Michael Dougherty | Heidi Pfeil Dougherty
1 The Ultimate Montana Atlas was all I needed.
I arrived in Bozeman with almost no knowledge of the area but eager to explore. The "Atlas" was all I needed to get pretty much wherever I wanted to go. I explored just about every nook and cranny of the greater Bozeman area and many of the surrounding paradises via drives and hikes I had found out about from the book. The book helped me scout out some beautiful camping spots and cabins which will be great for when I bring the whole family out this summer. The supporting background stories and trivia really made the areas I visited come alive. I can't wait for my next visit, and won't be leaving home without my "Ultimate Montana Atlas!"
2 Montana.....all you ever wanted to know, and then some!
Ok, so we are wondering where in the USA we may want to move to...from (hot) sunny Florida. The kids are almost out of the nest and we are wondering if Montana is the state. Good grief, I had no idea I would get SO much information out of one book, on ONE state. This book is definitely the book to have if one is considering moving to or just visiting Montana. I can't imagine much is left out. I need not go on and on what is included, as "Reviewer: Larkin Vonalt from Livingston, MT USA" says it all.
I had a few other questions in my back pocket so I contacted the publisher, Michael Dougherty, who took the time to answer each one thoroughly. I can't think of another publisher that would do that.
All in all, if you are looking for information on Montana don't go any further, this book is it. Definitely earns the 5 star rating.
3 Fantastic Guidebook to Montana & Yellowstone
This is the best guide book I've ever purchased. It's huge, with so many pictures and information - really all you'd ever need to know. The author has historical and local info, as well as reviews of restaurants, hotels, B&B's etc. Maps, phone numbers, detailed info on parks, and the book is organized very helpfully by different areas of the state. If only all travel books were this helpful! I recommend it very highly - even if you just want to learn more about Montana. I need one of these books for my own state. :) Enjoy!
4 relocator's dream!!!!!
We are rolling around the idea of packing it all up and moving it to Montana. This is the most incredible book for such an endeavor!!! It gives weather and climate info, elevations, and every other thing I could have EVER thought to ask and all arramged by sections of the state! I am impressed. This is not for tucking in your back pocket though, it's extensive.
5 Top Notch Travel Guide!
Just after graduating college in May 2003, I moved to Montana. Since my move, I have been using the Ultimate Montana travel guide to design my adventures through the cities and backroads of Montana. My hiking, camping, fishing, dining, lodging, and travel experiences have been greatly enhanced by this incredibly easy to use book! This book is a must have for visitors and Montana residents alike. With the assistance of this book, I have been able to get a stellar introduction to the beautiful state of Montana, and will continue to use the book for my up and coming travels and excursions! A FANTASTIC book!!!
6 GREAT!!!
For someone traveling in Montana, or a new resident, this book is a must! More information on traveling in Montana than all the others I've seen combined!
7 More info than I learned in 30 years
I have traveled around Montana for pleasure and work for many years. I took some pride in knowing the names of mountain ranges, the best little restaurants, and of course the nicest hot springs at which to spend the night. Then I picked up this guide and found out there was a whole lot more I could know about each of my favorite stops, not to mention the places I haven't been.
I have been to enough of these Montana communities that I know their is more than enough information in this guide, about any community in Montana, that now I take it with me when I travel the state to learn more about each community I pass through.
Once I understood the format, and used it as a tourist - serious about experiencing and learning about Montana - would, I new that I had gotten more than my monies worth.
If my daughter was still young, I would use this book to teach her interesting facts on Montana as we travel the state.
8 "Ultimate" says and has it all
Wow! I've never known a guidebook to be so easy to use, and this one contains the entire state. I travel all over Montana, and this publisher didn't miss a trick. Also, I can get rid of about seven books which are redundant now that I have this one. I've gotten into the habit of checking ahead on the road in the section I'm traveling through. I can't tell you how many things I've discovered that I didn't notice before. One fun, little thing is that corn maize you can walk through just south of Townsend (No. 2 in section 8). I got lost on both trails; sure was fun. Now I have one guide in my car, and I can open easily right to the area I'm traveling through and see at a glance all the attractions, museums, rest stops and many of the shops, restaurants and lodging in the area. (By the way, when I went to write this review I noticed a review where some guy said it was hard to understand. Anybody who has trouble reading this book probably has trouble tying his shoes.) Anyway, I gave this books to some friends for their birthdays and they loved it. I'm hooked on the "Ultimate" and will certainly get another one when this wears out. Thanks, Michael and Heidi
9 An Exercise in Frustration
I found this atlas unbelievably frustrating to use. The author is married to the "Map Locator Number", a system in which the user must always reference two or more pages at the same time in order to find out about a particular place.
