The Bozeman, Montana I have known

I moved to Bozeman, MT three years ago and have regretted it.  One of my first hints that I may well have made a mistake came when I told
someone at a Chamber of Commerce meeting that I moved here from Minneapolis, and she emphatically (and obviously in disbelief) asked:  WHY??!

Since then I have come up with several reasons why moving here seems to be a mistake.  I will cover the occurrences roughly in the order I
experienced them:

This has been my experience.  I am not comfortable here in Bozeman, either physically (often) or psychologically.  I may well move.
I am making this web page just to tell of my experience and perhaps to counter some of the B.S. that keeps Bozeman Montana fastest
growing city (it IS the nicest city in Montana, but that is a "LOW bar" and one might very well have to contend with all the problems I have
described).

In short, about Bozeman: the weather is hard, the ground (dirt, earth) is hard, the work is hard, the water is hard, the hearts are hard, and the heads
are hard. And, much is hard to find and/or hard to afford.  Historically, it is telling that in the time right after they offered double-sized homesteads
in the 1880s in Montana: 17,000 people came to try to have a life here (in MT); 16,000 of them left and went back where they came from. On the
positive side: many of the people are peculiar; if you want to go some place where people are different, you would probably find Montana people
more different that the people on other continents (e.g. Australia) -- be sure to try to keep them from killing you on the roads, though.

Yes. This is Bozeman for me.  Bozeman, my final resting place (when I can rest, with all the construction going on and the sounds of shotguns).
Oh, did I mention: we have a great deal of random sprawl – residential developments popping up on agricultural land outside the city,
and this seems to effect the quality of life.
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P.S.  There are no large casinos in MT, though they are legal, because they have a peculiar law that only 20 gaming machines can be in one place.
Even more odd: They have been trying to pass a law so their medical marijuana places can have only 3 clients each !!  Peculiar !!!

Montana is a place you can readily go to prison for a long, long time.  One guy, who in actuality physically did rather little (except escape from
jail, when he was left TOTALLY unguarded and unsupervised, and just walked out) got sentenced to many decades in prison.  

[ It also does not help my comfort level that those in-the-know say that 60% of Montanans are going to vote for Trump. ]

This is your Bozeman, MT reporter, reporting from Bozeman, Montana.

Addendum

To give some further indication of the lack of regular workers and services:  25% of Bozeman Public School bus routes had to be halted
because of the lack of bus drivers.  Students closer than 3 miles to school would now have to all walk or find other options.

In Sept 2016, I went to three different stores looking for saltine crackers.  I noticed all three stores had a very limited selection (1-2 brands) and
in all three stores the crackers were beyond, at, or near the expiration date.  Twice I made purchases of such crackers (near the expiration
date) and they were stale (one, which I attempted to eat very little of, I returned to the "major" store and told them the crackers were stale --
and the all the saltine crackers they had on the shelf also had the same expiration date; on doing further shopping at the store, I
found another product all of which was past the expiration date. The same day, I found a similar problem of expired food on the shelf at the town's
largest pharmacy.   I now religiously check expiration dates, because of these experiences.