your veins (although there’s no shortage of that sort of thing on any of our trips). We believe you’re just as likely to find adventure visiting the ancient Anasazi ruins in the American Southwest, watching a local artisan practice an age-old craft in a village in Oaxaca or sipping a glass of local wine in a chateau in France’s Loire Valley. For us, adventure is anything that gets you going, gives you a taste of local flavor and makes you look at the world a little differently.

Over the course of 20+ years of leading the pack in multisport travel, we’ve helped more than a few people discover their own sense of adventure. In search of a different way to see the world, Charlie Wiggins of Campbell Hall, New York made his first foray into adventure travel on ALA’s Glacier and Waterton Lakes trip several years back. While Charlie has long been avid cyclist, neither he nor his wife had ever taken a multisport trip before. Fortunately, their hunger for a new approach to travel paid off. Charlie tells Austin-Lehman, “That trip was the best trip I had ever taken. It lifted our spirits, woke up our senses, and gave us a whole new sense of adventure we never knew was inside us.” Austin-Lehman’s multisport approach made sense to Charlie, too. “We loved breaking up the activities like biking in the morning and hiking or rafting in the afternoon.”

Since their first trip with ALA, Charlie and his wife have been on several more adventures, including visits to Alaska and the Canadian Rockies. In fact, you might say they’ve been bitten by the adventure travel bug. In the past couple of years, Charlie and his wife have, as he tells us, have gone “native.” “We’ve gone kayaking and camping in the backcountry of Lake Clark in Alaska, just the two of us. Last summer we backpacked in the Canadian Rockies and I took a 14-day rafting trip on the Kongakut River to the Arctic Ocean in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. I can’t get enough of that adrenalin rush or ‘pucker factor’ as one of our former guides used to say.”

To be honest, we’re a little jealous of all the fun that Charlie and his wife have been having, but we couldn’t be prouder that it was a fateful Austin-Lehman trip all those years ago that sparked his sense of adventure. As he tells us, “We are thankful that the first outdoor multisport adventure trip we ever took was with Austin-Lehman. Any other company may have made our first experience our last.”

Charlie isn’t the only person whose life took a distinctly more adventurous turn after getting to know the Austin-Lehman way of traveling. Since his first multisport experience on a visit to Glacier National Park, Ken Lyons of Ringwood, New Jersey has been on several trips with ALA. Although he is a lifelong outdoors enthusiast who has enjoyed camping, backpacking and the sheer joy of being in the woods since his time as a Boy Scout, Ken had never considered an active vacation until an ALA catalog came in the mail. He tells us, “When I got the catalogue in the mail, my heart started pounding. There were pictures of destinations that I had remembered seeing through a View-Master as a child. Scanning the catalogue, I knew right away that this kind of vacation was something I would love to try. I had done my share of hiking and biking, had done some horseback riding and white water rafting. To do all of these activities in one week in some far away destination was something I had dreamed about doing.” Fortunately, Ken’s was not a dream deferred, and he was off to Montana shortly thereafter for his first multisport vacation.

About a minute into his first bike ride with Austin-Lehman, Ken knew this was the experience he was looking for. “After biking about 200 yards up the road, I felt a rush of elation – this was exactly the kind of trip I wanted! The rest of the trip was one series of highlights, one after another…from rafting the Lower Flatbrook River to bicycling part way up Going to the Sun Road…to horseback riding, great hikes, great guides and great guests. This trip was in August of 1995 and I remember it still like it was last month. The next to the last day, I actually felt sadness that the trip would soon be over. And when I got home, I felt like a new person – like my spirit had been rejuvenated and I was ready to take on whatever came my way. I love this kind of a vacation so much that I have now been on seventeen of them! Each is special in its own way and I remember every one and the people I shared them with. When I’m stressed out by life, I simply go back in my mind to these trips and it raises my spirits and gets me thinking about my next adventure.”

Neither Charlie nor Ken knew what they were getting into when they first signed up for a trip with ALA, but for these two intrepid travelers – as well as hundreds of other Austin-Lehman alumni – multisport travel has become not only a great way to vacation, but also a new way to see the world. We invite you to visit our website or contact the office to find out more about our upcoming multisport adventures. After all, with summer just around the corner, a biking-hiking-rafting-riding-cultural-dining adventure may be just what the doctor ordered to shake off the last of those winter doldrums.