Day 1:
There’s this moment when you’re going to visit someone in a place where you don’t usually see them when you think they’re not actually going to be here. It’s probably been some big misunderstanding, because we can’t possibly both be here in this tiny airport in the middle-of-nowhere right now. I must give credit for this idea, though, to my friend Michael who described this feeling while visiting me in Chicago last week, but that’s another story.
This was the feeling I was having in the baggage claim of the Billings, Montana airport (which according to my friend, Taylor, used to be international because it had one flight to Toronto). But then there Taylor was and we were hugging, and I was thinking of the hundreds of things I had to tell her in the two months since we’d last seen each other.
I would be visiting for six days. The first would be spent in Billings at her home, and the last five would be spent in Yellowstone National Park where Taylor and her family had visited dozens of times. Three months ago Taylor had asked if any of our college friends wanted to come visit her in July because her parents weren’t going to be able to use their Yellowstone reservation. I had brushed the idea off thinking that it just didn’t seem realistic. But then I remembered that I had basically been saving all my money since forever and wouldn’t it be nice to go somewhere new for a change instead of the repetitive (but still fun) weekend trips to Michigan. I was the only one who took her up on the offer and booked the trip.
Shortly after our baggage claim embrace, we drove out of the airport parking lot in Taylor’s Subaru, which I have come to the conclusion is the Montana car of choice. The terrain, mostly orangish-brown rocky hills with dried scrub clinging to them, immediately made me nostalgic for my childhood half-spent in Crested Butte, Colorado. I’ve always been the kind of person who yearned for space, the kind 
where you can drive and not meet another car for miles. My own town had been under construction all summer, congesting the roads and leaving a general air of grumpiness. But here the air was so clear of smog that I could see all the way to the faint outline of the Beartooth Mountains.
Taylor asked me if I preferred the windows down or the air-conditioning on. At home I almost always keep the air-conditioning on because it cuts the humidity, but there was no humidity to cut. Our first stop was at Albertson’s for trip supplies, and when you’re somewhere new with a friend even the smallest things like a new grocery store seem exciting. I pointed out all the brands I didn’t recognize like in one of those “Spot the Difference” games.
I’ve recently discovered since this trip that traveling to visit friends in their hometown is the ideal way to travel (at least for me). You get a tour of sorts, but you also get to pace yourself in a way that structured tours never let you do. Taylor knew all the must-see places and the ones we could skip in favor of a little down time. Also, it helps that you usually don’t have to pay for lodging or transportation. If you can get over the initial awkwardness of feeling like you’re imposing, you’ll get the local’s view of a place even if that is just seeing another state’s grocery store.
Exhibit A: that night we went to a Mustangs game, which is Billings’ minor league baseball team. Arguably I could go to a minor league game at home, but going to one in Montana gave me more exposure to locals who I met through Taylor. Had I been alone or with my family, I probably would have been on the other side of town already conked out in a Mariott Courtyard. Instead, I was eating what the locals eat (these amazingly crunch sweet fried mini-doughnuts), talking about what the locals talk about (camping, the World Cup, and the fact that we were getting killed by Idaho Falls), and experiencing a more authentic Montana than is advertised in guidebooks. It’s the same anywhere you go. And the perks of traveling with a local only got better once we were in Yellowstone.
Stay tuned for the next part in my Yellowstone series.