NW North Dakota

We got showered entering North Dakota near Fairview on the state line.  That is to say a huge truck full of gravel passed us going 70 or so and showered us with rock.  It felt like being on the wrong end of a gatling gun.  Result?  2 cracks and 4 chips in the windshield.  This area of the state is in a frenzy - black gold.  Every kind of semi is running full tilt on narrow two lane roads hauling pipe, tanks, construction equipment and gravel.  The predominant vehicle is a new white and mudcaked GMC or Dodge Ram - oil workers.  Graineries are being replaced with oil tanks.  Agricultural fields sport new oil pumps and the ground is being torn up not by tractor and plow but excavators, feverishly laying pipe.  Stopped in Watford City for some groceries and the shelves were pretty picked over.  Camps of trailers and RVs all over the place.  Rents and crime doubled and trippled.  The bank building in Watford is big and brand new.  We're on to Theodore Roosevelt National Park some 15 miles south - a labyrinth of coolies, draws, and canyons with spectacular colors this time of year.  Great campground.  Not many people.  Good hiking.  Even some buffalo.  One in particular that stood in the trail Ruth and I were on.  His tail was up which according to the ranger means he was about to charge or discharge.  We retreated!  Two nights in this wonderland.  We traded road noise for wind in the poplars and the distant thump thump thump of wells being drilled on the plateau above us at nite.  Got a cue from a fellow camper (who happened to be from McCall) about Ft Mandan so Ruth and I headed there yesterday (Thursday).  Enjoyed the Lewis and Clark Interpretive center near the fort then it was on to find a motel and much needed shower.  Found these luxuries in Aberdeen South Dakota where the sign reads, "1200 United Methodists Welcome you". Overwhelming!  Oh, en route we passed through Strassberg, ND, pop. 431, where the sign read "The Little German Town".  Underwhelming.  BUT birthplace of Lawrence Welk.  That raises the issue of sense of place again.  How did being raised on these forever, open and expansive plains affect Welk's music???  I think his rather tight, crisp and defined style was in reaction to his life in the wide open spaces where the only music is the wind in the grass and through the barbed wire.  On to Ruthton, Mn and the weekend with my favorite oldest sister and her husband Henry.  Later 

Hwy 2

I've always been curious about Havre, MT. Maybe its the name - like negotiating with a rancher about a horse, "Yes, I think I'll havre." Is Havre a person, a thing??? Maybe it's because its so far away from everthing. Anyway, having passed through, I'm glad to be passing through and pray that I don't have to live there. Like so many plains towns, it sit in a slight depression in the earth. Low buildings, short scrubby trees and no real center, just a long lighted runway with buildings along the Milk River where either Lewis or Clark described it as the "color of tea with an admixture of milk."

Couple of interesting stops though. Just east and south of Havre is the site of the last NezPerce battle and final surrender. After being pursued by General Howard for some 1200 miles (Over Lolo Pass, south down the bitterroon valley, into southern Idaho, up past Henry's lake, into Yellowstone, up through central Mountana, across the Missouri R and through the Bear Paw Mountains just two days from Canada) they stopped to rest knowing they were several days ahead of Howard. Unfortunately they didn't know there was a fresh new army unit coming from the east and they got caught in a hard to defend location with now way of escape. Losses were heavy on both sides. A seige was in place and Chief Joseph made the decision to surrender.

The location sits in a flat and willowed stream bottom at the north end of the low Bear Paw Range. Most researchers say they stopped because they were tired and thought they were safe. But I think that somewhere deep in their collective conscience they wanted that familiarity that the mountains would give them (having lived their lives near the Wallowas and Bitteroot Mt.) before facing the uncertainty of the Canadian Plains. A pause before the final break with the past. It's a strange place to visit: lonely, haunting and very real as to what happened there. The teepees of Chief Looking Glass and Joseph have been located along with the actual surrender site. That war ended a lot of things for the NezPerce. Moved to Oklahoma and Kansas for 8 years before they could finally get back to the Northwest, their bands lost all their horses and over half the people. Despite 25 years of broken treaties and promises, all they wanted to do was to get out of the way to embrace being responsible for their own destiny. Sounds very American to me...

