Yellowstone Country: Beds and Breweries

You won’t have any luck finding accommodations at the heavily guarded RV trailer cemetery up the road, so press on through Pray, MT, until you find Chico. Centered around an early 20th-century lodge, Chico Hot Springs Resort offers rural seclusion and a host of luxurious amenities for visitors, including a mineral hot-springs pool that can reach temperatures of up to 112°F.

A "historically romantic site since 1900" set amidst rolling hills in the Absaroka Beartooth Mountains, Chico began as a bathing spot for local miners, and later evolved into a boarding house, medical facility, gambling site, and dude ranch before settling into its current role as a relaxing getaway for families and honeymooners. The Georgian-inspired architecture and craftsman-style interiors of the main lodge are complimented by a variety of antiques throughout, while the Western-themed saloon boasts a pool table, big-screen TVs, and dance floor.

After a dip in the pool, with its shimmering blue waters that require no disinfecting chemicals, grab a bit to eat at The Dining Room, which serves some of the best cuisine in Yellowstone Country, or the less-formal Percie’s Poolside Grille, where I devoured a combination of potato soup and blue cheese and walnut salad; during the summer, the salad ingredients are taken straight from Chico’s beautiful organic garden.

Guests can choose from a variety of accommodations during their stay, from one- or two-bedroom log cabins with full bathrooms to Jacuzzi cabins equipped with a refrigerator, stereo, and private deck. Rooms in the main lodge start at $39/night, and the staff recommends calling ahead to make reservations. Pet owners will be happy to know that little Rover is welcome to stay, too, for a nominal fee.

Though the pool can undoubtedly lull you into whiling the day away in sun-drenched relaxation, Chico’s location affords visitors a variety of outdoors activities should action and adventure be the theme for the day. During the summer, rafting, fishing, hiking, and horseback riding are all easily accessible in Paradise Valley and nearby Yellowstone National Park, while the winter yields cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, and even dogsledding opportunities.

For more information and to make reservations, please visit the Chico Hot Springs Resort website.

Come for the second-largest bronze elk sculpture in the world, stay for the luxurious cabins and close proximity to Yellowstone Park. Located in West Yellowstone, just a short walk away from the western entrance to the park, Hibernation Station is a community of hand-built log cabins that’s perfect for families or couples looking for something out of the ordinary. Rustic? Not really. Full of personality? You bet.

As you walk past the aforementioned bronze elk, perpetually locked in battle and standing at 9-feet tall and 22-feet long, you’ll immediately be struck by the hand-carved cowboys, ranchers, and local wildlife lining each of the 40 on-site cabin’s roofs. That’s your first clue that these aren’t your normal, run-of-the-mill cabins. The second comes as soon as you step foot into your accommodations. Now, each unit is decorated differently and categorized, i.e. Henry’s Fork and South Fork Series, Madison Series, etc., so I recommend heading to the Hibernation Station website, where you can preview each cabin ahead of time and find the one that’s most appealing to you. Once you’ve done that, go ahead and book it.

With two rocking chairs, a satellite TV hidden behind the folding doors of a cabinet/dresser, and a very comfortable bed, I felt like Daniel Boone in his own private mansion. But the huge bathroom, which came stocked with rolled towels and quality toiletries, was the highlight. A huge mirror runs the length of the wall, extending into a tub that was so big that, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I was able to stretch out my long legs without having my poor knees stick out from the hot water in cold rejection. Needless to say, I stayed put for a good 40 minutes before getting out.

Other cabins have fireplaces and full-sized kitchenettes amongst other surprising amenities. Glancing through the website, I’ll tell you right now that the "Wyatt Earp" looks primo, as does "The Montana," "Wild West," and "Mountain Dreams," which has a bed you’ll have to see to believe.

As one might expect from its location, Hibernation Station has easy access to horseback riding, snowmobiling, mountain biking, running, rafting, fishing... the great outdoors are at your fingertips. My friend and I went for a morning jog before heading to Three Bears Restaurant for breakfast, and were thrilled... okay, okay... terrified to see fresh bear tracks on our path after we doubled back. Needless to say, we picked up the pace and made a racket along the way to hopefully scare him off if he was still lurking. Always exercise caution when you’re out and about, as bears aren’t the only wildlife milling around.

For more information, please visit the Hibernation Station website.

Yep, that’s me, Mr. Executive Suite. Who would have thought that my first semi-luxurious stay at a hotel would happen in the sparsely populated, yet wildly scenic, North American outpost of Bozeman, Montana?

You might even call me a go-getter because, according to a slogan found in the hotel, the Wingate Inn is "where the go-getters go." Excellent! My ascension up the corporate ladder has begun! From here on out, it’s expensive whiskey on the rocks, poolside champagne, and long, relaxing massages as angelic servants pluck grapes and Rochelle chocolates into my mouth. Yes, my stay at the Wingate was sure to change my life for the better... for good!

