Soak Up the Heat in Yellowstone’s Backcountry

By Dina Mishev

Two confessions. One: I had lived in Jackson Hole for 13 years without ever venturing into the backcountry of Yellowstone. Of course I had hit Old Faithful, and Mammoth, and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and all the rest of the sights you can see without venturing more than 100 feet from your car. But I, like 98 percent of the other visitors to the world’s first national park, had never taken the time to get more than several hundred feet from my car.

Horrible, I know. But it gets worse.

Lions and Tigers and Bears (and Snakes) Oh My!

By Helen Coronato
The Accidental Cowgirl

With spring taking its time this year, my family had to grab a beautiful, sunny day by the horns and make the best of it. We found that our weekly household chores and store errands are all contingent on the weather report; blue skies and warm weather trump all. This kind of flexibility led to a lovely hike on a recent Saturday afternoon.

When I was a kid, I thought that the seasons more or less changed overnight. I didn’t appreciate the small buds on the trees, the way that everything “wakes up” in the spring – sometimes by jumping out of bed and sometimes with a long yawn. As an adult, I want to appreciate that even the smallest changes in nature are worth pause. This year, I am dedicated to getting outdoors looking for signs of spring I can celebrate with friends and family. Or, in this particular case, back away from slowly.

Palettes and Palates

By Dina Mishev

Bring a picnic lunch to make the most of Big Horn’s 

Bradford Brinton Museum & Memorial.

It shames me, but I’ll admit it. I made half-a-dozen trips over ten years to the Sheridan/Big Horn area before stopping at the Bradford Brinton Memorial & Museum. I’m an idiot.

BBM&M isn’t just a museum with the most wonderfully eclectic collection of, well, everything — historic documents, paintings, sculptures, antique religious texts, books, a lock of Robert Louis Stevenson’s hair. It’s a museum within a museum. The home the collection is housed in (with the exception of pink walls in the dining room), is almost exactly as it was when Brinton died in 1936. Brinton’s younger sister Helen is responsible for the pastel paint.

Wanting to honor her brother’s memory, Helen Brinton’s will established the Bradford Brinton Memorial & Museum in 1960. It opened to the public in 1961, making 2011 its 50^th anniversary year.

So a visit here isn’t just a visit to an awesome collection of art, but also a glimpse into how a gentleman rancher lived in the 1920s and 1930s.

And let me tell you, it seems this one lived pretty good. Even if he slept on a fairly small bed.

Bradford Brinton, whose family made its money in the farm machinery business, bought the Quarter Circle A Ranch outside Big Horn from Scotsman William Moncreiffe in 1923. (A bit of trivia: It was Moncreiffe and his brother helped make polo popular in the area.)

During the 13 years he spent off-and-on here, Brinton — to use modern terminology — pimped out the place. There was an addition to the main house. And then he filled new and old with everything he liked. He seems to have liked the good stuff.