Grains, Trains, and Milk

2023-07-04
ND, MT

Today we went further west to our next National Park: Glacier. The trip across Northern North Dakota and Montana was on state roads rather than the interstate. Mostly this means it's harder to pass with only one lane. And you do need to pass. Some of these RVs are just putt-putting along. I get it; I wouldn't be in a hurry if I brought my own bathroom with me. But that doesn't quite explain why they suddenly feel the need to accelerate once I start to pass. Do I remind them that they missed the last increase in the speed limit 20 miles back, or are they just trying to own the road by removing the competition?

Besides the rolling fields, there were three things that struck us. First, the number of freight trains. Some moving, some stationary. Some were long, others were very long. We paralleled the track almost the entire trip and saw quite a few. Next, there were a lot of grain elevators. We have a few of these in Pennsylvania, but we passed dozens. Some were obviously in use, while a few looked pretty decrepit (but I am not sure they are unused). Most of them were situated along the tracks to load rail cars. And third, we followed the Milk River - which is a tributary of the Missouri - for many miles. We must have crossed it at least eight times. All of this led Val to dub the trip "Grains, Trains, and Milk River."

Our first stop for the day was at Fort Peck Dam. They built this dam during the depression, and it blocks the Missouri to make Fort Peck Lake. (These guys use naming schemes I can get behind!) There are a couple power generating stations. The interpretive center is only open Friday-Monday and thus with today being a Tuesday we had to self-tour in a fierce wind that encouraged said touring to be mostly automotive. We proceeded to drive across the dam, because we could. It is impressively long, and has steel plates driven into the bedrock deep in its core. It claims to be the largest hydraulically -filled dam in the US, where the hydraulics in this case means they used water to pump dirt into the dam and has nothing to do with the river.

Later in the day we stopped in the town of Havre (pop. 9362). It's a typical small town (and eighth-largest in Montana), but as we walked around the roughly nine-block downtown I was pleased to see that storefronts were nearly all full. They may be struggling a bit but they aren't disappearing any time soon. However, the town did manage to have the best windshield squeegee that we've used yet. You cannot overstate the value of a clean windshield on a road trip, although it did expose a chip I picked up yesterday.

Eventually we got to Glacier National Park. After checking in at the campground, we drove over to the St. Mary's visitor center to get postcards and watch the movie. We then were heading back to set up our tent when we decided to turn the wrong direction and travel up Going to the Sun Road for a few miles. In the first five miles we had some excellent views of St. Mary's Lake.

We then headed back and actually set up camp, had dinner, and packed up for tomorrow. We haven't camped in a year so we were a bit rusty and inefficient.