Montana
From the 50 State Visitor Guide :
Mont. Code Ann. 2021 §§46-23-504 through 46-23-520.
Registration Triggers and Deadlines:
Three business days for initial registration and updates; transients shall register within 3 business days of entering state.
Visitors: Must register within 3 business days of entering the state for a temporary residence of 10 days or more, or for an aggregate period of 30 days in calendar year. §§46-23-504, 46-23-505.
Residency/Presence and Other Restrictions:
None
Duration & updates:
Life. Petition to remove – T1 - 10 yrs; T2 – 25 yrs.
Updates by mail: T1 – annual; T2 – 6 months; T3 –90 days; Transients in person- 30 days. §§46-23-504, 56-23-506.
Most recent visit - August 2023
For registered visitors Montana is a relative safe haven among Northwestern states. While it’s true that anyone moving to this state must register within three business days, if you are only visiting you get nine consecutive days to visit (because the tenth day triggers your obligation to register) and return visits are permitted up to 30 days aggregate per calendar year. Furthermore, there are no residency or presence restrictions to be concerned about, at least at the state level.
All this means that Montana is your best staging point for a visit to Yellowstone National Park. Wyoming, where most of Yellowstone is located, allows you only two consecutive business days in-state (because the third day triggers). So stage yourself in nearby Montana on a Thursday, enter Yellowstone early on Friday (in both states any partial day in-state is going to count toward your total, so make the most of those first and last partial days), enjoy America’s most famous national park over the weekend, and return to Montana late on Monday.
If you want to return to Yellowstone, stay in Montana two nights and one complete calendar day, and you can restart the clock in Wyoming. Or see what Montana has to offer from Tuesday to Thursday before restarting the clock for a second extended Yellowstone weekend. Either way, just be mindful of your time in Montana because, while 30 days (including partial days) aggregate per calendar year isn’t too restrictive, it is after all a limit.
Speaking of what Montana has to offer, I decided to find out as part of my 2023 Pacific Northwest tour. Having spent the previous night at Badlands National Park in South Dakota, I entered the state on U.S. 212 in far southeastern Montana. I traveled west through the remote High Plains until I reached Little Bighorn National Monument where I took the auto tour. By the way this national monument is located within the Crow Reservation.
Continuing west on I-90 I spent my first night at the Columbus, MT town campground (donations accepted). Day 2 of my Montana journey took me to the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, then up to my primary Montana destination, Glacier National Park. Unable to find a campsite on public lands I turned to Red Eagle Campground on the Blackfeet Reservation.
Glacier National Park
The first thing you should know about Glacier National Park is that it is, of course, magnificent. The clouds shrouded the jagged mountains such that I thought I must be taking the road tour through Middle Earth. At the mountain peaks (the U.S. Continental Divide) it was cold even at mid-day – I was glad I’d brought gloves and winter clothing just in case. However, the sad news is that due to global warming there are no longer any glaciers in Glacier National Park, at least not that I saw.
The second thing you should know is that as with most great national parks, this one is very crowded during peak season. I was at first distressed to find they were only allowing “reserved admissions” between 6:00 am and 3:00 pm daily. Since it was mid-week I figured they might not be rigorously enforcing that and sure enough when I slid past the gatehouse at 7:30 am it wasn’t even open yet so I went right in.
Nevertheless Glacier National Park was quite crowded that day. I found it impossible to find parking anywhere close to the main visitor center at Logan Pass. In fact people were parking street-side over half a mile away, so I decided to skip that even though it meant missing out on a freezing cold mountaintop tundra hike. With some effort I was able to find parking at other stops along the main park road.
Perhaps this is why Glacier runs frequent shuttle bus service along the length of the main road all the way from Agpar Visitor Center to St. Mary’s. It has stops at every major point of interest along the park road. The only catch is you’ll need to plan your trip so you park at the big parking lot at one of the park entrances and return there at the end of the day to continue on your Pacific Northwest journey.
One last thing about Glacier – it abuts Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada, these two parks comprise an International Peace Park, and citizens of both countries are free to travel anywhere in either park without going through Customs. However, there are no internal roads linking the two parks so you’ll have to backpack at least 20 miles if you want to cross over into Waterton Lakes. I’m too old for that.
Reservation Tourism in Montana
My visit to Montana included three reservations. First was the Crow Reservation where the Little Big Horn National Monument is located. This reservation also includes the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area but that’s quite remote and difficult to access by road. Upon leaving Little Big Horn I got right on I-90 and headed west, which means I really saw very little of the reservation.
The second reservation I passed through was the Blackfeet Reservation. I saw more of this reservation because I passed through the largest town, Browning, at a time in the evening when I was searching for supper. I found a drive thru that claimed to have buffalo burgers but, sadly, they were out of them. Aside from that, Browning has all the usual attributes of a reservation town such as unadorned architecture, a food co-op, health center, native bank and billboards proclaiming national identity. It also has the Museum of the Plains Indian and I would have liked to have seen that but it was already closed for the night.
The third reservation I visited was the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Flathead Reservation, on my fifth day in Montana. Being curious, I stopped in the little town of Hot Springs to see if there was really a hot spring there, which there is but unfortunately it was long ago privatized and incorporated into what’s by now a fleabag hotel.
The principle town of this reservation is Polson, but it’s not really a reservation town. It’s really a European enclave town with all manner of commercial chains, hotels, fast food and recreation infrastructure geared around Flathead Lake, which despite its name has nothing to do with the reservation. It’s a lake created by a hydro-electric dam.
My last stop on the Flathead Reservation was the National Bison Range, which redeemed every other disappointment of the day. It’s great! It was unclear which “nation” is referred to in the name, but I do hope it’s the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation and not the United States.
Upon leaving the Flathead Reservation I got on I-90 and headed west into Idaho. This was a partial day but it still counted as Day 5 in Montana. Well within the state’s limits.
No comments:
Post a Comment