Bison 2

The bison pack 2 explored the main street area of Gardiner Montana on Thursday, May 25th around 9am. We walked down Highway 89 and Park Street then returned to the Absaroka Lodge. While walking we learned a lot about the town through our interactions with locals and just observing our surroundings.

Physical Setting

The area that we explored would be considered bustling for the area. We were somewhat surprised that even at 9am a lot of tourists were out exploring the shops around town. A lot of the shops sold ice cream and coffee along with many different souvenir items. The buildings themselves looked like they had been there for a while, but had been updated on the insides especially. Despite the area being a little larger than we had expected, we realized how secluded the town is when we saw a sign that pointed to the closest Wal-Mart, which is 83 miles away from town.

Interaction

While exploring the main drag of shops along the other side of the river, we decided to go in to a local saddle shop, called Kellem’s. There we talked to the owner, whose husband happened to be the owner of Absaroka Lodge where we’re staying here. She was very friendly and eagerly asked us where we were from, after which we asked her where she was originally from. She told us that she was from Brazil and had come to the U.S. originally as an interpreter with a group. While in Gardiner, she met the owner of the Absaroka Lodge, they fell in love and were married a year later, which quite frankly was adorable. She said she has enjoyed living in Montana for roughly the past 20 years, although she said she didn’t really appreciate the winters. After leaving her store, we browsed through a few more shops before entering the Wagon Wheel Trading post. While we were there, the owner Dianna, told us about how her and her husband had moved to Gardiner 17 years earlier to start a church. She was very open with us and kept telling us about how Gardiner had a small town kind of feel and was extremely welcoming. She went on to tell us about how her and her husband were only going to keep the store open for another season, before they sold everything and traveled around the country in their RV full time because her husband was in congestive heart failure.

Our pack explored Cooke City on Saturday, May 27th at approximately 1pm. Cooke City is a small town in the mountains that is made up of one major road. The section of town that our pack explored was along the main road.

Physical Setting:

The town is completely centralized around the main road that runs through the town. Hotels, cabins, souvenir stores, and restaurants can be seen on either side of the road. The huge number of lodging choices along with restaurants helped to show our pack the influence that tourists and visitors have on the town. The souvenir stores also had very large storefronts in comparison to some of the other businesses in town, which emphasized the impact of tourists on town.

While walking through town, our group came upon the Cooke City General Store. This store is labeled very proudly as a registered historic building in town and is clearly very well loved. Despite the fact that the town obviously draws in a lot of tourists, the history of the town is proudly shown through the Cooke City General Store.

Interactions

While in town, we didn’t encounter many locals sadly. While in the Cooke City General Store, we stroke up a quick conversation with the man working behind the counter. We noticed that he had a thick accent so we decided to ask him where he was from. He simply said that he was from Minnesota and that he came to Cooke City because of the snowmobiling and was offered a job doing roadwork so he decided to stay. When we asked him if a lot of people came to Cooke City from other places, he said yes and that only 3 or 4 people stayed in Cooke City for life. After our encounter with the man in the general store, we didn’t encounter any other locals in the town other than those working in the souvenir shops trying to sell things to us.