After walking into my glamping tent, I pressed a finger to the taught, yet wobbly, canvas wall near the nightstand. It’s a late October afternoon and while I was peckish, I figured it’s best to abstain from the bag of Jack Link’s meat snacks, part of The Ranch at Rock Creek’s welcome kit. While I read no mention of bears on the luxury, all-inclusive resort’s website, saw no repellant spray signage at the Missoula airport and The Ranch’s driver said grizzlies aren’t a problem, this is Montana. This canvas tent and my 40-yard dash time are no match for a bear in peak hyperphagia.
In travel, the term all-inclusive is typically reserved for experiences designed for mass consumption. Think: beach vacations, where frozen drinks are a food group, or queuing up for the thrice daily cattle call — eating, disembarking and embarking — on a city-sized cruise ship. But the math of The Ranch at Rock Creek is a big reason why this is a different kind of all-inclusive: A maximum of 125 guests, spread over about 31 different luxury tents, cabins and traditional rooms, all sharing 6,600 acres of mostly untouched Southwestern Montana wilderness. Another key figure: Costs start at $2,100 per night, double occupancy, for a room at the Granite Lodge during shoulder season, to $3,200 per night, double occupancy, for a glamping tent at the same time of year.
The numbers sound exclusive, and considering I drove past a private jet with nearly the same number of windows as the Boeing I arrived in on from Seattle, it might feel elitist. But all it took was one night of revelry spent enjoying excellent cocktails, bowling poorly, shooting pool even worse and playing mediocre darts for the vibe at The Ranch at Rock Creek to dispel pretense. It’s difficult to have an air about yourself while sitting at the Silver Dollar Saloon, the resort’s bar, straddling a horse saddle — the great equalizer.
The Red Roof Inn this is not, but during my stay, I met — and line danced awfully next to — a couple who flew in not too far from my Long Island town, folks celebrating a 50th wedding anniversary, a family with three young girls, newlyweds with extended family and a couple that got engaged during their stay. While The Ranch draws guests accustomed to paying for luxury accommodations, it also appeals to folks who want an experience — and are willing to pay for a story once they get back home. Where some all-inclusive packages might, in the end, start factoring fees, virtually everything at The Ranch at Rock Creek is included. The fee covers round-trip transfers to local airports, accommodations, all but a small handful of the guided activities (save for some special, off-premises sports like golf or ice fishing), all meals, top-shelf wine, beer and spirits, and access to a gym, pool and hot tub.
The Ranch at Rock Creek sits in a valley between the Sapphire and the Anaconda-Pintlers range near the Idaho border, both part of the northern end of the Rockies. My visit coincides with Whiskey & Water Weekend, when The Ranch hosts Trey Zoeller, the co-founder of Jefferson’s Bourbon, for distilling education, dinner pairings and whiskey siphoning straight from a barrel. It’s shoulder season at the resort, which has perhaps 30 other guests, and most of us are at the evening’s social hour next to the creek, listening to Zoeller describe how he stores barrels on ships, sends them from Louisville, down the Ohio River and to the Mississippi and then up to New York, all to recreate the old routes before railroads modernized distribution. Zoeller says he’s been coming to the Ranch at Rock Creek for nearly a decade, and while the Montana landscape isn’t all that similar to Louisville, Zoeller’s hometown, the outdoor focus feels like the perfect embodiment of bourbon. A day later Zoeller tells me he woke before breakfast to fish on Rock Creek when it was so cold his flies froze. He didn’t seem to mind.
