The train was almost 10 minutes early into Minot. It was a last minute rush as I thought I could check my luggage after 8 am. My brother and I had to rush to make the 8 am deadline. I missed breakfast.
Amtrak has finished their summer long remodeling of the Minot train station. Formerly it was a 1970s style crackerbox building with one story and a flat roof. The building now has a peaked roof and the exterior walls are covered in brick. The building looks a lot nicer now. I forgot to take a photo of the building.
Photo 1: Orange house across the tracks from the Minot train station
Photo 2: Tall building is downtown Minot as the train leaves the station
This is one of the slow times of the year and the train maybe was a third full. So it was easy to find two open seats and in a location where I had a full window view. Not that I needed the window as I spent most of my time either reading, talking, or sleeping. I spent very little time gazing out the window. I have seen the scenery so many times it has become routine. I barely glanced at the Sweetgrass Hills as we passed by.
I did spent a little time in the observation car when we first left Minot and watched the North Dakota prairie rush by. The grass was a brown color now and in the morning sun looked golden and nice.
Photos: Trestle Valley area west of Minot
Photo 1: looking NW
Photo 2: in the middle horizon you can barely make out a red water tower. About a mile from that is my mother's house
Photo 3: another photo looking back at Minot
As we left Minot the lounge car attendant came on the loudspeaker and sang several choruses of the old Cat Steven's song, "Morning Has Broken". She then announced the lounge car was open. I think the lounge car attendant was a frustrated singer as a few times during the day she sang parts of a few other songs when making her announcements.
When I was in the lounge car a young woman on a cell phone sat nearby. I could not help but overhear her conversation. She was upset that her friend was going to a funeral of a person they knew who had committed suicide by shooting himself. This woman felt he was a lousy person when alive and she was very annoyed her friend was going to attend the funeral.
Later I talked with the woman sitting in the seats across the aisle from my seats. Diane was traveling to Essex, MT after spending a few weeks visiting her father in Iowa. She lives in East Glacier and had left her car at Essex and not Browning as it was safer to do so. Since Amtrak is now on their winter schedule they do not stop in East Glacier.
Diane works as a seasonal ranger out of the Glacier Park Two Medicine area during the summer, then odd jobs in the area over the winter. She also hikes and cross country skis. She has hiked the Scenic trail which I want to do someday. We exchanged phone numbers and email ids for a potential hike if my hiking group makes it over to the east side this year. No, she is not a potential romantic interest for those who wonder.
It was dark and the moon was only a very small sliver in the western sky when the train arrived in Essex at 7:40 PM. Diane said it was a half mile on a gravel road from the train to Issac Walton Inn. While she wouldn't get lost in the dark one really wouldn't want to walk it at this time what with bears and mountain lions around. Fortunately a van had brought someone to catch the train and Diane was able to catch a ride with them to her car.
Another woman I met lived near Lake Chelan, Washington. Or I should say "above" the lake as she said once she returns home she would be away from stores and civilization for four months. While the locals there live off the grid, they do have generators for electricity and satellite internet and mail delivery so she said she would be able to order stuff from Amazon.com and get it. So she wasn't "completely" cut off from civilization. What did people do over winter before TV and the internet? Oh yeah... read books.
Just outside of Havre, MT, as the train stopped briefly to refuel, two border patrol men came on the train. They walked down the aisle asking each person if they were a U.S. citizen. Each person said "Yes" and the agents moved on to the next person. Later we wondered what the point was as each person said "Yes". If someone was not a citizen that person could lie and also say "Yes". But someone else said the agents have to ask each person so as not to discriminate. Still... wouldn't that be discriminating to ask for documents from the person they suspected as lying? How would they determine that person was lying?
At the Havre train station we had a 20 minute stop so many people got off the train to walk around the station. Outside the station there was a statue commemorating the U.S. and Canadian border patrol agents.
The train ran ahead of schedule all the way. Even what normally would be a short stop to only get people quickly off and on the train was longer as the train could not leave until its scheduled departure time. In Shelby, MT we sat there for over a half an hour. People were able to get off the train to walk around and have a smoke. I walked around and checked out the train station. Small. Old. Wooden.
The train station is shared between Amtrak and the BNSF railroad. A BNSF employee came out and lit a bar-b-que grill as I walked by. Guess what's for supper?
Shelby is a small dying Montana prairie town. Across the street north of the train station were several bars in a long lonely block. To the west was an overpass for a highway that went to Canada. In a half block area against the overpass along the tracks, next to where a telephone/satellite/transmission tower sat, the locals made the area into a small park with a bench and grass. It was kept up nice which is not common near train tracks.
The woman from Lake Chelan and I talked about what it would be like to live in a small isolated dying town like Shelby. It has its advantages but I imagine most all the young people can't wait to leave and go out to make their mark on the world.
Photos of Shelby
The sun had set by the time the train came in sight of the mountains so the view was them silhouetted against the sky and clouds. I couldn't tell how much snow was in the mountains. I stopped reading and settled back in my seat to relax for the rest of the journey.
Jackie met me at the Whitefish train station when the train arrived early. I spent the night in one of her apartments before she gave me a ride home the next morning when it was daylight.
The air was calm and fall like. The smell of wood smoke was strong the brief time I was outside that night. The next morning I could still smell the wood smoke in the air. Welcome to Fall in the Valley.
The wood smoke smell was strong when I entered my house. Stronger than I expected as I had thoroughly cleaned my wood stove and pipes and chimney this past Summer and had not used the wood stove since. I hadn't turned on my gas furnace for the year so the indoor house temperature was 50 F. The cool temperature may have highlighted the smoky smell.
Much of the smell faded once I lit the wood stove and warmed the house up. Still it took me several days before I no longer noticed the smoky smell. At least that is what I think as I doubt the smell disappeared just by my warming the house up. The same can be said of the outside as I no longer notice the smoky smell outside and I am sure it exists as the days usually are devoid of wind that would blow the smoke over the mountains and out of the Valley.
Lastly, here are a couple more train stations I took photos of.
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