I recently went on a short trip to Bozeman, Montana. My daughter and I went to visit Montana State University. We left Corpus on and Thursday and had an uneventful flight to Bozeman. The airport in Bozeman is similar to our airport in Corpus Christi. It’s small with just 5 gates. We left the warm 90 degree weather in Corpus and were greeted by a cool 24 degrees as we arrived in Bozeman. We rented a car and went to settle into our Hotel. We then left the Hotel to meet up with a professor from MSU for dinner. The story is unusual on how I gained contact to one of the research professors at MSU. I was doing surgery one day and mentioned in passing to a nurse that I would be traveling to Bozeman to visit MSU. It so happened that the nurse was from Bozeman and her husband happened to be a research scientist and professor at the University. Small world I thought. I exchanged numbers, gave him a call prior to our trip and arranged a dinner meeting prior to visiting the campus the following day.
Bozeman was established in 1864 by John Bozeman who founded the “Bozeman trail” as a northern extension off the well established “Oregon trail”. For thousands of years before that, the area was inhabited by the Native Americans tribes including the Shoshone, Nez Perce,Blackfeet, Flathead, Crow Nation and Sioux that traveled through the area, called the “Valley of the Flowers”, although the Gallatin Valley was primarily within the territory of the Crow people. Of course, before that time, the area was rich in Dinosaur sea creatures because the area was initially under water from an ancient sea that extended right through the center of the US all the way from Texas. The first dinosaur remains were found around Yellowstone River in 1806.
As we traveled from the Hotel to meet up with our dinner guest, we traveled through town and Main Street and got a nice look at the MSU campus off 11th Street. MSU is huge and overshadows the small streets in Bozeman. However, the Main Street in Bozeman is quaint and very modern and reminded me of places like 6th street in Austin. Many shops, Antique stores, furniture stores, eateries and internet cafes dotted almost every corner. As went through the campus, we encountered an unusual site from our car window. As we looked out over the mountains, which surrounded the entire campus and city of Bozeman, we saw a huge ice storm cloud roll right off the mountain range headed our way. Within minutes, it was snowing and icing with small chunks of hail. We hurriedly left the campus and headed to our dinner meeting.
We ate at the Montana Ale Works, a progressively new eatery that reminded me in part to the Spaghetti Warehouse in San Antonio. This was an old factory building converted into a sleek restaurant. We met up with the professor who was quite gracious and educated us on the workings of Bozeman and the University. We parted our ways after a wonderful dinner and he even helped us de-ice our car in the parking lot before we headed back to our hotel. The next day, we would tour the campus.
The morning tour of MSU was planned before we arrived. Our tour of the campus included a number of parent/son and parent/daughter combos from places such as California, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Nevada and Montana. It had snowed the entire night before our tour and the campus was a glistening white. The campus was not quite as busy as it could have been. Most of the students were away for a long weekend. What really impressed me about the campus was the tall pine trees and how the architecture of its buildings seemed to take into account these majestic pines. Whole buildings seemed to be built around a solitary pine. The modern art the dotted the landscape was also appealing as we walked from building to building on our tour. Most of the buildings on campus appeared modern and new, but others were the original buildings of the campus when it was founded in the 1800’s. However, they all appeared to work together well in architectural harmony. MSU was established in 1893 from a land grant as the Agricultural College.
We had the opportunity to meet with a professor of paleontology and visit the labs and some projects that would be presented by the graduate students. It was a good preparatory lesson before we would visit the Museum of the Rockies later that afternoon.
In the afternoon, we would visit the Museum of the Rockies, made famous by the dinosaur exhibits created by Jack Horner. After a nice walk through the museum, we would head back to our hotel and have an early dinner at one of the many Bistros in Bozeman. There is no shortage of good eateries in Bozeman. The next day we would travel back home. Before our travels, we had the morning to walk up and down Main Street and visit the many shops. We even stopped at the internet café to have coffee and scones.
