While the technical term is "mobile food vendor," most people know the unique and colorful vans, buses, and trailers circulating on Bozeman's streets as "food trucks." The practice of serving meals from vehicles is a growing trend around the country and the market has quickly adapted.

   Food trucks offer new choices to hungry folks who are looking for a different dining experience. Perhaps it's because of time constraints, or location, or the need to keep a first date casual yet intriguing that food trucks exist in their own niche of the restaurant market. Whatever the reason, they're everywhere. And by everywhere, I mean they drive around and can literally sell a hamburger at a stoplight. It's a genius idea and a path to business ownership without the massive overhead that's usually required. And as I came to discover in my "research" for this article, food truck owners care about more than money. They want to provide amazing and original food at reasonable prices. And my official verdict is that on the whole, they've succeeded.

   So, without further ado, and in an order that conforms only to my subjective feelings, I have listed the four objectively best food trucks in Bozeman, plus the only mobile coffee vendor in town. And while some of these trucks are truly mobile, others have a fixed location and I've listed the most likely address for each.

1. Heap Burger - Kenyon Noble Hardware parking lot, Oak St.

    

While I couldn't decide whether the word "heap" before the word "burger" was enticing or nauseating, I discovered that it's actually the last name of the owners, Jonathan and Athlene Heap, and is not referring to any aesthetic description of the burgers themselves. This was a happy realization for me, but given that it's located in the parking lot of a hardware store and caters to hard-working and hungry builder-folk, it probably sends the right message at least 70% of the time.

   Joking aside, Heap Burger was my favorite food truck before I started this article, and I singled them out as my first data point of dietary science. When I arrived, classic rock was pumping from the outdoor speaker and I immediately appreciated that I could hum along to "Manic Monday" while choosing from a menu of burger options that I would legitimately describe as exotic.

   With Athlene's help, I decided upon "The Asian Persuasion," and settled in to enjoy a burger that took Jonathan 50 tries to perfect. When he told me that, my surprise must have shown.

   "They don't all take that long. Some of them, I got on the first try."

   Jonathan is a chef who has utilized his skills to create unique hamburgers out of an aged red school bus, and as one of the oldest and most successful trucks in town, it's clear that the Heaps are doing something right.

2.  Rendezvous - North Wallace

Rendezvous is the only food truck I visited with a picket fence. Based on that and the generous, shaded seating, I give it the best environment award, easily surpassing of all the trucks I visited. Sitting permanently on North Wallace Street, across from Wild Crumb, Rendezvous serves mostly crepes but apparently on Friday (Fiesta Friday), beef tongue tacos are also a thing.

I wanted to order those tacos, but in the name of journalistic integrity, I went with what they described as “the customer favorite.” I ordered “The Ridge” crepe, which is filled with their house-smoked pork, breakfast potatoes, and cheddar cheese, and it was indeed an incredible breakfast. Like Heap Burger, Rendezvous plays music, but of a more European variety.

Ah, I just realized how it all fits together. French title, European music, crepes. It all makes sense now. Yet somehow, the picket fence surrounding a giant barbeque grill pulls it together and keeps the American dream alive throughout the dining experience.

Rendezvous is a great place to enjoy a summer morning breakfast at the base of the Bridger Mountains that will match the quality of any brick-and-mortar establishment.

3.  Blue Smoke BBQ - 502 N. Broadway

Blue Smoke BBQ gets the cheat code award for the fact that it sits in the parking lot of Bozeman Brewing Company and the owner, Justin, insists that you go inside to get a beer. And then they bring you the food. Even though I didn’t really want a beer when I showed up (I was doing important research) I realized that enjoying carefully crafted barbeque with carefully crafted beer was pretty much the perfect sales pitch. And the platter of BBQ Brisket with a side of tangy coleslaw was large enough that it took two beers to do it justice.

As it states on their website, Blue Smoke has almost two decades of experience, and is the result of continued experimentation and barbeque-apprenticeship, which apparently exists. The passion pays off, because it was easily the best barbeque I’ve had in Bozeman. I recommend visiting with a big appetite and some time to relax and unwind in the Bozeman Brewery. One, because it’s an awesome thing to do. And two, because there’s nowhere else to sit.

4. Victory Taco - The Lark Hotel parking lot, E. Main Street

We can all agree that anytime a taco is being consumed, a victory of sorts has occurred. There are many other things to eat, but choosing tacos always implies, at the very least, a shining and glorious moment popping against the grey bleh of an otherwise average day.

