Great morning.  On the chippy side but supposed to be sunny and into the 50’s and 60’s.  Morning routine,  Coffee (yeech), blog, shower, pack, scoot.  First stop, find some coffee.  Found a little place on the way out of town.  Very good.  Should I have the pleasure of living in Williston, I would go there again.

Again on US 2 west.  Stopped at our first historic point.  History of some of the forts along the Missouri River. 

Pressed on.  We wanted to get some mileage today.  In short order we crossed into Montana and into Mountain time.

The next few hours consisted of just plain driving.  Across the Great Plains.  Lots and lots of plains.  Rolling hills, no hills, passing through small towns.  Great road.  70mph speed limit most of the time.  Less going through towns.  Running close to the BNSF rail and Missouri River.  Lots of signage and references to Lewis and Clark.

Passed through the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.  Huge.

Occasional trains.  This one was over a mile long.  Stopped every so often to stretch.  One of the stops was in Glascow.  Decided to detour south about 20-30 miles to the town of Fort Peck to the dam and reservoir.  Wow.  I had no idea.  I am glad we took the time.

Dam was made in the 30s.  Took 7 or 8 years.  I forget.  Absolutely massive.  Dam itself is over 4 miles long.  The visitor center was locked up but an Army Corp of Engineer lady let us in and spent time answering all our questions.

The center is a great recollection of the project and also displays many of the dinosaur artifacts uncovered there and along the dinosaur trail (posted along US 2).

It was time to get on.  We are shooting for Havre, MT.  It looks like kinda in the middle of the state on the map.  The Fort Peck detour took a lot of time.  It was worth it.

By late afternoon we pulled into Havre.  Started looking for our evening resting place.  Apparently there is a big ‘bird shoot’ going on this weekend.  Lots of hunters and few rooms. The back story is retired NFL star Mike Tillman is from the area and returned to live.  Every year he gets local landowners to donate their land for the first day of pheasant season.  People come from all over.  Its a pay to play thing and each group gets set up with an NFL player.  Its been going on for over 20 years.  All the proceeds go to local athletic programs.  How neat is that…

Luck prevailed. Found a nice place.  Had a quick refreshment and on to Murphy’s Pub (and Casino) for dinner.

They had this supposed Irish saying on the wall.  Irena called BS.  Its from a Frankie Yankovic (you know, the famous accordianist) polka..  Verified by google!  We dropped a big $10 in one of the slots.  It did not take long at all.  Back to the hotel.  Wind down.

Tomorrow we head to Glacier National Park.  We have a cabin rented for a few days near the west gate in Columbia Falls.  Looking forward to it.  Been on the road for a week and it will be nice to ease into this.

Life is good..