This Montana Valley Was “Paradise” for Jimmy Buffett
Where the cheeseburgers come with a scenic backdropCutbow, one of the 630-square-foot glamping cabins I’ll call home for the next few days, is named for one of the trout that call the creek home, and sleeps up to four. A screened porch faces the water with a twin daybed for sleeping alfresco on warmer nights, and at the rear is a full bathroom. Connecting the two is a massive, A-frame canvas tent, complete with roll-up window coverings and curtain room dividers. Handsome pine planks cover the floor. The interior of the glamping tents are a mix of Western styling — with textiles and furniture that looks like something a frontier grandmother would cherish enough to load onto a covered wagon — and modern touches that can take the edge off chilly Montana evenings, like gas-powered stoves, a heated mattress topper and custom-made blankets. A detail not lost on my first night: the bathroom’s closet, which is not stocked with a supply of towels (those are refreshed twice daily) but houses an instant water heater to power the shower and nearby sink.
The view from the porch is essentially an iPhone wallpaper — tall grasses that capitulate in the wind, leading down to the gnarled Rock Creek lined with aspens and cottonwood a fiery yellow-gold. A bubbling noise enhanced the vistas and created a rhythm I’d swear only came from my phone’s sound machine app. Several tents are lined up in a little village, but never so close other guests interfere with the noise of the creek.
The format of the days at The Ranch is tidy: A seated breakfast, then off to a 90-minute-long morning activity, lunch on the property, then afternoon sporting, before a social hour and dinner. In the event a full day is too much, you can bail and relax on a sofa in the lodge or schedule a Respite on Rock Creek, where you bike or e-bike to a secluded hammock to find a blanket, a fire and a bottle of wine to keep you company while reading or snoozing.
It’s my first morning at the resort, but the setting outside my tent, sitting in an Adirondack-style chair, Nespresso in hand, as the sun started creeping into the valley and my breath formed a cloud, was nearly enough to skip breakfast. I heard the Granite Lodge, which functions as the resort’s most luxurious accommodations, restaurant and social hub, has lemon ricotta blueberry pancakes that are not to be missed. I was off to fact check.
Guests get between buildings on Specialized mountain bikes, one of which is assigned to each lodging, or on foot, which is what I did while snapping photos of wranglers managing the horses at the barn and the colors of Montana’s hillsides. The Ranch’s staff returns the bike to your cabin each evening. Perhaps the simplest pleasure I had during my stay was a late-night, downhill bike coast from the saloon to my tent with virtually zero light pollution, save for my ride’s LED headlight. On a clear night, Montana’s starry sky puts on a show that’ll stop you cold. After I interrogated a fifth or sixth staffer about bears, I felt confident strolling around at night.
The Ranch’s layout keeps most of the cabins and tents, along with the horse barn, rodeo and Rod & Gun Club, where many of the activities are based, on the east side of the creek. On the west side, you’ll find the Granite Lodge, saloon and mercantile. The Ranch has a map, and you’ll need it since there are virtually no signs directing you. The two elegant desks in the Lodge’s lobby, along with the helpful staff behind them who ask how your activities are going, might be the only indication of a routine hotel experience.
While my tent was very comfortable, and represents the best value on the property, it might not be for those looking for a more traditional room, and it’s not available during the winter season, though the resort is open year-round. The Ranch’s lodgings range from a remodeled 19th-century barn, which can host up to 13 people, to about nine cabins that can sleep from three to 12 guests. The most luxurious rooms are in the Granite Lodge, which has a bar that, during breakfast, is perpetually restocked with breakfast pastries before switching over to cookie mode. The day’s schedule allows for another perk: stealthy housekeeping. The Ranch’s staff pops in while you’re gone for breakfast to tidy up and restock the minibar and again after your evening activity so the room is fresh for bedtime.
While the setting is picturesque, the activities and the chance to interact with the setting are why guests visit. Most days start at the Ranch’s Rod & Gun Club to gear up. Depending on the season, the resort offers somewhere between about 40 and 50 different activities, with most happening on the property, and nearly all of which are included in the fee. Horseback riding is at the top of the list for most guests, followed by fly fishing on a Blue Ribbon river and shooting activities with pistols and rifles. Ahead of your stay, The Ranch emails you, asking for a wish list of activities so they can schedule your private, guided experiences which are limited to you and the folks in your party.