Okay, I’ve gone and got carried away. A 2-night stay at the Wingate just might do that to you. Keep me away from the corporate ladder: whiskey is hard to stomach; champagne gives me headaches; and the relaxing massages, and grapes, and Rochelle chocolates? I’ll take those. But, for a moment, let’s travel back to reality, to September of 2004...

I walked into the welcoming lobby, which was decorated with leather couches, a stone-surrounded fireplace, and a water fountain centered around two erstwhile bears. To my surprise, I was assigned an Executive Suite, and as I trekked up the elevator and down the hallway, I bandied about thoughts of what a real live suite such as this must contain. I was soon made privy: a complimentary basket of goodies, high-speed Internet access, a plush bed, a morning edition of the Daily Bozeman Chronicle, an iron, a hair dryer, a half-kitchen, separate dining and living rooms, two TVs, and a nice-sized bathroom stocked with various toiletries. When I turned on the tube, I was pleased to see HBO, Showtime, and other movie channels appear. Yes, dear business travelers, the Wingate Inn caters to you.

After exploring the room like a little kid explores a toy store, I walked down to the pool for a brief swim. It’s only 5-feet deep, and I felt a little silly swimming "laps" in this less-than-Olympic-size pool, but it was nice all the same. Afterwards, I relaxed in the nearby hot tub, which is adjacent to a small fitness center. Both the hot tub and pool are open daily until 11pm.

I passed out that night to the tune of Dennis Miller’s rants, which were more tired than I was feeling, and awoke to a complimentary breakfast downstairs of muffins, waffles, cereal, coffee, omelettes, fruit, and oatmeal. This was more than enough to fill the tank and prepare me for what would prove to be a rigorous day of mountain biking.

Now, about those grapes and chocolates...

Is it possible that these hotel owners have ESP? Did they somehow tap into my psyche and know ahead of time that I would be arriving with a roaring appetite for fresh, homemade chocolate-chip cookies? As Greg Graffin of Bad Religion once said, "sometimes truth is stranger than fiction." Telekinetic powers or not, I was pleasantly surprised by the at-home feel of what I expected to be just another average Super 8 hotel. After all, how much personality can a mid-grade chain such as this possess? Quite a bit, actually.

As I signed my check-in papers and was handed my room key, I couldn’t help but eye a huge plate of cookies lying on the counter. Pupils dilating, eyeballs rolling in my sockets, I anxiously inquired about their status. To my stomach’s relief, I was told that homemade cookies are baked every day for guests to enjoy, so shiver me timbers and roll me in cookie dough! I was in hog’s heaven as I hastily grabbed two or three (okay, okay... four or five), bit into one, and decided to save the others for later. Bless you, you cookie-baking Super 8 employees... bless you.

But the surprising hospitality didn’t end there. No sooner had I grabbed my sweet snack when the owner himself walked up, introduced himself, welcomed us to the hotel, and pointed out where the exercise and breakfast rooms were located. I pinched myself to make sure I hadn’t passed out under a sea of winnings at the Jackpot Casino across the street, and sure enough, this was really happening. What a pleasant place to rest one’s head for the night!

As for the particulars: centrally located just a few miles from Belgrade International Airport and down the street from a grocery store, restaurants, and bars, Super 8 has anything one could possibly need for a short one-, two-, or three-night stay. Rooms are clean and spacious and come equipped with all standard amenities, including cable TV and a complimentary newspaper. On the main floor, visitors will find a mid-sized pool, hot tub, and a fitness center with an elliptical machine, treadmill, dumbbells, and more.

My last surprise came in the morning. Expecting the usual "continental breakfast" (which is really just hotel code for "almost nothing"), I was pleasantly surprised to discover muffins, cereal, orange juice, coffee, and best of all, waffles made to order! Awww, they even had honey for this syrup-shunning traveler.

Everything about my stay was excellent, but let’s be honest here. The Belgrade Super 8 had won me over by the time I was on my second cookie.

"This ain’t no fast food joint, so if you’re looking for fast food, take your Happy Meal-eating @$$ down the street!" And with that, welcome to the Wolf Pack Brewing Company, one of the finest eateries you’ll find in West Yellowstone.

Established in 1999 and one of only three nonsmoking, alcohol-serving establishments in town, Wolf Pack doubles as a restaurant/brewery, with numerous awards won in the Yellowstone, Great American, and North American beer festivals adorning the walls throughout the cozy seating area. There are about 15 tables total, with a few hanging TVs and a very, very large illuminated picture of horses rounding out the decor. There’s also a small "store" selling various Wolf Pack memorabilia, including T-shirts, pint glasses, and growlers.

