Dillon MT, Population 5,000
I’ve been on the road for a month now and have been in a steady rhythm of climbing, driving, and occasional clothes laundering.
Rock climbing has been my guiding force — taking me from Tahoe, to Squamish BC and all the way to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky. At the same time I’ve been trying to travel with what I call ‘soft eyes’ —not focusing too much on any one thing and instead allowing myself to absorb the people and landscape as I travel.
I’m excited to share more about the climbing, but wanted to kick this blog off by sharing about a couple days I spent in Dillon, Montana — a town with 5,000 people, 4 bars, 3 restaurants, and not much else.
In Dillon, I was visiting an old high school friend and through him got to see a slice of what it’s like to live in small town Montana. Needless to say, it’s different from San Francisco, so here’s what I learned:
- There’s no anonymity.
The first thing I noticed walking around town with my friend is that everyone addressed him by his first name. Elderly couples, young kids, waiters, and waitresses. He’d been there for only a year and yet he knew everyone. This familiarity was friendly and jarring at the same time.
2. Dating is different.
I checked Tinder in Dillon (because of course) and there were two women on the app and they both worked at the local Safeway. With most people getting married before 22, dating in Dillon isn’t easy. It’s also a lot more formal, because everything you do is on display. This all makes being an asshole in Dillon a whole lot harder, but doesn’t leave a lot of room for errors.
3. Keno is in.
While Montana offers endless outdoors, it also has 8 months of cold, snowy winter. If you live in a town where you can explore all the bars in one night (which we did), you run out of things to do quickly. While I’ve never seen it in big cities, a lot of bars in small town America offer gambling. I took a shot at winning in Pat Robertson golf Keno and immediately lost $10. While the stakes are lower in digital keno than any table in vegas so are the salaries for most people in Dillon.
4. The taps don’t work.
For some people, Dillon Montana is just too big. These people live in houses scattered like buckshot across the valleys outside of town. When driving through these parts, every so often there is a bar (basically someone’s house with a tap and a sign installed).
We stopped at one of these bars called the Grasshopper. It was decorated with knick knacks and a fully branded Budweiser piano (which was awesome). The bar couldn’t have sold more than 10 beers a day, and just like the keg at our office, the tap didn’t work and dispensed foamy beer. While annoying, the broken tap served as the center of conversation for everyone who walked in so I felt like it might have been broken on purpose to give people something to talk about.
Overall, there is nothing better or worse about life in Dillon. It’s just smaller, and different. If you’re into a slow pace, beautiful outdoors and don’t mind driving a few hours to eat at a new restaurant, maybe it’s the spot for you.
