The Great Northern Route - Part Tres

Day 2: Passage into Montana
The night’s sleep at the motel was wonderful, as it involved a very large and comfortable bed, as opposed to the floor or the cramped backseat of a car. Elaine got a bath, and we got the car packed up. We were moving slowly, however, as we were the very last car out of the parking lot that morning. By the time we did our lightning-strike stop at Wall Drug (which the entire town was built around), it was approaching 11am.

Jill: "We have to hurry, because the cats are in the car. Someone might call animal control on us!" Didn't she see the billboard yesterday? South Dakotans REJECT animal activists. Punch line, I never got that picture of me sipping my 5-cent coffee.


I should take a moment to mention our navigation support team. First, there is Garmin, the state-of-the-art-but-not-top-of-the-line GPS device that we purchased on the way out of town. Garmin helped us to find food, gas, and gave directions through moderate-sized towns like Rapid City. Second, Jill spent many minutes on the phone with her sister Gwen, who was tracking weather systems online for us. Thanks to Gwen, we had a sense of what the driver requirements were in various passes along the trip, and of whether or not to attack them or take a night off.

Jill took over the initial driving duties. The roads had patchy ice and slush, but the sky was clear and sunny. We passed many abandoned cars along the side of the road, pointed in various directions, in the first 10 miles past Wall, indicating that our instinct to pack it in the night before was fortunate. I snoozed most of the way to Rapid City, where we spent too much time at a Wal*Mart getting some provisions.

The countryside began to appear more rugged as we left South Dakota. Farms had to get more creative with the landscape, and ranching was more in evidence. We passed many oil wells along the road – tiny ones, like little drinky-birds, stood 20 feet tall or so. There were also more icy patches as the terrain became more hilly. Due to the oblique aspect of the winter sun, many parts of the roadway never get sunlight, even on the clearest of days, so any ice remains much longer.

Refreshed, I took over driving in Buffalo, WY, where I-90 and I-25 merge for a time. We were already farther north than in Ann Arbor, and on the edge of mountains, so the days end rather abruptly around 4:30. Our previous, optimistic estimate was to make for Missoula, on Montana’s western edge. At 3:30, headed north, we revised our plans to get to Butte, around the middle of the Montana leg. I encountered my first ice a few minutes outside of Buffalo. It was a steady climb through foothills toward the Montana border, and the icy patches became icy lanes. As the rises and falls became steeper, and the day grew darker, the bare road was reduced to a single strip in the passing lane.

Most cars stayed in the passing lane, keeping the two driver’s side tires in the bare strip. Traffic still flowed at about 55mph, and I was being passed by people in the all-icy lane. My hope was that when we crossed into Montana, the roads would be better. I hoped in vain.

The ice was knobby and gnarled, like a lava flow, and clearly wasn’t going anywhere soon. The Montana D.O.T. had scattered sand all over the roadway, which had gotten embedded in the ice, and probably enhanced traction. However, it also made the entire width of the road a uniform brown. It was often difficult to see any lane stripes, including the white line on the edge of the road.

Throughout this leg, Jill was quite unhappy with my decision to continue at the prevailing traffic speed, and she said that it would be “absolutely fine” with her if I slowed to 40-45 and employed my hazard lights. As a general rule of safety, she was right, but I felt little slipping, and I simply wanted to be out of this pass before full dark. This 40-mile stretch ranked highly among the more harrowing driving that I have ever attempted, given the precious cargo. This, not coincidentally, was the last mountain pass that Jill would permit me to captain on the trip.

As full dark arrived, the road abruptly flattened, and we were going 80 mph again on a clear, black freeway. We were in Billings within the hour, and we decided that that was enough for one day. Garmin found us another Day’s Inn (they tend to have a handful of pet-friendly rooms available), and we took our rest.