We were all hungry after a long day of sightseeing in Yellowstone National Park and biking about 8 miles along the nearby Rendezvous Trail… but we were also craving a cold beer, so we checked out what they had on tap first. The beers have their own menu, and a small paw next to each individual description indicates whether or not it’s currently available. With so many appealing flavors to choose from… well… we decided to try as many as we possibly could! The Wapiti Wheat, Old Snaggletooth Schwanzbier, Lone Mountain Altbier, No. 10 Kölsch, and Storm Castle Irish Stout all come highly recommended.

The kitchen serves traditional bistro fare such as soups and salads, hamburgers, and hot dogs. Appetizers include deep-fried ravioli ($9), beer-battered french fries ($6), and Rocky Mountain Oysters ($11), which, of course, is just another name for buffalo testicles. I couldn’t help but issue a grade-school challenge to my dinner mates to order up a plate, but they wouldn’t budge… not even when I double-dared them!

But the Wolf Pack’s signature dishes are clearly the homemade pizzas, with 10 regular tomato-based and two Brewhouse Specialty pizzas on offer. As a vegetarian, I opted for the Veg Head, served with heaping amounts of fresh tomatoes, broccoli, bell peppers, mushrooms, red onions, black olives, and smoked Gouda. Yes, Gouda instead of mozzarella—it was almost too good to be true! Twelve-inch Veg Heads will set you back $16, while 16-inchers are $20. I guarantee that you’ll have trouble saying no to one more slice.

Don’t forget about Wolf Pack’s "Extras + Add-Ons," too: $1 for a stupid question, $5 for a messy child, $10 for a messy adult, and $25 if you ask for a domestic beer. If you’re not careful, your bill can add up pretty fast!

Of all things, and in of all places, the last thing I expected to see on the wall of Neptune’s Brewery was a vintage poster featuring former Detroit Lion great Alex Karras. And of all the people I expected to meet at this family-run jewel located in tiny Livingston, MT, population 6,000, was a fellow Detroit-area native in Bill Taylor, the amiable self-made brewmaster who eagerly led us on a tour of his labor of love. But I swear that the glowing impressions I left with of the brewery had absolutely nothing to do with the Motown connection... no, really.

Located on a tiny side street off what seemed like Livingston’s only main road, Neptune’s is part bar, part brewery, with Taylor running the show behind the scenes (or more specifically, behind a saltwater tank in the middle of the main floor) and his father-in-law manning the attached Z-Bar up front. The nautically themed decor helps contribute to the relaxing atmosphere that engulfs the bar, but really, the quality of the beers being served and the people serving them are the two biggest reasons why Neptune’s ranks as one of the area’s top microbreweries. The Sacajawea Wheat, Smooth Sailing Cream Ale, and Walk the Plank Stout all carry well-developed, complex tastes, but it was the Clipper Nut Brown Ale, their most popular beer, that took my taste buds hostage. I’m a sucker for nutty ales, and this was truly one of the best I’ve ever had.

Like many brewers, Taylor started his craft out of his basement, using a small 15-gallon system. He has considerably more resources at his disposable these days, cranking out about 30 kegs a month and 210 gallons at a time. He uses all-natural, organic ingredients, including grains from both Montana and parts of Canada, and takes pride in the fact that it still remains a one-man brewing operation.

And what exactly does Taylor do? He oversees and implements the entire operation of turning water, malt, hops, and yeast into beer, from the initial 1 1/2-hour long germinating and rinsing of the grains, to the fermentation period, to what he calls the worst part of all–clean up. After taking the time to carefully explain each step of the brewing process, Taylor made sure we got a few glasses of the final product after the tour. Each sip further convinced me that this tiny Montana outpost is selling beers that compete with the best microbrews in the country.

We were glad to catch up again with a baby-toting Taylor and his sales and marketing whiz, Beau Barnhill, at the annual Brewfest in Gardiner, MT, where they joined 10 other area breweries in the shadow of Theodore Roosevelt’s arch entrance to Yellowstone National Park. Was it the Motown connection that kept drawing me back to their booth? Or was it the tasty beer and enigmatic Neptune personalities? Let’s just say all of the above.

A few blocks off Bozeman’s main strip, in an unassuming building tucked away in the industrial part of the city, a small transistor radio blasts classic rock music on a sunny fall afternoon. A knock on a dust-covered front door bearing the Bozeman Brewing Company insignia yields no response from within. Cell phones are dialed, and finally, contact is made. The (brew)master of the house is indeed home... along with his treasure chest of fine microbrew beer.

Once the head brewmaster at Spanish Peaks for 11 years, BBC owner Todd Scott is now knee-deep in the throes of remodeling his own space, where his one-man operation churns out about 27 barrels a week of Bozone Plum St. Porter, Hefeweizen, and Select Amber Ale, Scott’s so-called "flagship beer." Now only used for brewing, he plans on transforming his headquarters’ front rooms into a full tasting room in the near future, which he’s careful to note is different than a full-fledged bar. Ah, legal technicalities are fun, aren’t they?

