Montana
Seeking to Silo in Montana – FLYING Magazine
Montana’s Flathead Valley is a widely acclaimed summer and winter destination, known for its pristine clear water lakes, ski resorts, and—most notably—Glacier National Park.
The Silo House fly-in rental in Kalispell is conveniently situated near the area’s attractions but benefits from its tranquil location at Sky Ranch Airport (MT95). The increasingly popular accommodation is owned by Tom Bass and Susan Jasmann, longtime residents of the area who individually share a passion for aviation and horses.
“We opened the Silo House four years ago,” Bass said. “Two months later, COVID hit and every reservation was canceled. We thought we were going to go broke but actually did quite well during the pandemic because of what you can do here.
“Montana’s number one economic source is recreation, and people flock here because of all the things to do. People that stay at the Silo House for a week spend two or three days at Glacier [National] Park and the rest with all the activities Flathead Valley has to offer. There are places to ride horses, fly fish, hike, float the rivers, zip lines, rent RVs or boats, and many other things. Flathead Lake, which is only 2 miles from the Silo House, is 50 miles long and is about 6 miles wide on average.”
The fly-in rental features a unique architectural style. It is a memorable starting point for a pilot’s adventures in northwest Montana.
“One of the four lots we own was the original farmhouse for the section of land that MT95 is built on,” Bass said. “The farmhouse was 100 years old, and we took it down to the studs and doubled its size. The farmer’s original grain bins on the lot needed to be repurposed and the Silo House was born. All of the exterior is rock, barnwood, and silos. The interior is industrial modern with dramatic steel beams, lots of glass, stunning views, and custom wood furniture. With the patio, an acre of grass, and stunning views: This is the place you want to come home to at the end of the day. The initial goal of the house from day one was to be designed from the ground up as a vacation rental.”
The project’s website provides an overview of its amenities.
“The Silo House has an open floor plan with plenty of room to entertain, with windows overlooking a wetlands pond and the dramatic Rocky Mountains,” he said. “There are two large bedrooms with comfy king-size beds, a round loft with three twins (for kids or adults), two bathrooms, and private study with a twin which is in the silo over the master bedroom. A round fully stocked kitchen is a phenomenal place to cook, and there is a stunning bar area. The beautiful rustic wood kitchen table comfortably seats 10.
“You can enjoy your cup of coffee in front of the fireplace or out on the beautifully appointed patio, which has an outdoor bar area and fire pit for both summer and winter nights. Also, bring your binoculars for sightings of all sorts of animal life, bird watching, and horses in the pasture next door.”
Bass contends that the unique project has continued to be successful, post-pandemic, for several reasons. More than anything, having a rental home with direct runway access is a rarity in northwest Montana. Pilots have taken notice of the ease of taxiing to their accommodation.
As a point of reference, Kalispell City Airport (S27) is 6 nm northwest, and Glacier Park International (KGPI) is 12 nm to the north of Sky Ranch Airport. When you land at the Silo House, your hosts will take you to one of several car rental locations and help with your luggage.
Bass, a Cessna 180 owner, offered an overview of some of the notable airstrips in the area. He is happy to help curate a list of “must-sees” for pilots visiting, both on land and the water. He has been to Alaska 15 times on floats and frequented many of the Idaho backcountry strips. If you need help in planning your dream flying adventure, he will be there to help you.
“I am familiar with all of the local runways around here, including backcountry runways,” he said. “There are four backcountry runways less than 40 miles away that all have great camping locations. Three of them—Schafer, Meadow Creek, and Spotted Bear—are a few hundred feet away from spectacular fly fishing spots. Flights over the mountains in this area will give you breathtaking views.
- Spotted Bear (8U4) – 27 miles; 3,672 feet msl; 3,800-foot runway
- Meadow Creek (0S1) – 35 miles; 3,993 feet msl; 2,800-foot runway
- Schafer (8U2) – 38 miles; 4,854 feet msl; 3,200-foot runway
- Ryan Field (2MT1) – 23 miles; 3,660 feet msl; 2,500-foot runway


“These backcountry strips are all in the mountains and should only be attempted by pilots with mountain flying experience. For those that are not seasoned backcountry pilots, there are instructors around here that seriously know what they are doing. They know what they’re doing because daily they help a lot of people who are flown into these strips as a place to start their hikes.”
