On the Road: Havre, Montana to Devil's Lake, North Dakota

A sunny morning which was good but which also meant driving into the blinding brilliance of the sun rising over the prairie. Sunglasses only helped some, but since I hadn't started all that early, the sun soon rose above my windshield.

I truly love the beginning of new days. I loved packing up (I was efficient by this time and only had one trip from motel to car) and started out again. All the travel weariness of the day before was erased by a night's sleep.

I started to see grouse and pheasants grubbing on the sides of the road. While US2 is two lanes, the traffic is usually sparse and by the time I was 20 miles east of Havre, I could make a margin call with no issues so I did: a U turn and onto the shoulder (mostly). I crept up to a grouse while in the car and got very close. Perhaps grouse are not particularly smart? or have a poor sense of self-preservation? since they just stood still looking rather clueless, or perhaps they had intuition and knew I was not out to harm them. At any rate, I saw all the pertinent markings for a good ID. These were sharp-tailed grouse (LB) and I saw several. They look like prairie chickens but have black chevrons on their breast and bellies rather than black bars.

Montana is nearly 700 miles long and I usually underestimate how many miles until I get to Williston which is just over the North Dakota border. And then, way at the eastern end of Montana, there was major road construction...widening the existing highway. I had to wait for pilot cars twice. At one stop, I chatted with a Native American woman who was working at directing traffic (basically making sure cars stopped and then motioning them on when the pilot car approached). She was a great grandmother and attractive, looking to be in her 50s with smooth lovely skin. She said she has been doing this for many years with a few breaks for working as a Home Health nurse. She makes $30 an hour. She told me all about how she takes care of herself on this job...changing her footwear every 4 hours...how she had fashioned some slow drip thing she wears in her hard hat when it is hot.. how she layers her clothing.

For much of the time while driving these high plains, I alternated between listening to French radio (an AM station from Canada) and a Native American station. Most of the time, American radio was country or religious and pretty boring. I understood about 1% of the French but kept hoping it would suddenly click in my brain. I loved the sweetness of the Native American woman on one station who was called "Miss Fancy." She played an eclectic mix of music...drum, country western, a bit of rock and roll, about half done in Native language...perhaps Crow. There were tribute songs to birthdays and deaths and a pending marriage "at the casino at 3 p.m. on Saturday afternoon."

Williston is changing as is much of North Dakota because of the Bakken oil field and one sees evidence of the industry everywhere in western ND. Huge, monstrous equipment, oil rigs and derricks and storage units, thousands of trucks, hastily built "man camps" for the oil workers which essentially were enclaves of 50 to 100 stark rectangular, trailer-like structures lined precisely in a grid. Many were starkly new, but some were older as stuff was beginning to accumulate around individual units, and many had plywood enclosures attached to the entry areas. It seemed Soviet. Richard says prostitutes are also getting rich out there which I don't doubt. While there must be women working in the actual oil industry, testosterone was in the air, along with the dust and noise and the smell of money. A new version of the old West.

I didn't even want stay in Minot which was also bustling and so much busier than just a few years ago, so I continued to Devil's Lake and stayed in a Holiday Inn Express, another very pleasant and comfortable motel with reasonable rates this time of year. I guess the oil boom is mostly to the west as there were few workers here.

Another vending machine supper....