Scott took us on a tour of his property, taking the time to explain in detail each step of his carefully crafted brewing process. We learned about how he tricks the malted wheats to break down their insoluble starch, how a beer’s hops help balance out the sweetness of its malts, and were even allowed to taste a handful of the fresh wheats and barleys. Every brewmaster has his own personal methods of making beer, and while Scott, like many other microbrewers, likes a rich hops flavor in his beer, he knows that it’s an acquired taste. "I love hops, but I don’t think most people like it as much as I do, so I try to tone down it down as much as I can," he says.

Of course, our tour wouldn’t be complete without sampling some of the finished product, and Scott was gracious enough to let us try each of his ales. He’s right–the Select Amber Ale is certainly one to write home about, though I did enjoy the others as well. With another stop scheduled at The Great Brewing Company in just 20 minutes, we bid Scott and his Bozeman Brewing Company farewell and jumped back in the truck, the sound of classic rock fading away as we pulled out of the driveway.

Stop! If you are one of a million Americans suffering from Six Pack of Beer Syndrome, look no further! The Great Brewing Company and owner Howard McMurry have created the seven-pack of beer to make sure that when six just isn’t enough, you never have to go to the store to get another!

GBC’s clever seven-pack packaging might be their hook, but their beer is what seals the deal. A four-employee operation handles this, the biggest brewery in Yellowstone Country, with an on-premises bottling machine handling about 1,000 cases a day once or twice a week. That comes to about 10,000 barrels of beer a year, which is a boon for local farmers since McMurry gives away all the leftovers from the brewing process.

McMurry, who attended a brewing school in California and has now been in the business for about 8 years, didn’t always possess his now well-honed knack for developing unique beers. "I did make some home brews at first, but they all sucked!" he confessed. Fortunately for him, he now has a 20-barrel system, a huge storeroom, and the aforementioned bottling machine (a rarity for area breweries) at his disposal. He also acquired Moab beer on September 1, 2004, and is doing 90% of GBC’s sales in Utah, where the maximum alcohol limit is 4.0% by volume (3.2% by weight). It may have been weaker than most beers, but the Baja Especial (from a seven-pack, of course) still had the refreshing bite that all Mexican beers have.

After taking us on a full tour of the brewery ("You don’t want to piss of the yeast during the brewing process because it’s a living organism! So we take special care to cool it down"), McMurry led us back to their front tasting room, which is open from 10am to 8pm. It’s a basic room with picnic tables and a fly-fishing theme, with anywhere between 7 and 10 beers available on any given day.

After a few cold ones we departed McMurry’s company, but not before he graciously offered each of us a seven-pack to take with us. And wouldn’t you know, a few weeks later, back home in Brooklyn, there came a night when a friend stopped and requested a beer. All hail The Seventh Bottle of Beer!

Brewfest is supposed to last until dusk... but according to one of the brewmasters on-hand serving up their signature suds, it depends on what your definition of dusk is. "When all the beer is gone, that’s when it’s dusk!" he said.

What began in 1999 as a small celebration of the area’s many fine microbreweries has now blossomed into a full day of music, food, and, of course, drinking, with 11 brewers represented in 2004. Held at a small park in Gardiner, and shadowed by Teddy Roosevelt’s arch entrance into Yellowstone, Brewfest was one of the events I was most looking forward to during my tour of Montana... and who wouldn’t feel the same way? With mountainous terrain and blue skies as a backdrop, about the only thing one has to worry about is drinking too much, too early. Thankfully, my group and I successfully paced ourselves long enough to make it to dinner without seeing doubles, which was no small feat judging by the glazed eyes and big smiles of our fellow attendees as the sun began to set.

We paid the $5 entrance fee, which includes a plastic Brewfest mug and two beer tickets, and made our way towards the beer tent, with the sounds of bluesy rock ‘n’ roll music helping set a worry-free tone for the day. With so much good beer to choose from, we were delighted to reacquaint ourselves with a few of the brewers we had previously met, including Bill and Beau from Neptune’s Brewery in Livingston, MT.

After downing a few ales and chatting with Beau about his big marketing plans, I retired to a picnic table to take it all in. All kinds of people were out enjoying themselves, from senior citizens to young, crunchy hippies who brought their dogs along with them. Hamburgers, bratwursts, and other barbecue-friendly eats were served throughout the day, and of course there were other refreshments available in case you just couldn’t drink another beer. But what are the chances of that, right?

Afterwards we "enjoyed" watery spaghetti and mysterious green beans at a local restaurant, though by that point we were just glad to have something, anything, to help soak up the beer. The festivities continued at a few neighboring watering holes, but as far as we were concerned, dusk had fallen on Brewfest 2004.