Thanks everyone.
I had coffee with a new-to-Montana person last week, and talking to her about the logistics of backcountry permits in Glacier got me thinking about how tough it can be for neophytes to do the big national parks in the summer. If you don't have previous knowledge the logistics of even little things can get very frustrating, which seems to put lots of folks off. I think this is unfortunate, as usually fairly minor alterations in planning can make these issues mostly go away.