   And this being the case, I chose to feature Victory Taco partially because of the narrative accuracy of their name. Every visit is automatically a victory. But beyond that, the tacos are amazing.

   I've already used the word "exotic," so I will describe the non-traditional twists of Victory's tacos as "deliciously quirky." Titles like "The Kim Jong," “The Piggly Wiggly,” and “Ferdinand the Bull” stick in the mind and I have legitimately had moments of thinking to myself that “I could really go for a Kim Jong right now…” While I’m sure President Trump often has similar thoughts, and perhaps they will emerge in tweet form soon, Victory Taco offers the safe and healthy way to consume the great leader.

Oh, and they serve ice cream too. Total victory achieved.

Bonus: Montana Coffee Bus - Various locations downtown and outside Collective Elevation Dispensary

I’ve had the privilege of being a taste-tester for the newly opened Montana Coffee Bus, and besides being biased, I can wholly endorse them on the basis that they serve delicious, healthy drinks and are the only mobile coffee vendor in town.

Supplied by Treeline Coffee and Townshend’s Teahouse, the Montana Coffee Bus specializes in unique drinks not found in most established coffee shops. Bus-made organic syrups, turmeric and mate’ lattes, Bulletproof Coffee (filled with healthy fats for balanced brain function and sustained caffeine absorption) and all the normal coffee options you would expect make up a versatile menu. Additionally, the Montana Coffee Bus delivers and can bring your sweet, sweet stimulants directly to your doorstep.
 

Kris Drummond is a writer, photographer, and traveler from Bozeman, Montana. You can find more of his writing, photography and publications on his website: ideaforeplay.com/ 

*Original Article Found HERE.

The aroma drifts from the raw interior surface of the timbers. The sensation of strings simultaneously stretched tight and lithe against fingertips. The harmonious jingle of tones accompanying each other, affirming each other’s attribute.
 

Without question, a guitar made by Daniel Roberts is a multi-sensory piece of artwork. It is an instrument made with a top, back and sides of solid wood intended to produce the most complex sound and to continually improve with age. It is the manifestation of precision and intent, from the heedful selection of the timber, to the drying and evaporation of its dampness, to the mindfulness of its abilities, limitations, and possibilities, and even its appropriate storage.  
 

“The target is to have 6% percent moisture in the wood, and then to let it stabilize,” said Daniel Roberts. “I keep the relative humidity upstairs (in my shop) at 45 to 47 percent. Wood moves when you add or take moisture away, and if you shrink it, the wood will remove the radius, and the top will drop and flatten out.  Wood – whether Romanian spruce, Northern Italian, German, or Swiss spruce – has different characteristics, and some wood that grows quickly is often softer, and then there is not as much stiffness within it. Wood has memory in terms of form and of how it moves geometrically, and how it vibrates.”
 

Thus begins a nuanced conversation with Roberts inside his Belgrade studio, a chat exploring his remarkably wide range of guitar-building knowledge and reflecting the variety of concerns and aesthetic visions that have shaped his artistry over the past three decades.   
 

“Wider grained woods often have much darker late wood lines or grain lines,” continued Roberts, “tending to be much stiffer and more resonant. The stiffer the top wood is, the thinner I can take the (guitar) top so that I can achieve the same strength with less mass, which generally allows me to make a lighter, more resonant, more responsive guitar without losing power, dynamic range, or volume. A factory will generally take all tops to the same thickness dimension, and that thickness will not vary regardless of the stiffness of the top. I vary my top thicknesses based on the stiffness of the top.”
 

What makes anything in craftsmanship a viable alternative is the integrity of one’s approach to it, it has slightly less to do with the materials, or even the style, but rather it is a kind of energy that comes into the particular sequence of events. A great value in a work of art is that we may better read the artist – in this case, Roberts – and his motives. It seems as if everything that he is thinking and feeling is intensely mirrored in the process.
 

Indeed, the guitar and its music provide him a much-needed dose of beauty every single day. He gets to revel in the physical splendor of the instrument as an object: the richness and delicate color contrasts of its woods, the multi-dimensional shimmer of a spruce top. There is the visual delicacy of inlays and the collective allure of the instrument’s figure.

“It’s interesting to build a guitar with hand tools, because I think you then understand the process and geometry of the guitar at a much deeper level,” said Roberts, running his fingers across a hand-built dovetail cutter. “I learned to hand plane, chop mortises, and pare wood with razor sharp chisels which neatly dovetailed into my guitar making. I believe hand tools are far more accurate than machine tools and they provide a respect for tradition, and also allow your intuition to have a full measure of say in the process.”
 

