Cozy winter weekend in a small Montana town

Several gift shops cater to the tourist trade with local handcrafts and Western themed items. Our favorite was Wild Rose, which has an eclectic selection of reasonably priced items, from watches to wall clocks and handmade candles to light fixtures. The Sapphire Gallery has fine jewelry, much of it made with locally mined gemstones. For $25, you can sift through your own bag of stones. Don't miss The Sweet Palace, a throwback to the old penny candy store, where visitors are greeted with free samples of homemade taffy and fudge and invited to select from hundreds of bins of familiar and exotic candies, all for $7.95 a pound.

Off the main street, Philipsburg has several other points of interest. The Granite County Jail, said to be the oldest operating jail in Montana, features a tower with a hangman's noose visible from the street below. The Opera House has been restored and hosts a professional theater troupe in the summer. A few streets away, the impressive brick Philipsburg Grade School completed in 1896 is still educating young Montanans. Remains of old mining operations can be found in the numerous ghost towns that surround Philipsburg.

There are at least a half-dozen restaurants and bars that serve food in Philipsburg. The old-fashioned Doe Brothers Soda Fountain offers traditional lunch-counter fare including milkshakes and hearty chili. Road warriors that we are, we opted three times to drive about 75 miles for dinner to Missoula, a vibrant college town, where there are plenty of good dining options.

The two-lane Highway 1 is well maintained, and with a 70-mph speed limit most of the way, driving times are generally fast - but caution is advised. Traffic slows suddenly going through the towns of Drummond and Anaconda, where locals abide strictly to the posted 40- and even 25-mph signs. You can also find occasional icy patches where the road is shielded from the afternoon sun. En route to Missoula one day, we found ourselves sharing the road with a cattle drive. It took us about 20 extra minutes to pick our way through hundreds of ambling cows, who were largely unmoved by the cars and trucks trying to get by.

Alas, the time was too short for us to sample the many outdoor activities available in the area. Opportunities for hiking, hunting and ice fishing abound. In Philipsburg's Winninghoff Park, an NHL-sized ice rink and arena hosts local hockey games but is also open to the public, so bring your skates. The Discovery Ski Basin, 13 miles south of Philipsburg, had just opened for weekend skiing when we arrived. At full operation the ski area has eight lifts and 61 trails that range from beginner to black diamond. The small lodge has a cafeteria and bar, and ski rentals and lessons are available.

But for a few short days, just relaxing and enjoying the scenery of a small Montana town in winter was well worth the trip.

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