SELECTING what you hope will be the perfect accommodation, sight unseen, isn't always easy. Certainly there are places where a traveller can arrive with no reservations and still have great choices.

But obviously prime holiday season isn't one of them. Twenty years ago on an Amtrak press ski trip to Whitefish, Montana, our small group of journalists stayed in a very comfortable ski lodge. It was an attractive property, surrounded by a snowy mountain landscape.

But this trip we had our heart set on a traditional cabin, preferably a log one away from town with a sense of solitude. In an era when bigger and bigger properties crowded on less and less acreage seem to be the rule, they're not as easy to find as they once were.

To the rescue from my shelves of travel guides came Moon Handbook to Montana and therein two properties that became home for nine nights.

Out of those listed, descriptions of the North Forty Resort and Best Western Rocky Mountain Lodge caught our attention. Subsequent research on their web sites and long-distance telephone calls sounded good.

Other travellers apparently thought so too, since originally only four nights were available in North Forty's largest cabin and one night at Best Western, which seemed a good choice in town for Amtrak's late arrival that first night.

They turned out to be a good choice. And before leaving home, North Forty called with some additional cancellation space. Unfortunately, it meant moving twice . . . four nights in a big cabin, one in a smaller version and two more back in a larger one.

INTERESTINGLY, just days before departure we met an alumni couple at Northwestern University's graduation and class reunions who live in Whitefish. They assured us we'd made good choices.

Turns out this has become a region much favoured by celebrities. Julia Roberts has a residence here and area landowners include Tom Selleck, Tom Cruise, Maury Povich and a lengthy list of other headline names.

Cottage Number 56 could sleep eight. Attractively log built with pine interior and attractive Montana-built log furniture, it's what many travellers hope their vacation home will be like.

With a long front porch and another one outside the large back bedroom, there was plenty of space to relax under sheltering pines. A fully-equipped kitchen, two bathrooms and gas fireplace added to the comfort level. We were told it could be rented as two separate units, one minus kitchen facilities.

Lack of air-conditioning could be a problem during a hot summer. Unfortunately local Montana highways are rebuilt in a fashion that first puts down asphalt, then covers it with stone. The result is a noisy, distant rumbling sound where cars driving over it sound like semi-trucks.

It was very noticeable in our last two-day cabin, Number 16, closer to the road. Our first four-day cabin was much quieter and that's the one we would hope to reserve next time.

Alsace, France uses the same paving technique and there it has caused many a broken windshield when it has been freshly done, ours among them.

One year there, a stone from a passing car hit the windshield of our rented Mercedes station wagon in a way that sent cracks out in all directions, necessitating replacement of the window.

One thing the highway department does here that deserves being copied elsewhere involves deadly accidents. And because the state is so large and towns so spread out, speeding to cover those distances is definitely a factor in causing accidents. When someone is killed on a highway, small white metal crosses are erected at the site. In some of the remotest areas, we passed locations with as many as five to nine crosses welded together. It's haunting and definitely thought provoking.

What about Whitefish itself? It had first attracted frontiersmen as a fur-trading and logging region. But not until the railroad arrived in 1893 did it become a permanent settlement, actually incorporated in 1904.

WHEN famed J.J. Hill carved his Great Northern Railroad along this intriguing route close by the Canadian border, it put Whitefish on the map. A densely forested area, it took six years to clear the town site, leaving so many stumps, for years it was called Stumptown.

Only 76 miles from Canada's border, its strategically located in a fertile valley surrounded by dramatic mountain ranges. Still populated with some prosperous working cattle ranches, its Big Mountain Ski slopes boast an average of 300 inches of snow annually. We'll be talking more about it in our annual ski round-up.

Increasingly, the area's great outdoor recreation opportunities lure many to both visit and settle there. So does it's proximity to Glacier National Park only 40 miles east.

You're at an elevation of just over 3,000 feet in the valley, which makes it easy for those of us from lower elevations to acclimatise to altitude change. Excellent fishing for cut-throat, rainbow and brook trout and northern pike lures anglers. There's great back-country hiking, a popular 36-hole golf course and two very large lakes. Whitefish and Flathead . . . offering water recreation. There's been a building boom, not of modest cottages or small summer homes, but mountain-side McMansions climbing up Grouse Mountain and other slopes that are constructed in such large and impressive style they look like posh resorts.

A local person we interviewed about the area's prosperity was on the board of a local bank. He confided a recent thirtysomething woman purchaser of such a home turned out to have some $30 million in assets and that was not considered unusual.

My brother Jim's Northwestern University classmate lived in one such gated area accessible only to those who knew the code. This sudden discovery of Montana's beauty has resulted in a sort of latter- day land rush with outsiders buying up and subdividing ranch land, threatening over-development.

Which is not to say everyone there is super affluent . . . new arrivals tend to be, but the old town centre, population some 5,000, retains a folksy, small-town flavour with attractive small houses.

With the influx of all this new wealth comes the inclination to tear down the old business buildings, replacing them with new ones, thus taking away some of that old frontier flavour travellers find so appealing and replacing it with the same modern generic banks and stores one finds everywhere else in the overdeveloped world.

Meanwhile, back to the pine forested, nicely designed grounds of the North Forty Resort some five miles from town. Traditionally dressed Canadian Mennonites, there for a family reunion, occupied 11 of the 22 cabins set on 40 acres when we arrived.

Their friendly presence was a pleasure. Well-behaved children brought their bikes and roller skates and thoroughly enjoyed their vacation adventure.

Mothers, aunts and grandmothers walked between cabins carrying endless platters of home-made goodies for reunion dinners in the big recreation centre part of the property. One cute wide-eyed six-year-old cyclist, not accustomed to the outside world, was so taken by one of my colourful Mexican dresses that she quite literally ran into a very large tree because she was so busy staring at me. Happily, some small surrounding plants saved her from injury. Our stay at North Forty cost $240 a night in the large cabin and $175 for the one night in a smaller one, plus tax.

BEST Western cost $129, including breakfast, for a suite that was good-sized with a fireplace, microwave, refrigerator and mountain view. There is so much to see and do in this area, we barely scratched the surface. And yet we were off exploring in every direction daily . . . rediscovering the beauty of Glacier National Park and its environs, driving east to Browning, headquarters of the Blackfoot Reservation, and south to Kalispell for some unique discoveries. One of the most remarkable private museum collections we have ever encountered anywhere is the Museum of America beyond Polson below Flathead Lake. We stopped in for a quick look and spent the entire afternoon.

There is no disputing this area not only offers some of the West's most spectacular scenery and most dramatic historic hotels in the entire national park system, dating to that early Great Northern Railroad era. There's even a museum in the railroad depot that's a real eye-opener.

You're also within striking distance of some of the West's premier wilderness areas with place names like Bob Marshall, Great Bear, Scapegoat, and Mission Mountains.

All are vast, unspoiled, mainly road-less, reached via trails favoured by true wilderness adventurers, on foot or horseback.

They cover many millions of acres set aside forever. But a Montana traveller soon learns there are also many roads leading to remote areas of superb wilderness easily accessible to the less adventurous.

More about all that next week.

Travel factfile: To view North Forty Lodge, see www.northforty.com. Rates vary by season.

q Next week: The wonders of Glacier National Park