While Roberts’ relationship with building guitars is tied to a series of progressions, his fundamental love of woodworking is inherited. From his grandfather, Christian Roberts, he learned to build benches, small toy guns, gun cabinets, and other pieces of furniture.

“I believe that my idea of what is an acceptable living situation has been skewed by my grandfather,” said Roberts. “When you opened grandpa’s door, at the center was a table saw, a wooden bench, and hand tools. His bedroom was his wood storage room and it was chock-full of woods and wood was stacked against the walls. His living room was his wood shop and his bed was covered with plastic to keep the dust out. Woodworking has been a part of me since I was able to walk next door to his workshop at age 3.”
 

Born in East Helena, Montana, Roberts signed up for drafting classes in junior high school and woodshop in high school. In college, he studied fine arts while experimenting with wood sculpture. He worked in the forests of Idaho as a tree faller and timber scaler for Plum Creek Timber Company. After leaving the timber industry, he started building instruments with a Bozeman company called Flatiron Banjo and Mandolin Company. Gibson Guitar eventually acquired Flatiron, and Roberts became one of the company’s plant production managers.  


Subsequently, Roberts earned employment with the Santa Cruz Guitar Company of California, spending six years living in Santa Cruz, and almost a dozen more working for the company out of his own shop in Montana.
 

While we romanticize the glittery eureka moments and quantum leaps, it’s seems that most progress happens incrementally. Around this time, Roberts learned advanced chisel, hand planning, and sharpening techniques while apprenticed under a Japanese master carpenter. This experience ingrained in him a deeply symbolic affinity for the slower, handmade techniques.  While Roberts currently utilizes some machinery, hand tools still dominate his day, as does a steady reliance on hand bending techniques, and the use of hot hide glue – a cooked down, filtered adhesive of animal connective tissues – for his gluing processes.
 

“How the parts of the guitar come together, especially the early parts, and where I find myself in the process, I just don’t always know where it is heading,” said Roberts. “Some of it is muscle memory, and some of it is strong movement, applying physics to acoustic theory. But the problem is that you can’t control enough of the variables to make it (guitar-making) true science, so it has to be an art form. And just because the guitar is made by hand doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t have to compete cosmetically with the high-tech companies. I believe I can compete with those companies.  I think that being handmade gives my guitars an assertive edge to their tone.”
 

Indeed, Roberts’ highest ambition lies in excelling in the art of the stringed instrument maker, or luthier. No complete estimate of his talents can be made without the recognition of certain dominating forces always at work behind Roberts’ strings, namely the spiritual approach he brings to all of his creative effort, and his firm belief in a union existent between man and learning.
 

“Life is the experience of discovery, and it’s not like I now know the answers 30 years later to everything,” said Roberts. “That’s because I’m constantly learning new information, learning that every decision you make along the way affects the product. Learning to not second-guess yourself. But to have confidence in voicing a top or making a neck play right, and have a natural curiosity to find out why it is how it is. Instead of thinking too hard, I have a tendency now to under-think.”
 

One of the benefits of lone craftsmanship is the uniformity of action.
 

“It’s hard to have eight people working on a single instrument,” said Roberts. “Each step affects all of the other steps in the guitar, every binding, every carving. With eight guys, the guitar sits on a rack and waits for the next guy to do their step; where I take one instrument all the way through. Every step is cognitive of the previous decision and guides what you do next.”
 

Roberts’ heart is filled with emotion toward his work, and perhaps it’s not surprising that he has only slight interest in making guitars (or mandolins, which are another one of his specialties) for collectors, hobbyists, or anyone who doesn’t seem genuinely inspired to use, understand, and form a relationship with the guitar. Most, if not all, of his clientele are full-time professional working musicians; many of them are recognizable names and faces, even, well, great icons, such as Eric Clapton and Stevie Nicks. (No, he doesn’t get to meet with each and every client, as many transactions are conducted by a proxy of managers and assistants.) Indeed, Roberts builds for those who are interested in the natural grace, the tremendous strength, and the simple beauty of his instruments.  
 

“When you choose to do something in a way that’s slower and more skill intensive, then you are choosing to build an instrument with a palpable difference, and I call that difference soul. When I string up a guitar, it is like being at a birth. It’s amazing to observe a guitar learning how to be a guitar, and vibrating with sequences under the tension that it has been put under. Many guitars have inspired musicians to new, almost mystical heights. The alchemy between a great guitar and an artist can be almost frightening. Still, the guitar that inspires greatness in one may fall dead in the hands of another.”
 

