America The Beautiful

Here I sit, in Havre MT.  It’s early due to the fact it’s Central Mountain Time and my body is still on Eastern Daylight Savings Time.  Our next stop will be our first destination, Glacier National Park. 

The planning, for these trips of ours, focuses on identifying the destination (s), studying the areas of interest and attractions our destination offers, the trails, the out of the way places. Then loosely scheduling the trip.  Yet as in past trips nothing can completely prepare us for the travels to and from our destination.  

This year’s trip out can be summed thusly:  96 to 127 to 75 to 2 and we arrive in Montana.  Of course that doesn’t even come close to what we experienced from the flat mid Michigan geography to the Big Mac, to US2 and its beautiful route across the top of Lake  Michigan, across the UP to Duluth, the drive through the forests to Devil’s Lake and the farm lands  of North Dakota and now Havre.  This brings to mind the words of one of my fave songs:

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

Not only could the stops we’ve made be destinations, the beauty of our land, as always, is stunning.  We could have spent a couple weeks in Duluth.  It’s vibrant water front, many museums and night life is so enticing.  The Devil’s Lake area is a fisher’s paradise and I could tour the  lakes for days.

One other thing; we are traveling at the time the farmers are harvesting wheat and corn.  Talk about ‘amber waves of grain’ in Minnesota,  North Dakota and Montana!  The amount of farm land here is truly overwhelming!  MaryAlice commented that the US could easily supply grain for the whole world if we didn’t make Twinkies …. I posited that we could supply the world even making snack food.

 What an incredible land we have here and how rich we are in natural resources.  It’s easy to become jaded about our world, that it’s all going to hell in a hand basket, that our resources are all spent and that it’s all downhill from here.  That could not be further from the truth.  

An example of why I like road trips; in Minnesota we drove across a small stream,  it’s name was Mississippi! Another example: we stumbled upon an education center in Minnesota that featured a mocked up logging camp and provided the history of logging and how the industry has become sustainable.

And now for our main course:  We drive a couple hours today an get to the  Glacier National Park. 

I haven’t touched upon some of the nice people  we’ve met… guess that will have to wait for later…. Now to exercise, have breakfast and  roll !!!

D

(oh I haven't made any observations  about Williston ND,  there is an oil boom happening there... temporary lodging for thousands... if you need a job... you'll get it there!   I will talk about that later)