Then there was Ft. Peck Dam, the worlds largest earthen dam at 3.4 miles long. For a good read, pick up Ivan Doig's book, "Bucking the Sun" and enjoy a good mystery and a lot of information about the life and times when the dam was built.

Weird thing shortly after the dam on Hwy 2. The road side was littered with what we thought was TP. Then we noticed this white stuff on the road surface. It seemed to be stuck there. Finally came to a construction stop and the flagger said it was indeed TP. They were crack sealing the road and would put TP over the tar used to fill the crack. "To keep the tar from flying up and damaging cars and avoid litigation." Hmmm, TP and tar installed by, (are you ready?) Highway Technologies, Inc. Pretty hi tech, huh?

(Pictures - Ft Peck Dam, Bear Paw Mtns, NezPerce Camp Ground looking east, Surrender location looking north toward camp and Plaque)

Rivers dominate the first few days of this trip.  Leaving Cascade and Long Valley we pick up the Salmon River.  Then it's over the Camas Prairie and down to the Clearwater and up the Lochsa to Lolo Pass.  Fall has begun on the Lochsa.  It's subtle but the patchwork of color and texture has begun - hints of yellow on the cottonwoods, the rust of ferns, an occasional flash of red on the hillside  and the light green in the tamarack that comes just before it turns yellow, contrasted with the dark green of the spruce and cedar that line the river.  The river bottom is lined with ripe blackberry and elderberry, the raw material of jams, pies and wine.  No wonder the NezPerce were so tied to this area. 

Over Lolo Pass into the north end of the Bitterroot Valley, through Missoula we pick up the Blackfoot River to our first nite destination of Salmon Lake State Park.  Continuing the next day on Hwy 200, the Blackfoot R. is alive with color along it's banks.  What a great road!  Hardly anyone on it, wonderful scenery and the Subaru finds it cruising speed of 70mph.  The breakout of the Rockies is abrupt as we head out onto a "Palouse" type of rolling grassland announced by the sign that said "you've entered beef country.  Toward Great falls the land flattens out.  We've hit the plains.  It will be 5 or six weeks before, in snobbish western fashion, we can say we're seeing mountains again.  Humps, mounds and rises will have to do.  Then there is the Missouri R. breaks.  What exactly are the breaks?? It appears to be a crack on  plain containing the Missouri River.  Ft. Benton, MT is our first into to this might river and a cool little town at that.  Then it's along the Milk River at Havre and the Missouri again at Ft Peck Dam and the Little Mo at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in No. Dakota. 

Like so much flotsom, people seem to coalesce, coagulate and gather up into tiny communities on this oceanic plain.  Otherwise, I'd say the population density outside these small towns in easter MT and No Dakota is about the same as Northern Canada (which was about 2 people per square mile when I was up there 29 years ago.  Honestly, ranches are MILES apart out here! (pictures, in order, The Salmon R. Lochsa, Elderberry, between Great Falls and Havre, The Might Missouri at Ft. Benton, MT

10:00am, Sept. 25 and we're off!  The "stuff" of our travel is easily absorbed by our Subaru.  Cascade and Long Valley should be looking a bit different when we return in 5 or 6 weeks.  Right now the only hint of autumn is a slight frostbite on our squash plants and a general brown tinge to the grazing lands around here.  So why are we doing this?  Of the some 25 definitions for the word "trip" in our dictionary, none of them really provide a rationale for why Ruth and I want to make this journey.  Other trips have been about adventure, escape, business, etc. but this one is about gaining a sense of place.  We're visiting some friends and family that we've never visited on their home turf.  We're seeing where things happen, e.g. where the NezPerce finally surrendered, where Theodore Roosevelt developed a conservation ethic, the hubub of where national policy is made in Washington DC.  My guess, seeing the physical context of these places will add much to the facts we've accumulated about people and events that happened.  We'll see about that...