But wait, there's more............................
I've never been there, but the Big Belt and Little Belt Mountains, generally north of I-90 and east of I-15 in the White Sulphur Springs area, look mighty nice. Lewis & Clark NF is the FS unit there.
I mentioned Philipsburg, and while I believe you're not crazy about towns and their populations, you might can make an exception for Philipsburg. Good food, good ice cream and fudge, and great folks, all in a very nice little town. Above P'burg is the ghost town of Granite. It's a steep and fairly narrow graded gravel road up there, but I took my Ford up there without a problem or concern. People drive cars up there every day, so it's not rough. There's walking tour of the townsite and a load of mining ruins.
On the east end of Anaconda, the smelter structures are still there and some are being used for metal fabrication work nowadays. The 585' tall smelter smokestack still stands and can be seen for many miles around.
From a point near the stack, MT 569(?) runs south, over the Divide (with some exceptional views just on the far side of the Divide), down to the Big Hole River/MT 43 a few miles west of the village of Wise River. If you're headed from Rock Creek or Philipsburg towards the Big Hole or the Pioneers, this is your route.
From MT 43 east of Wise River, Quartz Hill Rd runs up a few miles to Vipond Park. Vipond Park is a park in the sense that the term applies to an open, upland plain surrounded by mountains. Vipond Park is a true hidden gem and lies within the Beaverhead-Deerlodge NF, so disbursed campingis available most anywhere. Travel the main road for 3-4 miles through and across the park to where it reaches a bluff overlooking Canyon Creek. The road becomes a shelf road there but wil easily carry your rig to the floor of the Canyon Creek Valley. Canyon Creek is a box canyon, so head downstream, past Canyon Creek Cabin, past the "beehive" charcoal kiln structures so well preserved, to and through the former smelter town of Glendale, and finally to the Big Hole River crossing at Melrose, astride I-15.
Up the Byway from the village of Wise River, Mono Creek CG is a nice spot and is close to the ghost town of Coolidge. Coolidge is a well-preserved ghost town and the remains of the mill built to treat the ores are huge and impressive. Note that you can see the shorn-off side of Comet Mountain from Coolidge.
In Butte you can see the Berkeley Pit, one of the largest open-pit mines on Earth. It's slowly filling with water and can be viewed from a deck which has a small gift shop/museum attached.
Also in Butte you can visit the very nice mining museum. For rockheads like me, especially hard-rock mining rockheads, the museum is a must-see. Loads and loads of Butte history/miners union history, and general "Copper Baron" mining history there.
Up towards Glacier is Choteau, where you may bump into David Letterman in town while at his ranch nearby. The town of Augusta is nice and off the beaten path along US 287.
You can cross the Divide west of Augusta on MT 200 and pass through Lincoln, MT, the last home of the Unabomber. The road follows the Blackfoot River down to I-90 east of Missoula. The Blackfoot is the "A River Runs Through it" stream.
Browning, MT is close to East Glacier and is home to the Blackfeet Indians. The Museum of the Plains Indian is in Browning, and like the Big Hole National Battlefield, is a sobering place to visit. The Blackfeet are, generally speaking, unfriendly towards visitors, and after spending some time at the Big Hole Battlefield and the Museum in Browning, one can imagine why.
Between Glacier and Missoula is St Ignatius, a mission complex. I believe Mission Lake is on Reservation land off to the east side of US 93, but the only time I was there camping was in the late 1970s, a time frame sometimes tough to recall details about. I do recall it was a beautiful, forested lake, the beers cold, and the locals friendly.
Missoula is easily my favorite town in Montana outside of Philipsburg. Home to the University of Montana, it's a free-spriit libertarian city with the Clark Fork River running right through the center, separating the downtown from campus. Walking and cycling paths line the river, several footbridges cross it, and some really great restaurants, cafes, coffeshops, bookstores, and bars are all within a short walk of the motels on Broadway. I particularly like The Oxford, a diner which has no locks on the doors because they never close. They serve an eclectic mix of Americana and still use a pidgin-English style ordering system which is a scream to listen to. Missoula also has a Costco and a huge big-box sporting goods store (Academy?), and an REI store.
A last reference to a route to travel is the Skalkaho Highway, MT 38, running E-W from Hamilton in the Bitterroot Valley to Philipsburg in the Flint Creek Valley. From Hamilton east to the pass, it's mostly graded gravel and the uppermost 3-4 miles feature a no-guardrail drop-off down 800-1,000' to the valley below. Throw some active logging truck activity in there and it's a real thrill to drive. From the pass eastward, it's paved, and there's a nice NF campground and probably much in the way of disbursed camping in the same vicinity. From the foot of the range east of the pass, the southernmost section of Rock Creek Road traverses some wide-open floodplain with some large ranches and a particularly hoity-toity resort before reaching MT 348 and the lower section of Rock Creek Rd at MP 41, 41 miles from I-90.
Foy
Edited by Foy, 23 July 2013 - 09:21 PM.
... Of course I have Benchmark Atlases for ID, MT, WY, and WA...but I know very little about what I'm looking at.
