Day 13, 8/11/09, Livingston, MT

747 miles: camped in Livingston MT. Small world fact: the campground owner has been to both Canton and Potsdam, NY during the last year.

No other way to put it. Today was all work and no play. Well, if you count sightseeing out the windshield, then I did have some play time. Twelve hours of it!

Zoey and I left Fargo at 6:15 AM. Not a big deal cause I'm a natural early riser. In fact, I woke at 4:15 with no alarm. Fortunately the 7:00 AM wake schedule with Dave and Ann Wright did not corrupt me. :-

Interstate 94 is an excellent road. Relatively smooth and not much traffic. Of course, not many people live this far north. The flat farmlands of Eastern ND began to transition into the rolling prairie and badlands of Western ND. The combines were out in force. I heard on the radio that only 63% of the winter wheat crop had been harvested compared to the usual 80%. So they were playing catchup. I took a picture, but holding a camera and driving 75 (yes, that's the speed limit here) is tricky. I eventually slowed down to 65. My mpg at 75 was killing me. Oh, by the way, the temperature is killing me too. It hit 95 for a few hours today! The truck AC couldn't keep up.

We stopped at the outskirts of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Here is a picture of the "badlands" that are a part of that park. As we roll into Montana, the clocks go back another hour. So now we are two hours different than the east. Mountain Daylight Saving Time. The time change is great when you are heading west, but you really pay for it when heading back east. Eastern Montana is very rolling and dry. I94 ends in Billings MT and joins I90. They both follow the Yellowstone River for a long time.

Here is a picture of the Yellowstone at a rest area in Rosebud, MT. William Clark from the Lewis and Clark Expedition actually followed this river for quite awhile. Probably right where you are looking at now.

Tonight I'm in Livingston, and there are pine trees and mountains in the background. Glacier is six hours away, so I'll be there early afternoon Wednesday. I hope to catch the Perseid meteor shower in the morning, but the clouds are blowing in now. So we'll have to wait and see. I have my alarm set for 3:30 AM Mountain Time. The Perseid shower was the big one that Kathy and I caught in 2001 and she wrote about in her Pi Mu Epsilon speech. Here is a link if you have never read it.

All for now. Stay tuned.....