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#Anaconda montana free#

The Wi-Fi worked great, and it was extremely quiet since we were the only customers. Misty Mountain ended up being a great place to get some work done before settling into our camping routine for the next few days. Their freshly baked pastries were also a nice treat after a few hours on the road. But not only did they have a massive selection of tea bags to choose from, they were also brewing up a couple of specialty teas: Indian chai and hibiscus. TripAdvisor and GoogleMaps had no solution, but fortunately, Yelp revealed a teahouse in the middle of town: Misty Mountain Teas.ДЄnaconda is known for being a gritty mining town, a place for tough guys, so we were more than a little surprised to find a cute teashop with lace tablecloths and flowery cups. Not surprisingly, this little town has exactly zero Starbucks locations, so we were scrambling to find an alternative. Jen desperately needed someplace with a Wi-Fi connection to finalize an article she was working on. Our first stop in Anaconda was an unexpected one. But it did have a vault toilet, picnic table, fire ring, and water spigot, and we appreciated the amenities.

#Anaconda montana free#

Unlike many of the nearby national forests, though, camping in the park isnвЂ™t free (itвЂ™s $18/night for Montana residents and $28 for non-residents). ItвЂ™s peaceful and beautiful, with thousand-foot-high granite walls and a waterfall that plunges over a 50-foot cliff. can be wonderful and more sustainable alternatives to crowded national parks, and Lost Creek was a great example.

WeвЂ™ve realized that the bestВ state parksВ in the U.S. In our time there, we only saw a few other campers occupying the two dozen or so campsites (and this was on a weekend in August). We pitched a tent for three nights at Lost Creek State Park, which is about twenty minutes outside of Anaconda. One thing you can always find in Montana, though? Great places to camp! The handful of very basic chain hotels seemed kind of lame and overpriced, and the bed and breakfasts were a bit out of our budget.

#Anaconda montana full#

(Update: Quite a few Airbnb rentals have opened up in Anaconda since we visited! Options include a room in a historic home, a newly-remodeled cottage, a modern studio apartment, and a full two-bedroom house.) Not surprisingly, Anaconda doesnвЂ™t have a ton of lodging options, and it was particularly lacking when it came to our go-to accommodation: Airbnb. AnacondaвЂ™s colorful and oft-forgotten history seemed like exactly the sort of place we should be exploring. ItвЂ™s why I scour websites like Atlas Obscura, trying to find the weirdest things in the most out-of-the-way places. If you ask us, almost every town has something fascinating to be discovered. Seeing the sorts of places that arenвЂ™t at the top of the TripAdvisor page is one of the main reasons we decided to take this road trip.

Anaconda is only a couple hours from our hometown, yet weвЂ™d never done anything more there than stop for gas en route to the nearby Pintler Wilderness. IвЂ™m often shocked by how little we know about places that are just a short drive away, as if weвЂ™ve already written them off as having nothing worth seeing.

ItвЂ™s MontanaвЂ™s ninth-largest town (which isnвЂ™t saying much) and is mostly known for having a giant smokestack. Unless youвЂ™re from Montana or know a lot about 19 th-century mining in America, youвЂ™re probably not familiar with Anaconda. We wanted to hit up some of the more obvious places вЂ“ like Glacier National Park, Whitefish, and BozemanВ вЂ“ but as weвЂ™d considered this trip over the preceding months, I had made a point that we had to visit Anaconda. ДЇor that test run, we created a short road trip route in our home state of Montana. Last summer, before setting off on a ten-week road trip that would take us through six states in the Western U.S., we decided it would be a good idea to try it out in miniature first вЂ“ make sure our 15-year-old VW Jetta could handle some serious highway miles, check that we had all the camping gear we needed, and see that Jen and I could handle hours upon hours in the car together.