Missoula Top Tens

Ten Things we love about Missoula

1.       It’s biker/pedestrian friendly. Mostly this is true. There are bike lanes and paths almost everywhere. Riding along the river is beautiful. Riding on Orange St (the busy main road that we live on) is neither beautiful nor comfortable. People will stop on a dime if they see you’re trying to get into a turning lane, but on busy roads it’s easy to become invisible once you leave the bike lane.

2. It’s beautiful. It’s taken me awhile to say this because I was a little shocked to find how dry and yellow the landscape is here, but I’ve grown to appreciate this new landscape.  Lots of rivers and valleys and sheer mountains.

3. The river. The river really redeems the dry landscapes here. We’ve spent a good bit of time loving the river. Floating on tubes, swimming, and getting washed down river by the current are regular summer activities. We also enjoy romantic evening walks and chats riverside.

4.       It’s a city, but it feels like a community. People seem to rally together to appreciate art, music, and food quite often. Wednesday lunch and Thursday dinner we often picnic at Caras park while listening to local bands. The Farmers’ Markets here are huge in size and attendance. It definitely gives the city a familiar feel.

5. Hippy, earth friendly, indie loving, hipster residents. We regulary see hippy hipsters on their bikes toting backpacks brimming with veggies. We love that the market is a happening place for street performers (that look like they walked out of various classic novels). The indie population also attracts great music (gillian Welch, The Head and the Heart, Trampled by Turtles).

6. Good Foods. We get a lot of our food at the Farmers' market, which is delicious and great, but we also frequent The Good Food Store. Picture a high class health foods section the size of Kroger or Weis Market. One of our favorite things there is the goat cheese and olive selection.

7. The Friendly Factor. People seem to genuinely care. Cashiers asking about your day, followed by long pauses they expect you to fill, are a regular occurence. People also have unusually big smiles on their faces as they pass you on the street and on trails you talk in some way or another to everyone you pass.

8. Community awareness of social issues. Non-profits abound. Lots of people are intereseted in being educated about poverty and/or volunteering.  There are also regulars at the Farmer's Market picketing about oil drilling.

9. The wilderness is right next door. There is a unique coexistence of city and rugged wilderness here. We drove a full day in Montana without seeing more than a couple of towns.  It's also very wild and beautiful - we are always aware of the presence of wild animals, especially bear and mountain lion even though we have never seen one (and probably never will).  Just the other day we went to a friend's house for a potluck and there were some deer just hanging out across the street.

10. The weather thus far.  We love that it's dry enough that we're not suffocating and still hot enough to go swimming.  We definitely don't miss the humidity of Virginia even though our skin is already drying out.  It also gets pretty cool at night so that we don't have to sweat ourselves to sleep.

Ten Things we don’t love about Missoula

1.  It seems like everyone smokes, including the forest.  Recently it's been chokingly bad.  There have been wildfires in all directions around us and we can definitely tell.  Yesterday we went out at 8 pm and it was already dark like it was 9.  Also, I am reminded of Israel by how many people that smoke here.  Usually people are okay about smoking at public events, but anywhere else it's pretty annoying.

2. People like dogs.  Dogs Dogs Dogs, everywhere.  I have three general categories for dogs: Big, small, and ugly.  People mostly pick up after their dogs, so it's not too bad in that regard, but people love their pets too much.  Also, some things that make me sad are the amount of non-profits dedicated to pets - such as Animeals and their popularity.  There was also recently a "bone ball" that was all for pets and pet-owners - these events are not unusual.

3. Water Waste. People don't really seem to have any idea that there is a limited amount of fresh water on our planet.  People water their lawns all the time, even during the day when most of it is probably just evaporating.  Yesterday I was biking along and I saw five small (probably 1X3 feet) bands of grass that were in between the parking lot and the side-walk and sprinklers on each little plot - greenest grass in Missoula!

4. Lack of recycling.  For an environmentally conscious city, here is one thing that's lacking.  There are a few private recycling companies, but I think most people just throw their recyclables in the trash.  Target is pretty much the only place that takes and recycles glass.  The only place I've seen recycling done well is at public events.

5. Restaurants are either burger and beer style bars/breweries, food trucks, or high end pricey restaurants - not very good for economy dating!

6.  Seems to be a very spiritually polarized place.  It seems to be a mixture of watered down, wishy-washy spirituality and conservative Christianity.  It's hard to find people that are serious spiritually and also alive in the Spirit and working in the community as ambassadors for Christ in real ways.

7.   It's annoying to us that it's kind of a competition to see who can do the most extreme outdoor activities.  It's a pretty outdoorsy kind of crowd here.  Oh yeah, we only did a three-mile hike to the falls, that's nothing compared to your 10k triathalon training run/swim/bike uphill both ways...etc.

8.  The dryness can be a curse, too.  It's very dusty and yellow here and our skin gets very dry and itchy.  It's also easy to get dehydrated without knowing it.  Also, our apartment is brick and sometimes it takes a long time for it to cool off in the evenings.

9. There seems to be a pretty widespread never-grow-old mentality here.   Whether it manifests itself in doobeage or partying late into the night - seems to not be confined to students.

10. It's very difficult to get around direction-wise.  There are three main streets in Missoula: Broadway, Reserve, and Brooks.  These three make a huge triangle, so it's hard to get your bearing when the main streets are all diagonal to the rest of the streets.  Also it's confusing because some streets magically turn into other streets when you cross certain intersections.  For instance, our street, Orange/Old 93 turns in to Stephens.  Hmmmm...