We left at 6 am. Minot was quiet at this time. After gassing up the moving van (another $70 to $80) we took 4th Ave NW west through town to the bypass. We drove through an area hit hard by the Spring flood. Stoplights weren't working and street lights were off between Broadway and 16th St NW. Some houses had lights, some houses had no windows or doors. Most houses were dark. It was eerie.
The day before, as we drove through town with my brother, we passed through areas that looked like they were from a war zone. Few people or vehicles were seen. Lots of debris were still on the boulevards. Houses without windows. A few houses had only studs for walls to hold up the roof.
As we drove west out of Minot the traffic picked up. Soon the traffic was a long string of red taillights in front of us and a long string of headlights behind us. ND rush hour. Ten years ago when I drove this route I maybe saw a dozen vehicles the 130 miles between Minot and Williston. Now? Pickup truck after pickup truck. People commuting to work in the oil field. This road had more traffic than the interstate highway in western Minnesota and in North Dakota. Amazing.
As I drove through Stanley, ND I saw the Cenex gas station is now a big truck stop. At 7 am it was jam packed with trucks filling up with fuel.
In the morning dark both Stanley and Tioga were lit up with lights. Both towns looked much larger than the sleepy small towns I remembered them being before the oil boom.
Instead of darkness with a few scattered lights from farms across the wide prairie, now there were lights all over. Some lights were the gas flaring off oil wells. Other lights were from the over 200 active drilling rigs. The rigs were lit up like a night time space shuttle launch.
These are not the best photos as I took them as I drove, but the first two photos are of the gas flaring off oil wells.
Bad photos of oil rigs drilling for oil. Over 99% of the oil rigs strike oil. An amazing statistic.
Near Williston we saw the sunrise. Mara, Tammy's former co-worker, had asked Tammy for a photo of the sunrise after Tammy retired. She claimed it was a tradition people do the day after they retire from the Mayo Clinic.
We were a few days late in taking the photo.
At Williston we got gas for the moving van as the towns in eastern Montana are few and far between. While the gas price in Minot was $3.53, the gas at most stations in Williston was $3.79. I spotted a station that sold gas at $3.53 and we stopped there. There was a line to fuel your vehicle, then a long line inside the station to pay for gas. And that was with three cashiers.
Williston was hopping. Vehicles and people everywhere. Taco John advertized jobs at $15 an hour. About 1/4 of the ads on the radio station were for companies looking to hire people. There is no recession in North Dakota. The economy there, especially in western ND, is in overdrive. It's crazy. This is the modern day version of the California/Alaskan/Black Hills gold rushes. If I was in my 20s or 30s I would head to North Dakota to work. It's crazy. It's hard. It's exciting. It is a once in a lifetime experience.
As we drove west of Williston the traffic quickly died off even though there were still a few oil rigs drilling here and there. It was quiet when we crossed the Montana border.
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| Montana border |
In Montana we encountered road construction. Montana is finally improving the old part of Hwy2 that used to go up and down and up and down over the rolling hills.
While we were stopped and waiting for a pilot car to lead us, three cattle came to the road. After looking the line of vehicles over they turned around and went back to where they had escaped from.
A small town we passed by with two cute small water towers.
Then miles and miles of Montana roads.
The Sweetgrass Hills are in the distance beyond the freight train.
As we drove Tammy noticed the truck's shadow and the strange shape rising from the roof. Was something on the roof? Or something coming off the roof? What was it? After a while she realized it was the shadow from the truck's right side mirror.
Eastern and northern Montana is the home of a number of dinosaur bones. At a couple of places the locals placed dinosaur statues near the road.
Part of why we got an early start (well, earlier than normal for me) was to avoid driving through the mountains at night after a long day of driving. The following photo was taken was shortly after we entered the mountains. The yellow are the Western Larch trees turning color before their needles fall off for the season.
By the time we exited the mountains and entered Flathead Valley it was getting dark. It was black by the time we got to the ranch.
The truck didn't have enough power. A stiff headwind slowed us down by 5 to 10 mph. For some of the steeper hills we were down to just 35 mph - though if I floored it I could have gone a few miles an hour faster. Fortunately across Montana the traffic was pretty light. In the mountains we had a few more vehicles and when I was able to, I pulled off the road a few times to let the vehicles pass by. That's not to say I never passed any other vehicles. We did encounter a few vehicles going even slower than our truck.
The journey took 14 hours. The truck averaged between 9 and 10 mpg. We spent over $500 in gas.
We unloaded just the stuff we needed in the morning or that would freeze overnight as under a clear and starry sky, the temperature was dropping fast. Tammy slept in late the next morning.
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