Stop 1: Browning

Montana’s secret is that it’s a foreign country. Or, more accurately, I feel like I am visiting from a foreign country. The state’s original landlords were, after all, the Blackfeet Nation. Today Browning is their capital.

Here I get a latte from the tipi-style Big Lodge Espresso. And bunk down in a comfy tipi with fitted sheets at Darrell and Angelika Norman’s Lodgepole Gallery and Tipi Village. Here I realize it’s best to forget what I know, casting off my familiar surroundings. Darrell’s a Blackfeet. Angelika, who is German, arrived as a visitor.

“The first time I saw the Rockies,” she says, “I didn’t want to leave. I was crying. And then I met Darrell. And here we are.”