Leave the city behind and get really close to some wild and wooly nature at the Nature Conservatory's Pine Butte Ranch, 27 miles west of Choteau, Mont. Or, try a dig for dinosaur bones:

• Nature lovers who are in the loop book their stay at Pine Butte Ranch to coincide with the height of wild flower season in spring or the falling leaves in autumn.
  
• Spring wildflowers are in full bloom from late May through June, fall leaves at their peak in late September through October.
  
• The nearest airport to The Nature Conservancy is Great Falls International Airport, a two-hour drive away.
  
• Anthropology enthusiasts know one of the best places in the world to find preserved dinosaur eggs and bones is at Two Medicine Formation in Bynum, Montana, about half-way between Great Falls and Glacier Park on U.S. 89. There, the bones are exquisitely preserved in layers of bentonite.
  
• Egg Mountain, a Nature Conservancy-owned property that's part of the Two Medicine Formation, is well-known for its amazing fossil records of the Maiasaura, a duck-billed species whose name means "Good Mother Lizard."
  
• The Egg Mountain excavation site was mostly made of skeletal remains from a herd of 10,000 Maiasaura, theorized to have been killed by a catastrophic volcanic eruption.
  
• It is the site of the first dinosaur embryos ever discovered.

The Nature Conservatory's Pine Butte Guest Ranch
HC 58 Box 34C
Choteau, MT 59422
Weekly rates, $1,400 for adults and $1,000 for children, include horseback riding naturalist program, room and board and natural history tours.
406-466-2158
nature.org/wherewework

Old Trail Museum
823 N. Main Ave.
Choteau, MT 59422
Two-day area geology and paleontology field programs, including fossil excavation, Tours of Egg Mountain, daily at 2 p.m., $12 adults, $6 children
June-August, $200
406-466-5332
OTM@3Rivers.net