Wandering Buffalo Hotel and Lodge

A white bear has glowered over the lobby at 1200 East Main Street for more than thirty years, and it has outlasted the name on the door. Until its makeover this was the Western Heritage Inn, a Travelodge; in March 2026 it reopened as the Wandering Buffalo, keeping the Western heritage and the bear and letting the Travelodge go. The West it went for is a lodge's: leather and stone, and mounted deer heads keeping company with a large abstract painting, to show the decorating is new. The lobby is The Mercantile, a coffee bar with New Day Bakery pastries and country records on all day, and the nearest thing to a restaurant, since there isn't one. Outside, a garden faces Main Street with a fire pit in it.

Recommended for anyone who has come to Bozeman to get out of it, and for families who need more beds than a double: the King Suite adds a bunk bed to its king, and the Master Suite has two, a full kitchen and room for six. The free bikes do the hard part, 1.3 miles into the middle of downtown or out on the Main Street to the Mountains trails. On a summer Tuesday evening the farmers market is nine minutes' walk away in Lindley Park. In winter Bridger Bowl's skiing is 18 miles off; in summer Yellowstone's North Entrance is 78, through Paradise Valley. Back at the hotel, the cedar-clad studio has Pelotons for anyone the mountains did not finish, and a sauna built for the place. The car park takes off-road and recreational vehicles, a fair guess at what guests turn up in. The smallest rooms are called Crash Pads, 200 square feet around a queen bed, and named for people who mean to be out all day.