Missoula, Montana gems: Ghost town, coffee, and food!

Alright, I done messed up. They're gonna put me in the jail. I'm so excited! Nailed it! We made it to our 21st state! Montana! So we've been hanging out in Missoula for the last day and a half and today we're finally gonna get out and explore. But our first stop is Black Coffee Roasting. So the whole reason we came to Missoula is because of this coffee place. For whatever reason I found it on Instagram, I don't know how, a few years ago and I've just followed them ever since and I thought it was a cool space. So we were looking for somewhere to go in Montana and we were like, hey let's go to Missoula. So I'm really excited to be here because it's such a cool space inside. They roast the coffee here. It's like a big like, I don't know, open old garage. I don't know but it's really cool in here and I might give their coffee a try. And they make really good coffee. They have Oatly which is a huge win in my book. They actually put on their menu the beloved Oatly oat milk which is kind of funny because it is very beloved. People who love Oatly really love Oatly. We also bought a bag of beans. So we're starting this new tradition. We used to collect ornaments every time we travel but now we really don't, we don't have a Christmas tree and if we put a little one in there it would probably just be for like decoration. We probably wouldn't put like nice ornaments on it. So our new tradition is to get coffee from local roasters in every place we go to. So we got some from I think Jackson Hole Roasters in Jackson and this time we're getting it from Black Coffee. So we'll get to enjoy this on the road for like a week or so or maybe less depending on how much coffee we drink. That was worth the wait. I of course stick to the name. I didn't put any cream or anything. I had my coffee black. But one thing to know about it is they don't have any wi-fi there. So if you're planning on going to work, don't. Maybe bring a hot spot or just don't. Just go and enjoy your coffee. We did go to an awesome place yesterday called Clyde Coffee. It was super cool on the inside and they did have wi-fi. So we worked from there yesterday and it was great. So we recommend checking out both spots if you're ever in Missoula. Now we are headed deep into the mountains to do something we've never done before. I've always wanted to go to one of these places but it could be a little spooky. We are at Garnet Ghost Town, our first ever ghost town. I'm so excited. So a couple people recommended we go to a ghost town in Wyoming but we didn't have time and they were kind of out of the way. So we were researching what to do in Missoula. We came across Garnet Ghost Town. It's about an hour away from town. We figured that's close enough. Let's just go. Yeah, so we started heading out here. You're on the highway. Then you get off on the forest road. It's still paved. Then about halfway in, it turns to dirt road. And it was pretty smooth for a dirt road but I get nervous in the van with them. Everything's harder in the van. Yeah. But there were tons of cows on the road. That was kind of a fun experience. I guess we scared some and a couple of them started like sprinting and one was running alongside of us for a while. We didn't know cows could run that fast. It was funny. So Garnet was a gold mining town. In about 1898, there were a thousand people that lived here. And it says that there were four stores, four hotels, three stables, two barber shops, a union hall, a school, a butcher shop, a candy shop, a doctor's office, a something else office, and 13 saloons. That is crazy. So I think I read that by like 1917, they collected about $950,000 worth of gold and then the town just totally cleared out. And here it is today. So it's $3 a person to come to the ghost town. But if you have the America, the beautiful pass that we talked about in the first Grand Teton vlog we did, you get in for free. The first building we came in, we're inside this old saloon. And like this looks like it was the bar area. There's like tons of old beer cans and soda glasses and stuff. It's crazy. This is so neat. So on the outside, the buildings look really old, but they still look very like well-maintained because they did preservatives to keep them together. I read something that they're not trying to like make everything look newer. They're trying to keep it in its current state and not get messed up. But then you walk inside and there's like stuff ripped off the walls and it just, it looks like it hasn't even been touched. So the building we're in now was an old store. It said like, you walk in, you look on the left and there's clothes piled up for you to pick out. On the wall right now, they have like saws. I guess you could get drinks and food here. There's a bunch of old shoes. I don't know what that, what is that? An oven or something? Yeah, like a furnace or something. Yeah, this is, I think this is like a washing, yeah, a washing bin. Tons of old shoes though. It's like an antique store, but like way more legit, I guess. This room is dark and it's really creepy. There's a shovel. That's always a bad sign. Don't go into a dark room with a shovel. There's some kind of wall. Whoa, I don't know what this room is, but bring a flashlight if you're gonna go in it. You're putting the ghost in ghost town. I keep thinking that we're gonna see ghosts here. I'm very confused. So I keep thinking this is gonna be creepy, but this room is creepy. So we're in one of the houses and there's an oven. Looks like dinner table. Lazy boy. What you cooking? What's for supper? Soap. It's good soup weather today. There's a nice bed that's just like springs. It's a little bed. It looks comfy. I found the bathroom. Oh, hey. Pretty similar to our van bathroom. The whole family can go together. It's crazy that they let you go into so many of these and half of them, like they just have stuff out. It's not even protected. Some stuff has like a glass or like a plastic in front of it, but some of this you could touch, don't, but you could touch it and it's just crazy that it's still here and they're like letting people do this. This must have been a child house or something. I've always wanted to go to a ghost town. This is like awesome because it's one of the most intact and like well-maintained ones you can find, like not only in Montana, but I think in the United States, North America. This one's cool because you can go upstairs. What do you think this is? Lamp something. Lamp shade? It's got wheels on it. Table frame. Baby walker. Okay, that was close. This is like a leg to something. Stove. So we're inside the Wells Hotel and then the room we're in is the kitchen. They have a bunch of old pots and pans here in the middle island. Our favorite, coffee. Oh, there's three floors. Think they have any rooms available for us tonight? They might. I do like the casino we're staying at though. So this big space is where the poor miners used to stay and they would just roll their bed rolls out in here and just stay in here and it would be warmed from just from like the residual heat from the bottom two floors. And this wood that's on the floor right here, that's