When the American Computer and Robotics Museum reached out to me to let me know I was a winner of their 2025 Stibitz-Wilson Award, I was excited, especially when they told me that my prize included a trip for two to their award ceremony in Bozeman, Montana and a guided tour of Yellowstone National Park. I didn’t quite know what to expect, but my colleague Mary Shaw, a previous honoree, assured me that the trip would be fantastic. Indeed, it was!
Chuck and I arrived in Bozeman two days early so that we would have time to hike in Bozeman. (We had to fly through Denver to get there from Pittsburgh, and when our flight to Denver was delayed we thought we had missed our flight to Bozeman, but United Airlines held the plane for us and the handful of other passengers with late flights and we got to Bozeman on time!)
The weather was outstanding: not a cloud in the sky. On our first day we hiked the Beehive Basin trail, which ended up being about 7.3 miles round trip with a 1,645 foot elevation gain. We had to drive over an hour outside of Bozeman to get to the trailhead in Big Sky, and the hike took about 4 hours. There were not a lot of other people on the trail, but most of the people we saw had dogs and bear spray. We did find a dog named Ted (according to his collar) hanging out in the parking lot, and he accompanied us for the first mile and a half before turning back.
On the second day we started out with the College M hike near Bozeman. The College M is a giant letter M for Montana State University made out of white washed rocks. We had seen the M at the Colorado School of Mines and wanted to compare. The M at Mines has lighting, while the Montana State M does not. At the bottom of the trail there was a sign posted with recent bear and mountain lion sightings. There was a also an easy (and long) way to the top and a short and hard way to the top. We opted for the long way. It was difficult to actually see the whole M on this hike, but we saw it from the plane on our way home. We hiked to the top of the M and then hiked beyond it a bit and ended up coming down partially on the more difficult trail. We hiked almost three miles in about two hours with a 869 foot elevation gain. We did not see any bears.
Since the M hike was pretty short and we hadn’t driven very far to get to it, we had lunch and then went on another hike: the Triple Tree Trail. This hike starts out as a public trail that basically cuts through peoples’ back yards and farms. It isn’t very steep until the end, but goes through a variety of changing landscapes and is quite picturesque, especially with the fall foliage starting to change colors. The aspen and cottonwood trees were bright yellow and the trail was lined with several types of berry bushes. Near the summit there are lots of switchbacks and when we got to the bench at the top we were happy to sit down. We hiked 5.6 miles round trip over about 2.5 hours with a 900 foot elevation gain.
Next up…. Part 2: the ACRM, Montana State, and the Awards Ceremony