Montana

Planning to come back through North Dakota again on our way home in a few weeks, we bypassed Theodore Roosevelt National Park and the North Dakota Badlands for now, and opted instead to stay on U.S. 2 route through the northern North Dakota plains into Montana. Parts of route 2 loosely follow the Missouri River, so we thought it an appropriate time (and a way to break up the sameness of today’s scenery) to listen to “Undaunted Courage” on CD, tracing Lewis and Clark’s journey along the same river. Listening to the challenges they faced with disease, weather extremes, Indians, diminishing provisions, and difficult and uncertain terrain certainly put into perspective our complaints of having to walk the dogs in the rain, or of campgrounds lacking WiFi connectivity. Nevertheless, we find ourselves annoyed when campgrounds fall short of the descriptions we see in various camping guides (like the unmentioned proximity of tonight’s campground to the local railroad freight yards!).

On the bright side, we still prefer this mode of travel for a number of reasons – for one, being able to see how people live in the rest of the U.S., and also for the people we meet along the way: our neighbors in Williston, N.D. on Tuesday night included two men from California who are bicycling their way from Seattle to Bar Harbor, ME; tonight, we met a motorcyclist from Nova Scotia who was making his way to California and back in only four weeks!