photography: Andrew Geiger Under a big sky, the Yellowstone River flows smoothly in its wide valley below the massive snow-capped peaks of the Gallatin and Absaroka mountains.

On my last day I'm driving north to Livingston. The morning light is still low and soft, the Yellowstone River's chill mist lingers over its surface, a thin layer of gauze mingling the water with the cottonwoods lining the river edge. A backlit figure stands in a few feet of water, an arm arcing a wand back and forth. I imagine Brad Pitt fly-fishing in A River Runs Through It. Or is that local ranch owner Ted Turner out there in rubber waders, his line a snaking flash of light against the dark water backdrop? Ah, no matter; I'm hallucinating. Maybe it's that California influence from Bozeman. After a couple of days of wide-open, big-sky driving, anything seems possible. As I pass the figure, in my rear-view mirror I see it's no celebrity, just a woman with a fly rod and a piece of river all to herself this morning. Lucky.

After a hike up part of the steep Pine Creek Trail, mainly to generate the appetite necessary to take full advantage of lunch at Pine Creek Lodge & Café, I drive into Livingston. Perhaps what Bozeman used to be like, Livingston looks like storybook Montana: railroad tracks, a nearby river, some old warehouses and a grain silo, dusty cowboy hats on sidewalk pedestrians, and a small downtown center of modest, practical stores and meat-and-potatoes restaurants/bars. Here and there, however, you'll find a western-chic clothing store or a hipster coffee shop with real lattes and Wi-Fi.

I can't resist the vertical neon sign marking The Murray Hotel. After a warm day by the river and a crisp fall evening walking off the dinner steak under downtown streetlights, The Murray calls to me as it's done to Calamity Jane, Buffalo Bill, and Will Rogers . . . as Montana has done to so many who've come for a while to find something different and left wondering why the rest of the country is so the same.