Travel dates: July, 2022
We love a good college town, and Missoula is an excellent college town. We spent three days there last July, which felt like a good amount of time to see a lot of the city. Missoula offers a great blend of urban and outdoorsy stuff to do, something Montana in general excels at. You can read about our campground, Jim and Mary’s RV Park, in my last post.
Here’s the rundown of what we did there:
River float with Zootown Surfers
I don’t have any pictures of our actual float, but here’s the river we were in! So Zootown Surfers is one of a few companies that does guided rafting and float trips on the multiple rivers in the area. We picked a wimpy float trip instead of actual whitewater rafting. We hadn’t been planning on doing it because we already had a few big ticket things on the summer trip (looking at you, Durango train), but we scheduled it sort of last minute because Dave really wanted to get out on the water. We got a little nervous as the trip approached because there were storms in the forecast, and Dave called to ask about their refund policy. The guy on the phone told him that they don’t cancel or refund for storms and that “studies have shown” that the river is the safest place to be in a thunderstorm. I was skeptical about this and a google search did not turn up any such studies….but! there were no storms! We had a lovely day for our float! You park at their location not on the water and they shuttle you to the river. The float took us right through town and was very chill, but you do go over Brennan’s Wave, an artificial wave in the river right downtown for surfers, and a couple of other tiny rapids (and the river was higher than it often is, owing to late snowfall and a lot of rain that spring), so there’s a small amount of excitement in addition to just a nice, different view of the city. Abe was being especially nervous on this day, so we were very glad we hadn’t opted for anything more intense. Prices are in the $50-60/person range, and kids as young as 2 can go along.
Fort Missoula
We ended up at Fort Missoula twice because I just can’t stay away from living history museums. Well, that and because the first time we went there it was for a 4th of July festival type thing and we didn’t get to see everything. But we did buy expensive corn on the cob from a food truck:
We found out shortly before we got to Missoula that the fireworks display we’d been planning to attend had been canceled, so this was our attempt to find a festive replacement, but we mostly found it sort of hot and crowded. We liked it better when we came back later in our visit, even though it was still hot. It was hot pretty much everywhere we went in Montana, really. And in the country.
On our second visit we checked out the extensive museum about the history of the area, complete with an exhibit about forest fires.
The grounds are extensive outside, with lots of historic buildings, old machinery and train cars, and an old fire tower that you can climb.
At least when we were there, this was not the sort of living history site with a bunch of costumed interpreters or hands on activities or that sort of thing, which is always a bit of a disappointment for me. But still well worth a visit and a great way to spend a couple of hours.
Downtown Missoula
We really liked Missoula’s downtown area and spent a good bit of time wandering around there. Even Abe was pretty into this wandering experience, thanks largely to the Where’s Waldo scavenger hunt they had going on. A bunch of downtown businesses hide a Waldo somewhere, and kids (or I guess whoever!) can get a stamp for every one they find and then turn it in at the bookstore for a prize when they’ve collected enough stamps. Abe collected enough stamps, and, in the process, we got to see a lot of downtown, complete with ice cream, giant cookies, and a very nice public library.
Missoula Art Museum
Really, these next couple are a continuation of the downtown section. The Missoula Art Museum is small, but it’s also free and right downtown, so definitely worth a visit. And if you have younger kids who aren’t so into art they can pass the time looking for the very well-hidden Waldo (if they’re there in July, at least).
A Carousel for Missoula
A Carousel for Missoula comes up over and over again in lists of things to do in Missoula, but I admit I was skeptical; I mean…it’s a carousel. But it won me over. the carousel features a charming back story about a guy with fond childhood memories of carousel riding in Butte plus a community coming together to make the Missoula carousel happen. And then there’s the carousel itself–beautifully crafted and also surprisingly fast. Abe wanted to ride it twice. We liked that first horse he’s on so much we bought a Christmas ornament of it.
Unseen Missoula Walking Tour
There are a few different walking tours offered by Heritage Missoula. We did “Basements and Back Alleys” and found it completely fascinating. Reid, our enthusiastic and knowledgeable tour guide, took us all over downtown, telling us about Missoula’s history from its frontier days through the present, and showing us all sorts of places we never would have seen on our own, including a very creepy Cold War era fallout shelter complete with an aged supply of toilet paper still hanging around.
Tickets are $15 each and the tour lasts around 90 minutes. It’s not really geared for kids, and 9 year old Abe was a bit bored, though he hung in there and enjoyed parts of it (you know–like the underground parts). There’s also some talk of things like brothels, which I gather our tour guide talked about in more coded language than usual because of Abe’s presence. So in general I’d say that teens interested in history will really enjoy the tour and that kids over 8 or so will likely tolerate it fine…I’d hesitate to take a younger kid on it because it is very heavy on stopping and listening to long stories about Missoula history.
Downtown ToNight
We went to one of the weekly Downtown ToNight events held in Caras park right by the river. It was busy and festive, with great music and lots of food and drink options (although we did find the drink buying a little difficult to figure out; you have to pay for a bracelet that then allows you to pay for drinks, if we understood correctly). They have a similar lunchtime event on another day, too, if you’d rather turn in early. We brought Fiesta the beagle, and she loved it. We did have to flee early because a storm was threatening, though.
Here is a lone red balloon floating away. There’s a metaphor there somewhere I bet.
The “L” Trail
I guess it’s a rule that every city in Montana has to have a giant letter built into the side of a mountain for people to hike to. We’d already done the M hike in Bozeman, so we opted for the L here (the L was placed by some school or other, presumably one whose name starts with L).
The trail is less than 2 miles round trip, but it goes up over 600 feet in the 3/4 of a mile or so up, so it’s a pretty relentless climb on switchbacks all the way. I had a surprisingly hard time with it, probably owing to the altitude, but I rested a lot and made it. The kids and Fiesta clambered up no problem.
There’s not a lot to the trail on the way up…it’s just tall grass and zig zagging up the mountain…but you do get great views of Missoula (and the University of Montana) starting pretty much immediately:
And that’s it for Missoula! Next up things get complicated, because we’re at that part of the year where I’m finishing up LAST summer while starting to blog about this past summer. Or at least I think that’s what I’ll do. Because we just got back from an amazing trip to Newfoundland. But also I need to blog about our amazing time in Glacier National Park. And other places. Really, I’m just terribly far behind. Oh well.
maybe you would like to pin this?
Leave a Reply