If it sounds like having guides on hand to help with a couple of dozen different activities is a lot, it is, but it never feels like a Disney production. The guides here seem to love what they do and you get the sense that they’d be doing whatever they’re teaching you to do — mountain biking on e-bikes, finding wildlife to photograph or cross-country skiing — on their off hours or when their families are staying here. Expensive? Sure. Fussy? Not really.
I met my fly fishing guide at the Rod & Gun Club, and within 20 minutes, found myself suited up in waders and practicing my casting technique on the lawn. From there, I’m off to Rock Creek to try catching (and releasing) any of seven species of fish along the resort’s private, four-mile stretch of the 52-mile-long waterway. The guides are what makes the difference here, and The Ranch pulls from just about every corner of the country. Still, I missed all the fish. When I lamented the failure over dinner, fishermen like Zoeller are apt to remind you “It’s called fishing, not catching.” Even empty-handed, there are far worse ways to spend an hour than knee-deep in a Montana creek surrounded by tree lined hills.
That afternoon, after lunch, I made my way back to the Rod & Gun for shooting. Our guide loaded me into an SUV for a short ride around a hill to where the resort keeps its ranges, set back so other guests don’t hear the ruckus. He brought five handguns, including an old school revolver, and, after a safety lesson, let me rip on a few metal targets, offering pointers along the way. When it was good, the metal-on-metal sound was rhythmic, but even when I missed it was cathartic.
The next morning, I tried archery with a guide who helped me fire a compound bow at a few foam targets. She took the time to walk me through a test that determined which eye was dominant, which made the afternoon more productive. My last activity was sporting clays with a variety of shotguns, and it was the most difficult because it required tracking neon orange clay dishes across the blue sky. Yet it was the most satisfying since the shells ejected out of the gun, just like in the movies. Also: I don’t often get to say “I’ll try the 18 gauge again” back home.
Once the guides return you to the Rod & Gun Club after the activity, you’re off, on foot, bike or sometimes via luxury SUV, to lunch or back to your room to freshen up for dinner. A printed itinerary spells everything out for you. The food at The Ranch at Rock Creek varies in formality, from topping bowls of stew for lunch, to seated dinners and recommendations from a sommelier. Executive Chef Josh Drage, who helped open the resort in 2010, sources about 75% of the menu’s items, from eggs to veggies, from nearby farms, and virtually all of the meat is local. Breakfast is everything from a hearty bowl of oats in the Granite Lodge to grabbing a quick coffee and muffin after a morning run from a self-serve bar. Some lunches are outside at the Buckle Barn where you might find four kinds of chili, dished out of hefty cast-iron Dutch ovens. Dinners, which usually highlight expertly cooked beef and pork, range from unpretentious fine dining to buffet style where guests sit at long, communal tables in front of live music and line dancing instruction.
It’s late fall during my visit, but in a few weeks, The Ranch shifts into winter activities. Once the temperature drops, guests have access to ice fishing on the frozen mountain lakes while you look out on the Pintler, Flint and Sapphire ranges from a heated tent you reach with a snowmobile. Trying to snag rainbow trout through a few inches of ice is one of the few off-property activities at the resort that carries an additional fee. Guests can opt to be fitted with snowshoeing gear to roam around the property. Starting in early December, The Ranch shuttles guests about 35 minutes away to a ski and snowboarding area that spreads nearly 70 trails on three mountain faces.
With no room service available, the resort makes an effort to get guests out and mingle as part of daily pre-dinner social hours, where strangers who’ve just returned from activities can talk about this shot, that horse or the fish that got away. If I didn’t know better, I would suspect the cowboys moving a couple dozen cows, from a nearby ranch that found a way through the resort, was a staged production — until a cowgirl explained the right of way cattle have in Montana, and it’s what stewards of the land do. By the last day, I was done asking about bears, satisfied that they, nor poisonous snakes, are really an issue at The Ranch. Instead, what you really should look out for are moose, which waited until the day I left to start munching, peacefully, on foliage near the cabin.
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