November 16 -- The Road to Bozeman

Getting from Fargo to Seattle took two all-day drives, 11 hours behind the wheel on each. (Apologies for the pix and text on this post. The technology got ahead of me.)




The first day I made it as far as Bozeman, Montana. The first part of the drive was sunny, straight across the prairie past Jamestown, Bismarck and Dickinson. The pictures at left give some sense of the flatness and incredible sense of space. Despite the wide, unobstructed views, I don’t remember a place where there are so many deer strikes as across North Dakota and into Montana. If you look closely at one of the pictures, you can see where an animal was hit. The dead deer are pushed to the side of the road and painted with a fluorescent mark so they don’t cause more accidents.




The weather clouded up in the western part of North Dakota, and the scenery changed as I drove through the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It became hilly and scrubby; the hills reminded me of the badlands in South Dakota, but with more shrubs, and with pretty golden and pink colors underneath. None of the pictures I took from the car do it justice.




As I rolled into Montana, the weather cleared. The sun (at times a little hard to drive into) highlighted scenery that became hillier as I 90 continued west past places like Rosebud and Bighorn, and signs for Yellowstone National Park, toward Billings.




It was completely dark -- a western, SERIOUS dark -- as I drove through Billings. I’d be curious to see the place during the day; at night, it appears very industrial, and it seems like there is lots of oil equipment because of all the volume of bright lights that appear to be attached to tall superstructures. It reminded me a bit of the way a seaport looks at night, with cranes, containers and the like all lit up.





Beyond Billings, it was almost another two hours of to Bozeman. The deer situation, and what felt like an absolute absence of natural light, made this part of the drive tough. Two big, black Cadillac Escalades in a convoy swept past me, oblivious to the risk. Their bright red lights danced and disappeared slowly in the distance. I stopped for the night at the Bozeman Inn, where I got the last room because of a big athletic event taking place between Montana universities.






“Go Cats!” I guess.