For example, the end of each section has a "Dining Quick Reference", which does not include the restaurants' addresses or telephone numbers or even their towns. Instead, you get their "Map Locator Number". Then you must proceed to find the map, which appears some 20 to 30 pages earlier, at the beginning of the section. Then you look for the "Map Locator Number" on the map, which, once you finally find it, is large enough so that you know the place is within about 10 miles. To be fair, once you have the "Map Locator Number", you have the option of opening a third page, the directory portion, where, if (and only if) your restaurant is an advertiser, you will see a description of their place of business and nearly always get an address and telephone number. Otherwise, your final information is that the place is within about 10 miles. Good luck.
In addition, stores, motels, parks, car washes, restaurants etc. are jumbled together by category and listed together by "Map Locator Number", making it very difficult, say, to quickly assess the next 3 or 4 possible places to stop for the night. (There are faint gray letters that code each entry: T for "To Do", F for "Food", L for "lodging", D for "Lewis and Clark", for example, but the coding is arcane and the entries are then jumbled together.)
In frustration, I turned to the Great Falls telephone directory in my hotel room, which, to my delight, had extensive restaurant listings, including a section of restaurant menus. It had a map, too, that located restaurants by numbers, but it was possible to use the directory just one page at a time.
If you've got to have The Ultimate Montana Atlas and Travel Encyclopedia, do yourself a favor and buy a big pack of Post-it Flags, and don't expect to use it while you're driving down the road.
10 An overpriced yellow pages, not a travel book
We were planning a drive from Seattle to Minnesota at a leisurely pace with 3-4 days in Montana each way. I was interested in more information than could be found in Moon's Montana Handbook and the AAA tour book. Specifically on sights of historical and scenic interest, and in the eastern part of the state, as the Rocky Mountain/Glacier area is already well covered in many publications.
The Ultimate Guide is not really a travel book. It's not insightful. It's very difficuly to use. And given all the ads, I thought it grossly overpriced.
First, it's a book that was written to provide information on businesses. It's a yellow pages first, and a travel guide as coincidence. It's absolutely crammed with advertising. Not just side bars or obvious ads which clutter the pages, but most city and town descriptions are just entries on establishments. For general example, there's a paragraph and a picture about Flo's laundermat, Joe's knick nack shop and the Super Number motel. Historical and scenic information is often just lifted from goverment publications.
Yes, it has many maps, but they are just simple grids. They don't tell you were points of interest are located.
The book is bulky and very difficult to use. Probably the biggest complaint is simply locating information. The approach they used is to put black numbered dots on a regional map and then have you flip through the pages trying to locate the corresponding description. But when you flip back and forth looking for numbered dots, you are confronted with sections keyed to LETTERED dots. Such as T for attraction. You might end up in the wrong section, as there are something like 13 of them.
It's easier to use if you travel east to west as that's how it's organizied.
The text is difficult to read. Titles and subtitles are in a big bold font, but then the text is a small very faint font.
I wondered if the publishers actually ever tried to use this book.
After I used the Ultimate book for a couple weeks, I went back and read my Moon Handbook, which now read read like best book ever written. The Ultimate Guide is not at all insightful and simply doesn't contain travel writing. There's no inspiring pictures of scenic beauty (except the front of the nick nack shop). However, with Moon, you will get some of the author's opinions, but I found that better than having no insight.
The Ultimate Guide might be useful if you lived in MT or spent a couple weeks in MT traveling between small towns.
In the end, I would recommend the Moon Handbook, the AAA guide and the free information from Montana tourism over the Ultimate Guide. I wish I had bought the new edition of the Moon Handbook (at about half the price) than the Ultimate Guide.
11 MUST have this book!
What a great book. We are going to Montana for the first time, and I didn't know where to start. Hotels, food, gas stations, etc. It's all there in a really nicely laid out, simple format. Information about almost every stop along the way. Will be going to Montana with us, and passed along to friends that will be going later this year.
12 A Must have book!!!!
We love to go to Montana and in looking for a guide that wasn't run of the mill...blah...blah...blah I came across this one. At first I thought the [...]price was a little steep but I read the reviews for it and thought why not.
I only had time to glance through the book before we left on vacation. But riding in the car I could really digest my purchase. I read ahead before we came to each area we wanted to see. I read it aloud to my husband in case I missed anything that he might like to see also.
The book is wonderful. It gives you everything you may want to know and then some. So many books touch mainly on tourist trap destinations. This book touches on all of it...off the beaten path type places along with everything in between.
We love Montana and we learned so much that we didn't know. There is alot of history meshed together with the do and see parts.
This book is worth every penny. Don't just think about ordering a copy....get one!!! Ten Stars!!!!
13 The Ultimate Guide to Montana. Really.
With a skepticism born of the east coast, my tendency upon seeing something described as "the ultimate" is a "Yeah, right" response. But in this case, they may be on to something. "The Ultimate Montana Atlas and Travel Encyclopedia" by Michael Dougherty and Heidi Pfeil Dougherty is an incredible compendium of facts, stories, information, advice, suggestions and observations. The Doughertys call this book "the essential reference guide to the treasure state," and that's an accurate description.