The well-manicured grass runway at Sky Ranch Airport is much less intimidating to the visiting pilot, sitting at an estimated 2,905 feet msl. According to Bass, 100LL fuel is typically available for guests so that they don’t have to fly to another airport to fill up.
“MT95 is the biggest grass strip in Montana,” he said. “It’s 5,000 feet long and 220 feet wide, but we have designated a 50-foot taxiway on each side. There are no obstacles, so it is easy to get in and out of.”
Montana
Montana Lottery Mega Millions, Big Sky Bonus results for May 8, 2026
The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at May 8, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Mega Millions numbers from May 8 drawing
37-47-49-51-58, Mega Ball: 16
Check Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from May 8 drawing
09-14-18-20, Bonus: 16
Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from May 8 drawing
14-16-21-43-51, Bonus: 03
Check Millionaire for Life payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
- Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
- Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
- Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.
Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.
Montana
“It’s Life Alert or rent”: Montana trailer park tenants are on rent strike
Mobile home residents in Bozeman, Montana, say they’re being forced to choose between paying rent and paying medical costs.Courtesy of Jered McCafferty
35-year-old Benjamin Moore has lived in Mountain Meadows Mobile Home Park, outside Bozeman, Montana, since he was 17. This month, for the first time, he’s withholding his rent.
On May 1, Moore received a rent bill for $947, up 11 percent from the month before, and the second hike in nine months—the product of the park’s sale to an undisclosed buyer.
Moore hung a sign on his trailer that says “RENT STRIKE.” He and his neighbors in Mountain Meadows and nearby King Arthur Park, organized with the citywide group Bozeman Tenants United, are collectively withholding over $50,000 a month from their landlord.
Historically, trailer parks have been a relatively affordable housing option—a third of trailer park residents in America live below the poverty line. But on average, their cost of living has risen 45 percent over the past decade. By unionizing, the Bozeman trailer park tenants believe they might be able to fight the most recent rent hike—especially given the state of their housing.
For years, tenants say, the maintenance hasn’t been attended to: tree limbs hang perilously over trailers, and water shutoffs are a regular occurrence. “I cannot recall a time in the past 20 years where we had three straight months of water and power working all day, every day,” Moore said.
Shauna Thompson, another resident, calls the water “atrocious…like a Milky Way, like you’re drinking skim milk. It’s very nasty and turned off all the time, without any notice.” And tenants allege that they’ve experienced retribution for maintenance requests, punitive eviction attempts, and unsafe conditions.
“It’s really hard on people here,” Moore said. Some residents are “already paying their entire Social Security check for rent. It’s a very poor neighborhood. We’ve got old folks. We’ve got young families. We’ve got working-class people who can’t afford anything else.”
For the past four decades, a group called Oakland Properties has owned both trailer parks. When they learned about the sale, tenants were scared that their parks would be bulldozed, or that their rent would be increased even further, forcing them to move.
The tenants attempted to buy the parks themselves, but were decisively outbid. The winning bidder demanded an NDA. The transaction should be finalized next month, park owner Gary Oakland said, but residents still don’t know who’s going to own the land they live on.
This month’s rent hike, Oakland acknowledged, was “part and parcel” of the sale. But for tenants, it’s a catastrophe. On top of the $947 lot rent—more than double the national average—many residents also pay off home loans on their trailers, as well as insurance and utilities costs.
Oakland calls claims of broken utilities “nonsense”: “If it was such a bad place to live, why would the homes be selling for such high dollars?” he said. The rent strike, Oakland points out, is “just a group of people not paying their rent.”
Some people are rationing their medication to make ends meet, Moore said. “There’s one person who canceled Life Alert. It’s either Life Alert or rent, and if you don’t pay rent, they evict you and throw you in the streets.”
Tenant organizers across the nation have found a foothold in recent years organizing against individual landlords, and Bozeman’s tenant union, situated in one of the fastest-growing communities in the state, is no exception. Tenant unions from Los Angeles to Kansas City to New York have organized to win rent freezes, maintenance, and security in their homes.
