Having spent time in Whitefish for Glacier National Park and then five days in Missoula, our third of four stops in Montana was its state capital – Helena.
Helena is a cuter city than we were anticipating with a lovely downtown area, some great breweries, an excellent farmers market and more.
Here’s what we got up to during our five days in Helena.
Where We Stayed
We stayed all five nights at the Residence Inn Helena, just a few miles northeast of downtown. We booked our stay using points as it was better value doing that than paying cash. Residence Inn is one of Marriott’s brands and it cost us an average of 20,200 points per night versus the cash price of $238.74 per night.
One of the best parts of booking a stay here was that we were able to book a one bedroom suite with points rather than just a studio suite. It was great having a separate living room and bedroom, plus every room at Residence Inn properties has a full kitchen.
The only negative thing from our stay was the air conditioning in the suite. The thermostat was in the living room, but the only vent was in the bedroom. That resulted in a significant temperature difference between the bedroom and living room. It was very cold in the bedroom, but very warm in the living room – probably a 10-20 degree difference. That was most notable at night when Shae was freezing in the bedroom while I was hot out in the living room!
Complimentary breakfast is provided for all guests. There were lots of amenities like a fitness room and a well-equipped guest laundry area…
…as well as a swimming pool, whirlpool and even a splash pool for toddlers.
Despite the air conditioning issues, overall it was a great place to stay and we’d be happy to stay there again if we ever return to Helena.
What We Did In Helena
Pioneer Cabin
The Pioneer Cabin dates back to 1864 and was constructed using hand-hewn logs. It’s the oldest documented dwelling place in Helena and one of the oldest buildings in the whole of Montana.
Reeder’s Alley
The Pioneer Cabin is next to the entrance of Reeder’s Alley, an alley that’s reminiscent of Elfreth’s Alley in Philadelphia.
It turned out that similarity shouldn’t have been too surprising because the alley was built by Louis Reeder from 1873-1884, a brick mason from Pennsylvania. It’s a quaint alley with brick houses that now house a variety of businesses.
Walking Mall
Reeder’s Alley isn’t the only quaint part of downtown Helena. A short distance from there is the Walking Mall – a pedestrian-only street with lots of stores, breweries, restaurants and more.
The Walking Mall has a lot of other stuff to see including murals, sculptures, an original Helena streetcar and more.
Although we didn’t take a ride on it, Helena has a Last Chance Tour Train you can take a tour on.
Farmers Market
Helena has a superb Farmers Market on Saturdays with dozens of stalls, food trucks and more.
Garnet Ghost Town
We’d heard about a couple of ghost towns that were somewhat near Helena, so one afternoon we decided to explore one that’s apparently excellent – Garnet. It was just over an hour’s drive to get there, but unfortunately our trip there didn’t work out as planned.
Google Maps had us going in one direction, but that road was blocked off. That meant taking a precarious route up a steep dirt road instead, full of potholes and rocks in the road. It was a very narrow road with barely enough room for two vehicles, but we encountered several vehicles coming down, while we were perched on the edge of a steep drop down on our way up.
This alternate route to the ghost town was a much longer drive at extremely slow speeds. With us being in a Toyota Corolla rather than an SUV, our car wasn’t really equipped to deal with the state of the road, so we ended up turning around and driving all the way back to Helena having not seen the ghost town.
State Capitol Building
Seeing as Helena is Montana’s state capital, we stopped by the Capitol Building to check it out and get its stamp in our State Capitol book.
Where We Ate & Drank
5 Pet-Friendly Breweries
A fair bit of our time in Helena was spent exploring the city’s pet-friendly breweries. I wrote about that in a separate post, so check that out here.
Big Dipper Ice Cream
Big Dipper Ice Cream is a small chain of ice cream shops with five locations in Montana – two in Missoula, one in Great Falls, one in Billings and one in Helena. It was a very warm day when we were walking around downtown Helena, so we were more than happy to stop for ice cream there.
Shae got a scoop of their Mexican chocolate which she greatly enjoyed, while I got a scoop of huckleberry ice cream which was also excellent.
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