6 Best Sights in Billings, Little Big Horn, and the Montana Plains, Montana

The Bowdoin Wildlife Refuge Headquarters, at the main entrance to Bowdoin, provides information on refuge conditions, species lists, a variety of mounted birds and mammals, and instructions for a drivable tour route.

The Bowdoin Wildlife Refuge Headquarters, at the main entrance to Bowdoin, provides information on refuge conditions, species lists, a variety of mounted birds and mammals, and instructions for the auto tour.

Interpretive signs explain the geology of the rock layers visible on the ½-mi loop of the Cap Rock Nature Trail, which begins on Cains Coulee Road, a few miles from the park entrance. The trail affords excellent views of a natural rock bridge. Beginning at the campground, the 1.5-mi Diane Gabriel Trail loops through both badlands and prairie terrain. At the halfway point a duck-billed-dinosaur fossil is embedded in a cliff. The.5-mi Kinney Coulee Trail starts about 4 mi south of the park entrance and leads 300 feet down a canyon. The terrain here is a bit more forested than elsewhere in the park, but the rock formations are the real stars.

Bordering the shores of Fort Peck Lake—and extending west more than 100 miles to U.S. 191—is the massive Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, a 1.1-million-acre preserve teeming with more than 200 species of birds, including bald eagles and game birds; 45 different mammals, including elk, bighorn sheep, antelope, prairie dogs, and deer; and a variety of fish and reptiles. But this is also a refuge for history: each year scientists from around the country march into the preserve, and each year they find something new, whether it's dinosaur bones, buffalo jumps, tepee rings, or an old homesteader's shack. The refuge, one of the largest under the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's management, is open for hiking, horseback riding, fishing, boating, and other activities. Several access roads run through the area; most of these are unpaved, aside from U.S. 191, which runs north–south through the western edge of the refuge.

Named after the Lakota word for "bad land," Makoshika State Park encompasses more than 11,000 acres of Montana's badlands, distinct rock formations also found in Wyoming and the Dakotas. The bare rock walls and mesas of the park create an eerie moonscape that is only occasionally broken by a crooked pine or juniper tree warped by the hard rock and lack of water. Practically a desert, the badlands are excellent fossil grounds, and the remains of tyrannosaurs and triceratops have been found here.