Set the Cruise Control at 83

One does not creep across Montana. The speed limit on two lane highways is 70 MPH and the Interstate is 75 MPH. This makes for quick trips but there is not tolerance for losing one's concentration. Taking photographs from the moving car was quite a challenge. I never mentioned I drove into downtown Minot, ND last evening. It is a nice town, but at 8:30 PM it was difficult to find a person up and around. It does not get dark until after ten o'clock. I wonder if people but on eyeshades to get to sleep in June?

Today's travels took me from Minot to the western North Dakota city of Williston. This completed my time spent on US 2. "It was a long, but not particularly winding road." At Williston I turned south and almost immediately crossed the Missouri River within miles of where the Yellowstone River that flows northeast adds to its impressive volume. I found a picnic table to sit down and have my yogurt and blueberries but when I got my small cooler empties I notices I had a least twenty mosquitoes on my neck, legs and arms. I quickly packed and ate in the car. About thirty yards from me were two women fishing for their dinner who must have had the secret for repelling these bugs.

Here is another flashback to yesterday. When I was standing on the tee box to the sixth hole at the Rugby Golf Course (without my camera), three huge extended flat bed trucks drove by. On each was a propeller for a giant windmill. Each propeller arm must have been eighty feet long. This morning just outside of Minot I saw four more large trucks carrying equipment to the Minot ICBM missile base. One looked long enough to be carrying a missile. My next truck sighting was out in a field under a row of high tension electric lines. I guessed it was a machine used to pull cable up on the poles. Sure enough I had a turn to make in a mile and was stopped while a crew started drawing up electric cable for the line of poles. I watched this for about fifteen minutes (had no other choice). I have pictures below. My last trucking experience was a line of ten Halliburton trucks that were part of a oil drilling operation. I had to pass each of these trucks on a two lane highway. They were only doing 60 MPH.

Today I saw the beef. Cattle were grazing everywhere. There were also over one hundred oil pumps on the grazing lands that I passed. I wonder which pays the ranchers more money, beef or oil. For the end of my trip in North Dakota and for most of the way in Montana the road followed the Yellowstone River. This river is no slouch. It was flowing very quickly.
I crossed into another time zone today. I am now on Mountain Time. Since my trip yesterday was to Minot and not Devils Lake as originally planned, my trip to Billings went quickly. This was also helped by driving at 84 MPH and saving an hour with the time zone change. I got to my hotel at 12:45 PM. The Pondit had time for another unplanned round of golf. I played at Eagle Rock Golf Course just north of Billings, MT. I played well on this 6,238 yard course and was hitting the ball a little farther than normal. I just checked and the course is at an elevation of 3,400 feet. I am not getting stronger, only higher. I did hit twelve greens in regulation including a string of seven in a row. It was too bad I took forty putts. Some of the greens were very large.
There will be no golf tomorrow as I drive through Yellowstone Park and Grand Teton Park on my way to Jackson Hole.

Here are some of today's pictures:

The wide Missouri.

The water was flowing very fast here. The mesquitoes were huge and hungry.

The money makers of the prairie.

A close up look at these fully automated pumping stations. There were some that looked forty years old and some that looked only months old. That's my Genesis in the background.

Here is the crew trying to get the high tension cables up to the top of the poles.

The guy in the suspenders is the crew chief.

Old railroad bridge across the Yellowstone River.

Looking down from the railroad bridge.

I came into Montana on a back road but was still greated by a rather large sign.

Contrary to suggestions by my Garmin, I thought I should skip this exit.

Billings, MT from the Interstate.

The club house at Eagle Rock.

The golf course looking back toward Billings.

More of the course.