Post by Lisa Petrison on Sept 8, 2011 12:24:42 GMT -5
OVERALL: 5 (EXCELLENT), with exceptions.
I spent about a month in Montana in August 2011, traveling around in my RV. In general, I loved this state and would consider living there full-time, possibly even in winter. Certainly, from now on if I am looking for a place to go in the summer, this would be my top choice.
In general, Montana has very good air quality. It also has what I consider to be a lot of charm. People there seemed surprisingly sophisticated, as well as grounded, down-to-earth, and accepting of others. (Then again, maybe I was just in such a good mood from the air that it reflected on my feelings toward them.)
Montana’s #2 industry is tourism, most of it focused on outdoor pursuits, and one tour guide said that they were very protective of their environment in part as a result of that. Their #1 industry is agriculture, but this mostly seems to be hay and ranching rather than crops that are problematic to me. The recent approval of Roundup Ready Alfalfa could change that (I am increasingly convinced that Roundup -- or more specifically the toxic fungi that colonize the soil in places where Roundup is used heavily -- is a problem for me), but hopefully farmers will decide not to adopt it.
Montana has huge numbers of RV parks and campgrounds, and for most of the summer (even on weekdays) the vast majority are full. Arriving early in the day to get a spot is a good idea here. RV parks can be on the expensive side.
I drove north into Montana from Sheridan, Wyoming, on I-90 and drove west all the way to Missoula. Then I went north on 93 to Glacier National Park. East of the park, I drove south on I-15 back to I-90, then retraced my route out of the state.
Billings Area: 3 (FAIR)
Billings is the biggest city in the state. It felt okay to me, on both of my drives through. It’s what I think of as a generic medium-sized western city in a good state, both in terms of what’s there and in how it feels.
I stayed one night in the KOA on the river there. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this (the river did not feel great to me and conceivably could be worse at other times), but I didn’t experience problems as a result.
Bozeman Area: 5 (EXCELLENT), with reservations.
Bozeman is an absolutely charming, upscale city that does not really “belong” in Montana. It’s much more like (say) Telluride, Sonoma, Moab, Aspen, Jackson Hole and Sundance -- a little Yuppie enclave where people can experience the great outdoors on vacation or (if they’re lucky enough to have a flexible job or to have retired with a lot of money) on a permanent basis. Of this group, Bozeman actually may be the best since it’s not yet too crowded or super-expensive. Give it time though.
Not all the buildings in Bozeman were great (for instance, the lovely library was intolerable to me), but the outdoor air so far is holding up remarkably well. The only problem that I experienced appears to have been blowing from Yellowstone National Park, which I know is a very bad place for me and which is less than 100 miles south. On one day when the barometer was dropping fast and the wind was blowing strongly from the south, Bozeman started feeling fairly bad. Whether at times (e.g. winter) it gets even worse than that, I’m not sure.
One thing that folks might want to do in Bozeman is to go to the food co-op store. It’s not quite the level of a Whole Foods, but it’s still likely the best store to get a variety of healthy food products in four states (Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota). There’s an excellent juice bar there as well.
Three Forks Area: 5 (EXCELLENT)
Three Forks is about half an hour west of Bozeman. There is a nice RV park there (a former KOA called Camp Three Forks), which is very spacious and (for the area) not too expensive. (Bozeman just has a very expensive KOA and one other very crowded RV park, so this was a better choice for me.) The air was terrific here, even when Bozeman was feeling bad to me.
Butte: 5 (EXCELLENT)
Butte’s main tourist attraction is a large copper mining pit that has filled with super-toxic water. I did not visit this attraction, but I drove through the neighborhood and around the rest of the town. In general, it all felt fine to me. It’s an older city and quite run down, but I had a nice meal here and spent a long time on a couple of days sitting in the Starbucks in the newer section of town.
Fairmont Hot Springs: 5 (EXCELLENT)
This is about 20 minutes from Butte (west on I-90). There is a big RV park, and the air felt great to me. It is next to a hot springs (extra charge) which has a nice outdoor pool area. I didn’t feel like the water was anything terrifically special in terms of its healing powers, but it was clean and (I think) non-chlorinated. Unfortunately, though, you have to go through the hotel to get to the outdoor pool. I didn’t find that a problem at my current level of reactivity, but some people might.
Missoula: 5 (EXCELLENT)
This is an older German city that reminded me a bit of what Cincinnati would be like if the latter didn’t have any suburbs. The difference was that the air here was great! And the river that runs through the city seemed really clean too. (There was one guy fly fishing on it when I was there, and this did not seem to me a bad idea at all.) I was just here for an hour on a sunny day though -- I drove around, then visited the downtown area a bit on foot and rode their carousel.
Glacier National Park Area: 2 (POOR)
A lot of national parks are problems for me, and Glacier certainly fits into this category. I didn’t find any of the worst toxin for me -- instead, it’s something that seemed similar to what I found in Santa Fe, Big Sur, Mt. Lemmon (in Tucson) and Custer State Park (in the Black Hills of SD). Based on where I’ve found it, I think it’s related to a fire retardant that’s just started to be used within the past five years or so.