Yet, he has no compunction when it comes to parting ways and saying farewell to a completed guitar; he’d rather know that it is serving as a source of radiance, vibrancy, resonance and inspiration for the world.   
 

“Guitars that have been played and vibrated after a year of gigging will have a tone that develops in a different way than if it were just in the closet. It will be an unbelievably different instrument than when it leaves here. It is just getting started, and it will have an evolution.  It’s an ongoing living thing and it’ll never be complete. Maybe not alive in the general sense, but certainly developing and changing all of the time, and that’s a very exciting thing to be a part of.”

Brian D'Ambrosio is a writer/editor living in Missoula, Montana. D'Ambrosio is the author of more than 300 articles and five books related to Montana history, people, and travel.

The ancient bond between humans and horses has been every changing. First seen as a source of meat by early man, horses are the earliest known animals to be artistically depicted in cave dwellings, and horse have been credited with enabling human evolution by providing food, labor, transportation, and increased hunting proficiency. These primary purposes remained the dominate ones for horses for most of the centuries between human cave dwelling and modern agriculture. However, in recent years, horses in many countries of the world now play many, and unexpected, different roles, as companions, as partners in a variety of sporting endeavors, as muses for literature, poetry, and art, as emotional and mental therapeutic guides and teachers, and as physical therapists for patients with muscular and balance problems.

Dunrovin has had many opportunities to personally witness the impact of horses’ evolving roles on people. Countless times during our normal horse guiding operation, people with heavy burdens and troubles have found their way to our ranch to connect with horses. Sometimes just being with a horse and facing physical challenges together with another sentient animal opens them up to new perspectives about themselves and the problems that they face. For example, Dunrovin once hosted a young man and his mother for a short afternoon ride that took them across the Bitterroot River and up into the mountains. It was clear that the mother was nervous about the rigors of fording the river and climbing the steep hills. Yet she held it together, forcing herself to concentrate, and trying to relax. Once safely on the mountain top, she broke down in tears and explained that her husband had six weeks earlier committed suicide. She needed her son’s help to get through it all, but she didn’t know how to ask. We simply dismounted, took the horses away to give mother and son some privacy, and allowed them the time to talk and begin anew. She and her son returned in a completely different frame of mind that when they had started – and it was the horses and facing her fears with them that opened the dam that let her emotions flow. This is but one of many, many such incidents involving women, men, and children who have found something in themselves by exposing themselves to horses.

Dunrovin is determined to support the use of horses are therapists and to celebrate and honor the changing roles of horses in our culture. We are starting by hosting two special events highlighting different aspects of the human and horse bond. 
On August 19, 2017,  Friends of Dunrovin, which a 501 c3 Montana nonprofit affiliated with Dunrovin Ranch, will host a Horse of a Different Color by inviting six Montana artists to publicly paint and decorate six Dunrovin horses. This daylong event will culminate with an Painted Pony Parade, music, dinner, and a People’s Choice contest to select the most popular painted pony. The entire event will be broadcast on Dunrovin’s webcam network at www.DunrovinPresents.com. Both online and onsite participants will have an opportunity to vote on their favorite horse/artist combination. Funds raised by the Horse of a Different Color will be used to support equine-assisted therapeutic programs and research in Montana.

During the Horse of a Different Color event, harlequin bestselling author Danica Winters will present her new series of four romance/mystery novels set in Dunrovin Ranch in the fictional town of Mystery, Montana. She will also draw the winning entrant for a contest that Destination Missoula is sponsoring for a five day all expenses paid trip to Missoula, Montana for a mystery tour of Missoula and participation in Dunrovin Ranch Living with Passion Women’s Getaway on September 8, 9, and 10.
Dunrovin Ranch is partnering with Spirit Dance Equine-Guided Life Coaching of Minneapolis to host a three day Living with Passion Women’s Getaway. Life coach and author Lynn Baskfield will team up with Danica Winters to use horses to help women ignite their muses for passionate living at any age. 

Learn more about these events by visiting Dunrovin Celebrates the Human/Horse Bond.

See Events HERE: http://members.daysatdunrovin.com/magazine/horse-of-a-different-color/

SuzAnne Miller is the owner of Dunrovin Ranch. A fourth-generation Montanan, SuzAnne grew up roaming the mountains and fishing the streams of western Montana. Her love of nature, animals, science, and education prompted her to create the world’s first cyber ranch where live web cameras bring Dunrovin’s wildlife and ranch life to internet users across the globe.

Visit SuzAnne live at www.DaysAtDunrovin.com!