Weird day trips from Helena

The strangest Helena finds are often a short drive out. These 14 day trips — Uptown Crystals & Wellness Shoppe, Cryptid Crystals & Metaphysical Supplies, Wild Wisdom Collective - The Underground and more — are each hand-vetted and sourced: ghost towns, hot-spring soaks, roadside oddities, and odd small-town museums worth the gas. A weird day trip is its own kind of date.

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Uptown Crystals & Wellness Shoppe A crystal-and-wellness shop wedged into Butte's historic uptown mining district, about an hour south of Helen… Butte
Cryptid Crystals & Metaphysical Supplies A small metaphysical shop in a Central Avenue suite in downtown Great Falls, named for the cryptozoology stre… Great Falls
Wild Wisdom Collective - The Underground A genuinely subterranean metaphysical space beneath downtown Bozeman, reached by descending below street leve… Bozeman
Old Montana Prison Montana's territorial-and-state prison held inmates from 1870 until 1979, and the empty sandstone cell blocks… Deer Lodge
Yesterday's Playthings Doll & Toy Museum Set inside the historic Old Montana Prison complex, this single-obsession museum stuffs in over 1,000 dolls s… Deer Lodge
Montana Law Enforcement Museum A free, volunteer-built museum devoted entirely to the history of Montana law enforcement, from the earliest… Philipsburg
Blackfoot Pathways: Sculpture in the Wild Founded in 2014 by sculptor Kevin O'Dwyer, this open-air sculpture park sits on wooded acres just off Highway… Lincoln
Bleu Horses Thirty-nine bright blue steel horses graze on a windswept 160-acre hilltop above Highway 287, visible for mil… Three Forks
Big John: Cowboy Muffler Man A 20-foot fiberglass cowboy has stood guard over Big John's Casino since 1999, hands hovering at his sides as… Great Falls
Boulder Hot Springs Inn & Spa A rambling California Mission-style hotel from 1910 wraps around geothermal pools fed by springs a miner firs… Boulder
Ringing Rocks This unremarkable-looking boulder pile is one of the country's few ringing-rock fields and the only notable o… Pipestone / Whitehall
Goose Bay Handblown Glass Jim and Terry Gundersen have been blowing glass in this Townsend shop since 2002, working at the furnace near… Townsend
Garnet Ghost Town Montana's best-preserved ghost town sits at 6,000 feet up a gravel back-country byway, with more than 30 weat… Garnet (near Drummond/Missoula)
Old Montana Prison & Museums Complex (incl. Yesterday's Playthings) Montana's territorial prison, opened in 1871 and later expanded by convict labor (its castle-like sandstone w… Deer Lodge