My experience in all of these places is that the toxin creates a cloud of unpleasant, slightly acrid feeling air that at first feels to me to be vaguely unpleasant but tolerable, but eventually grates away at me until I become a total mess.
My experience was that this stuff was a factor in the whole area surrounding Glacier, starting at Polson (southwest of the park) and then east through Browning. I spent two nights in the area but never did make it across the Going to the Sun Highway. So many things went wrong that it almost felt like it was fated that I not go across it -- perhaps this is where the sourcepoint for this stuff is.
Going east from Glacier, things felt much better when I got to Cut Bank (5), where there’s an RV park. Conceivably, sometime, I might stay there and then just go to the park for a couple of hours as a day trip. The glaciers are supposed to be beautiful there. More likely I’ll just skip it though.
Great Falls: 5 (EXCELLENT)
I felt fine in Great Falls and the surrounding area, but it didn’t feel like a city I wanted to spend a lot of time. It is not a city that I felt had a lot of charm. There’s a smelting factory there that makes a lot of unpleasant smoke. The Lewis & Clark Museum felt good to me and (since I knew almost nothing about that bit of history) was vaguely interesting.
The campgrounds in this area are all located on the river, which felt at least okay to me as I drove by it.
Helena: 5 (EXCELLENT)
Helena is my favorite town in Montana. It is the state capital and has a lot of quiet charm. I spent a lot of time at Starbucks (the one closer to Wal-Mart -- the older one in the downtown didn’t feel good to me) there.
I stayed at a lovely little campground (Moose Creek) on Mt. Helena, about five miles down a bumpy dirt road. It was $5/night. There were some horse flies, and I could get only the spottiest cell phone (Verizon) connection, and the grass was overgrown on some of the sites, and there was no dump station or water to fill the RV (just a hand pump), but otherwise I really liked it. Seriously!
Boulder: 2 (POOR)
I had lunch in this town and felt myself getting really irritable, even though I didn’t think the restaurant had mold in it. There used to be uranium mining here, and perhaps that had something to do with it.
Anaconda: 2 (POOR)
I drove through this town and felt pretty bad. Later I found out that it had been a Superfund site (lots of government money used to clean up a toxic area) and was considered a real success story. Perhaps, but traces of the problem still remain, I think.
Phillipsburg: 5 (EXCELLENT)
I drove here one day, just for the sake of doing a tourist-type activity. The whole area, including the ghost town in the hills, felt fine to me.
I spent about a month in Montana in August 2011, traveling around in my RV. In general, I loved this state and would consider living there full-time, possibly even in winter. Certainly, from now on if I am looking for a place to go in the summer, this would be my top choice.
In general, Montana has very good air quality. It also has what I consider to be a lot of charm. People there seemed surprisingly sophisticated, as well as grounded, down-to-earth, and accepting of others. (Then again, maybe I was just in such a good mood from the air that it reflected on my feelings toward them.)
Montana’s #2 industry is tourism, most of it focused on outdoor pursuits, and one tour guide said that they were very protective of their environment in part as a result of that. Their #1 industry is agriculture, but this mostly seems to be hay and ranching rather than crops that are problematic to me. The recent approval of Roundup Ready Alfalfa could change that (I am increasingly convinced that Roundup -- or more specifically the toxic fungi that colonize the soil in places where Roundup is used heavily -- is a problem for me), but hopefully farmers will decide not to adopt it.
Montana has huge numbers of RV parks and campgrounds, and for most of the summer (even on weekdays) the vast majority are full. Arriving early in the day to get a spot is a good idea here. RV parks can be on the expensive side.
I drove north into Montana from Sheridan, Wyoming, on I-90 and drove west all the way to Missoula. Then I went north on 93 to Glacier National Park. East of the park, I drove south on I-15 back to I-90, then retraced my route out of the state.
Billings Area: 3 (FAIR)
Billings is the biggest city in the state. It felt okay to me, on both of my drives through. It’s what I think of as a generic medium-sized western city in a good state, both in terms of what’s there and in how it feels.
I stayed one night in the KOA on the river there. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this (the river did not feel great to me and conceivably could be worse at other times), but I didn’t experience problems as a result.
Bozeman Area: 5 (EXCELLENT), with reservations.
Bozeman is an absolutely charming, upscale city that does not really “belong” in Montana. It’s much more like (say) Telluride, Sonoma, Moab, Aspen, Jackson Hole and Sundance -- a little Yuppie enclave where people can experience the great outdoors on vacation or (if they’re lucky enough to have a flexible job or to have retired with a lot of money) on a permanent basis. Of this group, Bozeman actually may be the best since it’s not yet too crowded or super-expensive. Give it time though.
