Jul 20, 2021
Today, I’ll be speaking with Mel Harrison about all of her favorite outdoor adventures around Livingston, Montana.
Join Mel and me as we spend a winter day cross-country skiing, dog sledding, snowshoeing, hiking, skiing, and ice skating all around Livingston, Montana.
Then, in the end, we’ll also dive into a few summer-weather outdoorsy activities, including fishing, floating, and hiking, that can be enjoyed in the Livingston area!
Mel is an expert on Montana and Yellowstone outdoor recreation and has spent years exploring both for work and pleasure.
She and her family are unschoolers who have shaped their life to include year-long travels, overnight rafting trips, weekly hikes with their homeschool group, backpacking into the wilderness, cross-country skiing, and more.
At TravelingMel.com, Mel writes about her family’s adventures in Montana and worldwide.
She has also authored two guide books focusing on hiking and skiing in the Greater Yellowstone area.
Learn more about Livingston, Montana from Mel’s website: Traveling Mel
And as having only lived in Livingston for 20 years, we’re relative newcomers. People would not consider us locals who’ve lived here, you know, generations.
Mel Harrison
Livingston has a great community. We love the people here. We love… it’s eccentric. There are some quirky folks out there. But that’s really what makes it pretty fun too.
Mel Harrison
And the other thing that I’ve really realized from traveling all over the world and other places … there aren’t a lot of places that have kind of the wilderness that we have here. Where you can go into the mountains and not see anybody or see any sign of humans other than the trail or a sign for kind of a long time. And I just haven’t found places like that on our travels. So that kind of always… the wildness of it, always brings me back.
Mel Harrison
That’s a good point, though, that I usually try to bring up is that there are a lot of places where you won’t get cell service. And so you need to download your Google Maps, and you need to come ready to be a little bit self-sufficient. I mean, it’s not the wild west out here, but you can’t always get what you want right away.
Mel Harrison
And there’s just a really outdoors mindset here … most people who live here, not everybody, gets outside. Because I mean, what else are you going to do? Right. There’s some great restaurants. There’s a couple of small galleries. There’s a great art community here in Livingston, too. But really, if you don’t get outside, you would just go crazy here. Winters are long, and if you weren’t outside enjoying them, that’d be kind of brutal, in my opinion.
Mel Harrison
So for such a small town of 7,000 people or 8,000 people, it’s pretty foodie, and there’s a lot of artists, you know, they say it’s where Cowboys and artists meet.
Mel Harrison
And a lot of times, what we’ll do is maybe we’ll ski for a few hours and then come back to the car or somewhere nearby, and we’ll have a fire … and then just kind of hang around the campfire in the snow for another couple hours.
Mel Harrison
I can’t imagine skiing somewhere that had lift lines. I kind of forget that that’s even a thing, but yeah, no lift lines.
Mel Harrison
That Pine Creek trail I told you, it is kind of popular, but I think I sometimes forget that what I think is a lot of people on a trail might not seem like a lot of people on a trail if you’re coming from somewhere else. You know, if I see other people on the trail, it seems like too many other people on the trail, which is not, you know, which is crazy.
Mel Harrison
This historic downtown of Livingston is beautiful. Once you see it, you’ll realize that, oh, I’ve seen this in other ads and commercials and things like that, because it’s so iconic with this western downtown, big mountain in the background, the neon signs, and we just have such a great community. And like I’ve said a couple of times, you know, there’s all these artists and cowboys and writers and foodies, you know, chefs and it’s this combination of all these interesting people, creative people, in this big outdoor setting that inspires it all.
Mel Harrison
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