Mobile home parks—increasingly private-equity-owned and uniquely at-risk in the face of climate disasters—are organizing, too: a group of trailer park residents in Columbia, Missouri, unionized in February. In Montana, as Rebecca Burns recently wrote for In These Times, mobile homes were already once a site of tenant organizing: buoyed by the state’s miners unions, the first Bozeman-area mobile home tenants’ union won an agreement with their landlord in 1978.
Oakland says park residents “have been terrorized by the union,” and plans to evict the strikers. The strikers say they’ve retained a lawyer and will fight to stay in their homes.
“I wish none of this was happening,” Moore said. “Your utilities should work. Your place should be safe. You should be able to get in and out of it. These are the absolute basics, and they just haven’t kept them up. And if you call them on it, they threaten you.”
Montana
Montana’s fastest man who started as a walk on
MISSOULA, Mt. — Karsen Beitz arrived at Montana with no scholarship offers, one remaining walk-on spot and no guarantee that his track career would last.
Now, the former Sentinel High School standout is one of the fastest athletes in Montana history.
Beitz, a Missoula native and junior sprinter for the Grizzlies, has turned an unlikely college opportunity into a record-setting career. He owns Montana’s 100-meter and 200-meter program records and enters next week’s Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships as one of the top sprinters in the league.
Coming out of high school, Beitz was a football and track athlete without a Division I offer.
“I was upset about it,” Beitz said. “But at the same time, I was fine with just going to college and living a normal college life.”
That changed after conversations between Sentinel coach Dylan Reynolds and Montana coach Doug Fraley.
“You may not think he’s a D-I prospect based on his times,” Reynolds told Fraley, “but I’m just telling you, if he gets in the right program, he’s going to be a D-I runner.”
Fraley had one walk-on spot left on his roster. He brought Beitz into his office, talked with him and decided to take a chance.
“I liked him. We had a good conversation, so I decided to give him the last walk-on spot,” Fraley said. “I’m sure glad I did.”
Beitz became a Division I athlete in his hometown, but his first goal was modest. He wanted to prove he belonged and earn a scholarship.
He did that quickly.
As a freshman, Beitz placed at the Big Sky Outdoor Championships and helped Montana’s 4×100-meter relay reach the podium with a school-record performance.
“There was no doubt he earned that scholarship,” Fraley said.
Beitz continued to climb in 2025. He placed second in the 200 meters at the Big Sky indoor meet, but a hamstring injury kept him out of the outdoor championships.
“It sucked to deal with,” Beitz said. “But I’m young and still had two years left, so I shifted my mindset to how I could come out these next two years.”
He has not looked back.
Beitz won the 200 meters at the 2026 Big Sky indoor championships, the first individual conference title of his track career. His time of 21.09 seconds edged Idaho State’s Alex Conner by one-hundredth of a second.
“I think the best part about it was seeing how happy Doug was,” Beitz said. “He was jumping up and down, gave me a big hug. After last year, I knew what I was capable of, so to go out there and do it was amazing.”
Then came the outdoor season.
In April, Beitz broke Montana’s 58-year-old 200-meter record, running 20.55 seconds at the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate in Long Beach, California. The previous record had stood since 1968.
Two weeks later, he added the school’s wind-legal 100-meter record, running 10.25 seconds at the Bengal Invitational in Pocatello, Idaho. Which broke a 44-year-old program record and gave Beitz both sprint marks.
“He’s a really competitive guy, and he wants to be the best in the Big Sky,” Fraley said.
The records have not left Beitz satisfied. They have made him hungrier.
“You have all these goals and numbers in your mind,” Beitz said. “Then once you hit those numbers, you’re not satisfied. There’s just more numbers to chase.”
The next chase begins at the Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships, scheduled for May 13-16 in Portland, Oregon.
After college, Beitz hopes to follow his mother’s footsteps and become a pharmacist. Maybe even the world’s fastest pharmacist.
“If I’m running around the hospital talking to doctors,” Beitz said, “I’ll do it pretty fast.”
From a walk-on few people noticed to a conference champion and school-record holder, Beitz has become Montana’s fastest man — and he is not done running.
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