Along The Road

A Million Miles in the Same State

Wow, Montana...big!

I started out in the evening, to avoid the 100F daytime temperatures that were predicted. Drove most of the night, with a couple of half hour stops to nap, and to avoid the electrical storm that was preceeding me, east to west, across the state.

Wheat...lots and lots of wheat. Did you know that MacDonalds loves Montana wheat? They say so, at least in the Montana franchises, to the tune of 73 million pounds a year. That's a helluva lotta buns (almost all the other starch is corn). Some parts of Montana are flatter than others, but pretty much all of them are covered by wheat.

I didn't see the Rockies until somewhere west of Havre (pronounced Have-'er), materializing out of the distance haze. By the time I got to ????? they were quite substantial. I was a little concerned that the Magic Hatchback would have trouble getting up the hill, but Highway 2 runs up around the southern end of Glacier Park, through Marias Pass, only 5200 feet, and easy grades all the way.

Descending was a bit harder. The grades were downhill, but the incomes are all uphill. The Rockies, at least in Montana, are the worlds largest backdrop, the screen against which rich, vacation home owning Americans live out their transplanted urban lives. Drive-by espresso joints are the norm, so you don't have to get out of your car to enjoy the fine life. There are still a few towns that haven't been overcome by the larger-than-life lives of the rich and mobile. There's a building boom, of course. And at least the new homes won't be washed away by the tides (like in the Outer Banks of North Carolina) when global warming raises sea level by a foot or two. Perhaps peak oil will send the Rockies back to the bucolic, when driving becomes expensive enough that only the super-rich can afford the price of the gas it takes to get up the hill.

The population of northeastern Montana is shrinking, as the size of farm equipment grows, and a farmer can no longer "make it" on less than 5000, or 7000, or 10,000 acres (140 acres was once considered a "homestead"). And the population of northwestern Montana (at least in the summer) is exploding. The trip took me about twelve hours. But sitting here, in a Starbucks (because it is the only WiFi hotspot available nearby), I feel that I've driven much farther than that.