And Americans too, even two Washingtonians is a filthy SUV. Canada is not far from Havre. Havre itself is about halfway across the state of Montana. We left Minot (North Dakota) mid-morning. The temperature was right around 70 degrees, the lowest (day or night) temperature we’ve seen since the day we left Washington.

The northwest part of North Dakota is oil country. Every few hundred yards you see another small oil well. Sometimes you see drilling derricks preparing a new well. And you see lots of oils services people and trucks all over the place. We rolled into Williston around lunch time and found bumper-to-bumper traffic. Sometimes we hit MacDonald’s for lunch. Then never seem to mind us buying coffees and eating our store-bought cold cuts and fresh fruit. Initially we could not find a parking spot at the local MacDonald’s!

From there we continued west on US-2. Heavy construction slowed us down; at one point the road was gone and we were driving on dirt and gravel. Many of the little towns along the way were boarded up or otherwise closed. We did find a few low-riders in Wolf Point.

We noticed a lot of European names in Montana including; Glasgow, Harlem, (Le) Havre and Malta.  Not sure how that happened…

Eventually we reached Havre and settled in. It was a long day, around 450 miles and most of the day light hours behind the wheel.

Tomorrow will be another long day, but again we will get an hour back when we cross time zones. We saw the geography change slowly over the course of today’s travel; from flat-as-could-be to rolling hills. The change tomorrow will be dramatic as we cross over the Rockies in Glacier National Park. Should be fun!