all that remains of the walls that separated their little spaces. So we were gonna go for a hike today but we thought let's do something different and I am so glad that we did. Yeah, me too. We were in the visitor center a second ago and on the wall there's a poster of what the place looked like kind of probably in its heyday and there was a fire in 1912 that destroyed a lot of the buildings but I think it says there's over 30 of them still standing and they're in really good condition for being over 100 years old. And the poster that was in there was cool because they were just, there's so many more buildings and we thought this was cool. I can't even imagine how cool it would have been if all those buildings were still here. Yeah, when last week before we came I was looking for stuff to do in the area and I saw this online and I was like, done, we're coming. I'm so glad, nailed it. And now we're back in Missoula and so far we are loving Montana. We're really loving Missoula. The whole drive from Yellowstone to Montana or to Missoula in Montana which is absolutely beautiful, mountains all around. The city is surrounded by mountains. It has like a super cute like small town feel with a cute little downtown, lots of parks, lots of trails. There's a river. It's just really, really beautiful. It's awesome here but it does have one con that we've noticed is it's not the best for boondocking if you like want to be in and around the city center. There's not a lot of options for you. You kind of have to trek out to get out to like some BLM land or the woods. So the two nights we've stayed here, first night we got here kind of late. It was raining really hard so we were just kind of looking for something quick, dirty and easy and so we stayed at the Cracker Barrel. So we went inside, ate a good meal, good big meal. Good southern meal. And then just went outside and camped in there. Which is allowed by the way. Yeah, yeah. It's actually, our van friends have told us it's actually better than a Walmart so we called in advance, we made sure and we just ate there to be nice and support the business too. Yeah and the second night, last night and where we're also going to stay tonight is a casino. So I think like, I don't know if it's all across the country but in the Pacific Northwest at least I've heard or the Northwest, that casinos kind of let you stay there overnight. And the one we were at, you just go in and you sign up for a player card. Just I guess so they can get some information from you. And probably hoping that you'll play. Yeah. I mean they want you to come and spend money but we're on a budget and gambling's kind of addicting. So but I read on there that you could stay up to seven nights. So we're going to go back tonight and it was a perfect spot. Like it's got mountains surrounding and it's kind of out in the woods and it was nice. A lot of people sleeping there. They were super friendly so. Yeah it's a good thing about the van though like putting up the shades in there is it's all completely blocked out and so you can't really tell where you're staying anyways. Yeah now you really don't know. Are you in the woods? Are you in a casino parking lot? You really don't know. So that's the nice thing. Once the window shades go up you can imagine in your mind wherever you want to be. So that's really the only downside we've seen so far. Another fun thing about Missoula is it's home of the University of Montana. Go Greys! So we're right by the campus right now. Yeah the football team I think is practicing right now. Cool. Pretty cool. So if you look behind me you might see an M on a mountain and that's called the M trail. That's the trail we were gonna hike and apparently it's really steep to get up there but it's really popular. You can overlook the city, the University of Montana. It looks awesome. If we had an extra day here we would definitely do it. So if you're visiting and you need something to do and you want a good like butt kicking hike go up there. I'm slipping. So one thing we keep finding in these small towns that we run into is these like white water like rafting type water breaks in the middle of the river that runs through the middle of town. It's really cool and right now we just saw like some kayakers in it and they run up in it and they like swoosh around, swoosh around. One guy did like a 360 but we've seen them here. We've seen them in Boise and Bend. Yeah and in those two cities we saw more people. In Bend people go like tubing. It looks so fun. We also see people surfing. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't think I have enough guts to do it because I don't even like swim well in a pool but it's really fun to watch. And for dinner we came to a place called Five on Black. It's a Brazilian restaurant order at the counter type place which is our favorite kind of place but their style is kind of Chipotle style so you kind of pick your base and your protein and then your sauce and all that stuff so you get to just you know, you've probably been to Chipotle. So we both pretty much got the exact same thing so we got greens and rice in the bottom with beef. That's a bunch of cilantro. These are if you've never had these Brazilian like cheese breads these are like to die for and then a coconut sauce on top and then some sweet potato and this is like torturous. Oh wow. Flavortown? Flavortown. This place is the bomb. It was under $20 for both of us. A huge win in our book. It is so flavorful. The coconut sauce is kind of almost like a curry mixed with like the Brazilian food. We got chimichurri on here. One thing that we didn't mention before is we had the farofa thing. If you watched our Austin vlog we went to this place called Boteco and we had farofa on our meal there and it's just like a I think it's like a crispy like cassava flour or something like that. Oh man, this place is really good. Exciting update. These cheesy roll things called pao de queijo I think are gluten-free so I had to go in and get two for myself because I just assumed I couldn't have them but Adam keeps saying how good they are and it was torturing me so I got two for myself. I'm so excited. It kind of just tastes like a Cheez-It but like gooey. That dinner was magical. Oh, it was so delicious. The food was so good and it was nice to have like some kind of different cuisine. The Brazilian was awesome. Very unique compared to what we're used to. Yeah, the food was awesome. The people inside were really nice and cool and friendly and then also the space inside was really cool. It's kind of an old building and the street it was on was pretty with the lights and everything. It was cool. A plus experience. We've had a really fun couple days just hanging out in town and then like half day adventure today. So really cool and we hoped to have spent more time in Montana but unfortunately, since we got a really late start on the road we had to cut our time very short so we will be back next summer for sure but tomorrow we are headed back to our beloved Washington and we can't wait. Let's do it. I wonder where they put the flat screen. Alright, I done messed up. They're gonna put me in the jail. You're under arrest!