Planning a Montana Camping Trip

Planning a Montana Expedition

Montana is a place to stretch your mind and your physical being. It is a wonder in so many ways and will leave you breathless over and over again. To assure a wonderful experience, utilize every planning tool you can bring to the process. Obviously we hope this will be the beginning of a great journey for you as it was for us a couple of summers ago.

We visited Montanaas part of a trip we planned with our family; husband, wife, two teenage boys, and a scrawny little dog named Poe. Montana was the highlight of a trip that took in besides Montana, places like the Bighorn Mountains, Mt. Rushmore, and Yellowstone Park. All of the places we visited were a wonder by themselves, but Montana was special. >We'd like to share some of the aspects of the trip that made it possible to be so awesome. If you'd like to read some of the details of that trip, visit the page on our Month-Long Trip West.

First, let me say that over the course of many weeks, we spent but just a few nights in hotels. When the layers of dirt demanded a long hot shower and a night's rest in a more familiar kind of resting place, we did bunk at a Super 8 or the like. But this "guide" is about how to plan a truly outdoor experience. There will be many aspects to the planning of such a trip. Some of our mistakes we learned from and can save others the hard lessons.

Obtaining proper equipment and supplies is essential to such a trip.I have compiled a list of gear we truly needed and left off the items we rarely if ever used. It would be a mistake to go "cheap" on these items. There are places to replace gear, but they are often literally hundreds of miles from where you might be. The reality is that you don't want to have to drive 50 miles to Butte to replace an item as we did. Another issue is transporting your gear.Your vehicle had better be up to the job. My suggestion is that the process proceed something like this:

• Determine a time-frame for your trip' season and duration
• Determine your priorities for the trip: is it a camping trip, will you also want to fish, will you be hunting, are there specific places you know you want to see?
• Establish a budget to work within
• Sketch out some preliminary plans
• Discuss plans with participants of trip and revise as necessary
• Nail down the exact destinations and at least an idea of duration of stay at each (here I suggest some flexibility for allowing for places you really like or ones you don't like as much once you get there)
• Determine how you will travel: fly to Montana and rent a vehicle: drive there and use your vehicle, etc.
• Assemble necessary equipment
• Go!

The first three aspects of the process are ones that I cannot really assist you with, other than suggesting on the budget that you really think it through. I made arrangements so that I was certain I always had enough set back for return travel. There is nothing worse than returning home with a pile of credit card bills on the way! Skecthing out preliminary plans involve a number of resources.

Preliminary Planning Process

Follow this link for resources and more ideas on sketching out the preliminaries for your trip

Additional information to follow to continue this process!