Trip to the Pacific Northwest - North Dakota and Montana

This is the second day of the trip through North Dakota and Montana.

North Dakota and Montana

I opened my eyes a 4:00a.m. as we are pulling out of Fargo, North Dakota. The train is so smooth and quiet that one does not feel the change in speed.  The train whistle, loud and annoying outside could not be heard inside.  Our seats turn into (semi) beds and sleeping was comfortable.  My daughter suggested bringing a light blanket and we took a couple of “snuggies” and sleeping in coach seats could not have been better.  Although the train was very quiet, about three or four seats behind us sat an overweight person with a sinus problem.  He not only snored, he could have won a competition for annoying noises against a large pride of lions growling at the same time.  There was a couple of times that he seemed to have stopped breathing and was about to die – no such luck.  I feel sorry for the person sitting next to him.  We did have an incident where someone must have had a heart attack in the car next to us.  “If there is a doctor on the train please come to car number six” was the announcement over the intercom that first indicated a sign of a problem.  The train stopped in the next town, an ambulance was waiting and they took him (or her) off the train.

At 6:22 a.m. we awaken to a beautiful sunrise near Rugby, ND. The scenery continued with vast farms, however, it seemed that soybeans and wheat were rapidly replacing corn as the farmers’ favorite crop. There were also a lot of cattle grazing at the distance. The landscape is absent of trees now but there are a few walls of poplar probably planted as wind breaks. The sky is clear I began to look for buffalo roaming and deer and antelope at play – after all we were heading West. 

It seems that all of the northern section of the State of North Dakota is flooded.  I was informed, by a “Dakotan” traveling on the train that there is no outlet for Devil Lake and it is flooding the northern part of the State, essentially on its way to becoming an inland sea. Crops cannot be planted and the railroad is being threatened. 

The rails parallel the Interstate and it's nice to be able to pass cars as if they were moving very slow. We must be moving at least 80 to 85 mph, a little less than the 110 mph we were doing in Michigan.  There is a lot of oil drilling going on in northwestern North Dakota. Oil drilling rigs everywhere as far as one can see from the train.  In support of the oil drilling, there was a lot of construction of supporting infrastructure such as small and large storage tanks, rail tracks to ship the oil and hundreds of new-looking rail oil tanker cars waiting to carry out the oil.  We also were beginning to see hilly land as we get closer to the Rockies, although they were still very far away from our location.

The Rockies could be seen at the distance rising from the plains by late afternoon.  I noticed also that there were hawks every 10 or so power line posts.  Probably the range of their territories and if they are like cardinals, they will not let other hawks in their territory to hunt.  The power line posts were the highest things around and they each claimed their perch watching for food and trespasser hawks.  As we traveled west we had another brief stop at Wolf Point and Shelby Montana, a couple of small towns that someone from a larger city would go insane if they had to live there.  But it was the perfect home for the locals.  

 Wolfpoint MT

 A brief stop at Shelby, MT

Traveling companions on their way to Glacier National Park

I got to see at a couple of antelope (at least they seem to antelope) feeding on what seemed to be a recently harvested field of wheat.  I also saw a couple of deer but in either case I could not get my camera in time to take the pictures.  I wanted to see deer and antelope play like the song “Home on the Range,” but I guess I had to be satisfied with dear and antelope feeding.

The train had a scheduled stop at Havre, Montana, we were a little hungry so I called ahead to Dominoes Pizza and had a large pizza delivered to the train as we made a brief stop. Apparently even the conductors were surprised that nobody had thought of that before.  I got a standing ovation from the passengers and crew.

 Our Pizza Order

We had a chance to talk to a lot of people both in the dinning car and in the observation car.  The topic of conversation after the “pizza stop” was two thunderstorms over the plains of Montana coming our way (or more precisely we were going their way).  It reminded me of the time I was driving through Montana one summer evening in the late 1970s.  There were two thunderstorms one on each side of the highway.  The only radio station I could get out there at 2:00 a.m. was a country-western station and it was playing Johnnie Cash singing “Ghost Riders in the Sky.”  The impressive part was the lightning on either side of the car that seemed to be synchronized with the music.  I still get choked up thinking about it.

 Two Thunderstorms over Montana

We got to Glacier National Park as the sun was setting. The picture below does not show the forest-covered mountains or the snow at the higher peaks because the light had faded very fast.  But it was a beautiful view.  I was lucky to have gotten to see the “amber waves of grain” and the “purple mountains majesty” rising from the plain.  I kept looking for buffalo but did not see any.

 "Amber Waves of Grain"

Approaching Glacier National park at sunset

It was slow going up the mountain and we couldn’t have been going more than 40 mph.  We got to east Glacier National Park at around midnight and half the people on the train got off – but not the one with the snoring problem.