I like to read guide books, and I have stacks of them that I've perused: of places I've been, of places I'm going, of places I'll never visit. As an inveterate reader of guide books, not to mention a traveler to some of Montana's most arcane and unusual places, as well as being a collector of trivia, information and gossip, I didn't expect there to be much in this book that I hadn't seen already. I was wrong. It was chock full of unusual and interesting information, and it was all I could do not to grab my keys, jump in the car and head for parts heretofore unknown.This book still had things to tell me.
The entry for Livingston puzzled me as I couldn't figure out what criteria had been used to give commercial establishments a big write-up or to essentially pass them by with a simple mention. A phone call to the writer-editor-publisher shed light on this mystery. Those commercial establishments that got big write ups paid for them. I'm not certain what my philosophy is about this . . . certainly Triple A does much the same. I felt better after I knew that's how the decision was made, because you can use the appropriate pinch of salt, just as you would when reading an ad. Publisher Michael Dougherty explained that this revenue greatly helped to pay for this project and certainly they would have had to have charged a lot more than thirty bucks for this book without that. Still, there are also entries that are clearly included because the Doughertys were enthralled by them, and those are the pieces that make for the most engaging reading. This guide covers everything from kitsch to class, with everything in between. For eclectic travelers it really is a treasure trove.
Because they want to make this the ultimate guide to Montana, they'd like to hear from readers about great stuff they might have missed. The Washoe Theatre in Anaconda, for instance. This was an immense project and that they manage to include as much stuff as they did, stuffed into a reasonably sized package of a book (about the size of the Spokane phone book) is quite an accomplishment. You can't fault them for missing a thing or two, and if you call them up to tell them about it, they're pleased to hear about it, and will include it in future revisions.
The guide is stuffed with detailed maps, mile by mile information for all Montana State and Federal Highways as well as information on Dining (1796 restaurants), lodging (685 motels, 150 guest ranches, 200 bed and breakfasts) 350 campgroudns, 96 forest service cabins, shopping, auto services, hiking (255 hikes) and fishing( 225 sites), Lewis and Clark information (140 points of interest), scenic drives, adventure, entertainment, area information, local history, roadside geology, 270 outfitters, quick reference guides, 71 public golf courses, 25 hot springs, 200 historical markers, 65 scenic drives, 50 ghost towns, 700 annual festivals and events, 40 rodeos, 31 ski areas, and a partridge in a pear tree. Just kidding about the partridge.
Essays on a variety of subjects pepper the volume, including such fascinating topics as the Frontier Cattle Industry, Lewis and Clark, the history of Butte, Kid Curry and the Wild Bunch, a great section on Ingomar (including, if you will, a "bed and breakfast") the Indians and Fort Union, the Nez Perce war, the Bozeman cemetery and the Pryor Mountain Horse herd as well as all sorts of interesting Montana trivia like: the area surrounding the Yellowstone down around Colstrip was once home to one of the largest herds of bison in North American, more than a million and a half animals. Did you know that Petroleum County, the last county established in Montana in 1925, is also the smallest in population with only 518 people? Or that Alzada, Montana is closer to the Texas panhandle than it is to Yaak, Montana? From the town in the southeast to the town in the northwest is 800 miles, or a 12 hour drive.
In any case whether you're traveling from Alzada to Zortman, or Glacier to Yellowstone, or Scobey to the Monida pass, or just hitting the highlights as you speed through on Interstate 90, "The Ultimate Montana Atlas and Travel Guide" makes an excellent traveling companion and earns the space you give it behind the seat of the truck, in the glove box, the map pocket or under the seat. An excellent find.
14 This is truly the ultimate book on Montana
My only criticism of this book is that it may be too much. Its as if the publishers refused to leave anything out. I am a Montana junkie and own every guidebook on Montana I have been able to find. I could have saved a lot of money if this book had been available earlier. The maps in here are better than the one the state travel bureau sent me. While they are not in color, their detail is impressive. And they are on a much larger scale than any foldout map. They are the only book I've found that has maps of towns other than the few major cities--I counted 45. The book is incredibly well organized. It is broken down into 15 regions of the state rather than the six regions that most books are divided by. The level of detail for each region is unbelievable The regions are ordered geographically with the maps as the starting point. It is very easy to look at where you are on the map and find information relevant to that immediate area. I found the information on Yellowstone and Glacier Park to be more complete than most books dedicated exclusively to them. The book is huge--as big as many phonebooks. Aside from its being the most impressive guidebook I've ever seen for any state, it is fascinating reading. It is loaded with historical tidbits, and fascinating pieces of information that you simply don't find in any of the other guidebooks. All I can say is, if you're even thinking of visiting Montana, you would be frankly dumb not to have a copy of this book. Oh and one secret the publishers for some reason are silent about--if you send in a card in the back of the book, they will send you a 32 page book of coupons with over $3,000 in discount.