Not all the buildings in Bozeman were great (for instance, the lovely library was intolerable to me), but the outdoor air so far is holding up remarkably well. The only problem that I experienced appears to have been blowing from Yellowstone National Park, which I know is a very bad place for me and which is less than 100 miles south. On one day when the barometer was dropping fast and the wind was blowing strongly from the south, Bozeman started feeling fairly bad. Whether at times (e.g. winter) it gets even worse than that, I’m not sure.
One thing that folks might want to do in Bozeman is to go to the food co-op store. It’s not quite the level of a Whole Foods, but it’s still likely the best store to get a variety of healthy food products in four states (Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota). There’s an excellent juice bar there as well.
Three Forks Area: 5 (EXCELLENT)
Three Forks is about half an hour west of Bozeman. There is a nice RV park there (a former KOA called Camp Three Forks), which is very spacious and (for the area) not too expensive. (Bozeman just has a very expensive KOA and one other very crowded RV park, so this was a better choice for me.) The air was terrific here, even when Bozeman was feeling bad to me.
Butte: 5 (EXCELLENT)
Butte’s main tourist attraction is a large copper mining pit that has filled with super-toxic water. I did not visit this attraction, but I drove through the neighborhood and around the rest of the town. In general, it all felt fine to me. It’s an older city and quite run down, but I had a nice meal here and spent a long time on a couple of days sitting in the Starbucks in the newer section of town.
Fairmont Hot Springs: 5 (EXCELLENT)
This is about 20 minutes from Butte (west on I-90). There is a big RV park, and the air felt great to me. It is next to a hot springs (extra charge) which has a nice outdoor pool area. I didn’t feel like the water was anything terrifically special in terms of its healing powers, but it was clean and (I think) non-chlorinated. Unfortunately, though, you have to go through the hotel to get to the outdoor pool. I didn’t find that a problem at my current level of reactivity, but some people might.
Missoula: 5 (EXCELLENT)
This is an older German city that reminded me a bit of what Cincinnati would be like if the latter didn’t have any suburbs. The difference was that the air here was great! And the river that runs through the city seemed really clean too. (There was one guy fly fishing on it when I was there, and this did not seem to me a bad idea at all.) I was just here for an hour on a sunny day though -- I drove around, then visited the downtown area a bit on foot and rode their carousel.
Glacier National Park Area: 2 (POOR)
A lot of national parks are problems for me, and Glacier certainly fits into this category. I didn’t find any of the worst toxin for me -- instead, it’s something that seemed similar to what I found in Santa Fe, Big Sur, Mt. Lemmon (in Tucson) and Custer State Park (in the Black Hills of SD). Based on where I’ve found it, I think it’s related to a fire retardant that’s just started to be used within the past five years or so.
My experience in all of these places is that the toxin creates a cloud of unpleasant, slightly acrid feeling air that at first feels to me to be vaguely unpleasant but tolerable, but eventually grates away at me until I become a total mess.
My experience was that this stuff was a factor in the whole area surrounding Glacier, starting at Polson (southwest of the park) and then east through Browning. I spent two nights in the area but never did make it across the Going to the Sun Highway. So many things went wrong that it almost felt like it was fated that I not go across it -- perhaps this is where the sourcepoint for this stuff is.
Going east from Glacier, things felt much better when I got to Cut Bank (5), where there’s an RV park. Conceivably, sometime, I might stay there and then just go to the park for a couple of hours as a day trip. The glaciers are supposed to be beautiful there. More likely I’ll just skip it though.
Great Falls: 5 (EXCELLENT)
I felt fine in Great Falls and the surrounding area, but it didn’t feel like a city I wanted to spend a lot of time. It is not a city that I felt had a lot of charm. There’s a smelting factory there that makes a lot of unpleasant smoke. The Lewis & Clark Museum felt good to me and (since I knew almost nothing about that bit of history) was vaguely interesting.
The campgrounds in this area are all located on the river, which felt at least okay to me as I drove by it.
Helena: 5 (EXCELLENT)
Helena is my favorite town in Montana. It is the state capital and has a lot of quiet charm. I spent a lot of time at Starbucks (the one closer to Wal-Mart -- the older one in the downtown didn’t feel good to me) there.
I stayed at a lovely little campground (Moose Creek) on Mt. Helena, about five miles down a bumpy dirt road. It was $5/night. There were some horse flies, and I could get only the spottiest cell phone (Verizon) connection, and the grass was overgrown on some of the sites, and there was no dump station or water to fill the RV (just a hand pump), but otherwise I really liked it. Seriously!
Boulder: 2 (POOR)
I had lunch in this town and felt myself getting really irritable, even though I didn’t think the restaurant had mold in it. There used to be uranium mining here, and perhaps that had something to do with it.
Anaconda: 2 (POOR)
I drove through this town and felt pretty bad. Later I found out that it had been a Superfund site (lots of government money used to clean up a toxic area) and was considered a real success story. Perhaps, but traces of the problem still remain, I think.
Phillipsburg: 5 (EXCELLENT)
I drove here one day, just for the sake of doing a tourist-type activity. The whole area, including the ghost town in the hills, felt fine to me.