The True West

I drove around the south end of Glacier Park and saw my first fall colors. I crossed the great divide on red pavement and drove on through Shelby, where I tuned in to a radio station that played Blackfoot Indian chants on the hour. I was in the true west now. Outside Selby I saw Lake Elwell on the map and headed for that. It was several miles off of Highway 2 and was dirt the whole way. It turned out to be some sort of reclamation area, and was very primitive. I was planning to take another stab at fixing the leaking manifold and needed to let things dry for fifteen hours before I could run again. I got the work done just as it was starting to rain, had a nice dinner and went to bed as the weather turned just as predicted – NASTY. Turns out it hadn’t rained since May in the area, and it took this Northwesterner to bring some rain to the area. Not just some – an inch and a quarter through the night, while it blew like stink. I got up the next morning to be greeted by my changed surroundings – a total mud hole. Once I was packed and ready to go, I headed out. I started down one road and knew I’d sink to my axles, so picked another route out. I had put some great mud and snow tires on the rig before I left and they sure came in handy on this morning. It was some of my favorite kind of driving – really slippery and slidey – in these situations it’s really important to keep the momentum up and just feel the rig. No over correcting. It’s a beautiful thing – being right on the edge of disaster. And being fifteen miles from the nearest paved road made it just that much more so. It was a great beginning to the day.

I gassed up in the town of Chester, got some propane and drove on Propane for a tank. I stopped for lunch in a tiny town named Rudyard. And weird as it may seem, there was this cool little car museum there, right in the middle of nowhere.  Turns out that some German guy came through a few years ago on a motorcycle, saw this building, decided that the town needed a car museum, bought the building, and gave it to the town.

I spent the night in Glasgow in a comfortable RV park and headed out early the next morning. It was still rainy and windy. The truck was running well and I ran to Wolf Point, where I got some supplies and gassed up. I headed out of town and got not more than a mile out of town when the truck started running like hell. I swung it around and limped back in to town. I tried three places, a small shop, the Ford dealer and the Chevy dealer and nobody could help, so I went on my way and ended up dead in the water in the middle of a back alley. Truly dead in the water, as it was still raining cats and dogs and the truck was in a big ‘ol puddle. And then along came Andy Schultes, a young cowboy, who asked if I needed any help. He got his pal, Matt Ransom, and they ran me back and forth to the auto parts store not once, but twice and hung out with me until I had her running again. Turns out that the gas I got in town did something to the propane solenoid and starved me of gasoline. I ended up buying them both lunch – just a great couple of guys, and just the sort of magic I hope for on the road.

I headed east on two into North Dakota. The highway turned into a four-lane road at the border, a little too big for my taste. This was a fairly busy area as it is where the oil shale fields are. It is a total boomtown situation. There is work to be had there so it is crowded. Andy and Matt warned me about how crowded the area was, and they were sure right. The RVs were stacked like cordwood with no room at the inn. I had also been told of the flooding that happened a year ago when the Souris River overflowed in the city of Minot. There was unbelievable destruction as I drove around town. I remember reading about it in the news, but it sure brings it home to see such a thing in person – There were stacks of debris piled up all over town. I couldn’t find any place that would take me, so I ended up parking on the street downtown. There was a nice wine and tapas bar, which I made use of. Tapas in Minot, North Dakota…who woulda thunk it? I got up the next morning thinking I could find a cool old breakfast joint – a three-calendar place, as William Least-Heat-Moon called it in “Blue Highways”. The place was packed with a whole bunch of locals and a waitress who was probably close to eighty and still totally on her game.

I wandered around downtown, found a cool independent bookstore, got a few books and hit the road. This four lane road stuff was just too big for me, so I hooked over to highway one and traveled east on that road. Much better. Hit the Minnesota border around six that evening.