We visited the museum of the Plains Indians in Browning. It's a very well done exhibition of Plains Indians dress and way of life from the mid 1500's until today. Tom asked the girl working in the gift shop why these were the Blackfeet Indians, instead of the Blackfoot Indians (Idaho variety). Her explanation was that there were different tribes from a different culture. The Blackfeet are Plains Indians, the Blackfoot a Plateau Indian. But only 5 miles out of town and squarely on the Blackfeet reservation, was a small group of houses in a "town" called Blackfoot.

Chester calls itself the "High Heartland" with a heart symbol. It contains a very attractive roadside rest, unfortunately already full of other RVs, which we subsequently had to pass on the road to Havre. Rudyard is "rip snortin', rarin' for business." Kremlin is "Kremlin, USA style."

Havre, Montana is a small community by almost any standard -- except around here. It's the biggest "city" for a long way in any direction. If one merely drives through town on Highway 2, it's hardly impressive. Some gas stations, a fairly compact shopping mall, the inevitable grain storage elevators, and a lot of old buildings which must have related to the railroad in some fashion quite a long time ago. But if one takes a few minutes to explore away from the railroad tracks, in the direction the town has understandably grown, it's a truly All-American rural community. The homes are modest, but well maintained. Churches seem to be on almost every corner, and the streets all have numbers instead of names.

Havre prides itself on the H. Earl Clack Memorial Museum and the Wahkpa Chu'gn Archaeology site. Although difficult to find since it is neatly hidden behind an RV park, and its directional arrows point in the wrong direction, the museum has some interesting dioramas and the usual collection of "pioneer" gear, old plows, shovels, etc. The archaeology site would be best seen by guided tour. Havre also has an underground tour. It appears that, as a railroad town, it had its complement of Chinese and the resultant tunnels. It looks like an interesting tour - one not open on Sundays.

September 5, and we continued our eastbound trek. The Bear Paw mountains to the southeast of Havre provided the last visual entertainment on the horizon, and it's now flat in every direction. Though fairly dry, there must be rain enough to grow wheat, or otherwise to provide for grazing. Chinook, Harlem, Zurich, Dodson. Towns no doubt created from the western spread of the Iron Horse. We've been following the trail of the Great Northern since West Glacier -- backwards, in the direction of its origins. The railroad tracks have provided company to us now for several hundred miles. One of the highlights of the morning drive was crossing over it once, and then getting to see it from the other side for the next several hours. The little towns keep passing by. All have their grain elevators; and the "larger" ones are easy to spot, because they each have their own rodeo grounds just outside of town.

At Malta it becomes a bit less arid. We were now in the land of the Milk River, a major tributary of the Missouri river. With the increased ration of water came both larger herds of cattle, and much more wheat and hay. The fields here are tilled in such a way as to create giant stripes, about 100 yards across, and stretching endlessly to the horizon. They alternate between unplanted, plowed dirt and either wheat or hay. It appeared hay must require a more certain source of water. It had been recently cut and baled here, as the only activity we saw in the fields involveed moving the hay for winter storage. There must be a reason some bales are wound into large "spools," while others are heaped into giant breadloaf formations. Still others are baled into the more traditional rectangular shape, but on a scale that would contain enough hay to make at least 20 of the ones we've seen in feed stores.

We discussed the possible reasons for the different ways to bale hay, and concluded only that it is yet another example of how little we know of the things we see every day.

Mid afternoon we crossed into North Dakota. As we traveled toward Minot, the terrain took on some of the characteristics of South Dakota with valleys reminiscent of badlands. The wind, with its attendant gusts, persisted; we were hard on the heels of the storm we encountered in Kalispell.

The state swiftly lost any resemblance to eastern Montana, and became a green land of very gently rolling hills. The dry range land of Montana was completely gone. The cows changed along with the scenery: one of Tom's axioms is that if it isn't a Hereford, it isn't a cow. By that standard, these were not cows. The state appears to be quite prosperous; Williston, with its neat, wide streets, and freshly painted homes is a stark contrast to Havre, Mt. and has only 1000 persons more. Minot is a perfectly delightful small city of 34,000 +, with many cultural events, restaurants, etc. We tried without success to find "old" Minot, as the whole town looks like it was built in the last twenty years. However, the Minot literature claims it started as an old railroad town in the late 1800s-similar to many of the other towns in the West.

Another nice campground, and we met the first of the "North Dakota in the winter and California in the summer" campground hosts. Quite a yearly change of scenery!

We had a curious reaction to the residents of Minot in a local restaurant where we enjoyed breakfast: Everyone in North Dakota looks very much like everyone else in North Dakota. We couldn't identify exactly what the similarity is. But it is some combination of broad faces and pale-but-ruddy skin. At the end of a long, dry and sunny summer one might expect to see lots of sun-tanned faces. Not here. Perhaps this is due to the predominantly Scandinavian ancestry of these folks.

We had contemplated staying a day in Minot to visit a wildlife refuge and Lake Sakakawea, a dammed up portion of the Missouri River, but opted instead for more travel.

The presence of water became more and more evident as we meandered east from Minot. One small town en route, Rugby, proclaims itself as the geographic center of North America. They have erected a stone monument at precisely the spot that is supposed to represent the epicenter. One wonders how on earth one might identify the geographic center of the North American continent with such precision!

By evening on September 6th, we'd crossed to the far eastern side of North Dakota. We stopped at Grand Forks, which was large enough to have a power book battery store-a specialty item we needed to continue our written record.

The next morning, we crossed into Minnesota, and began driving through an unending carpet of green.. Highway 2, which had had its winding, bumpy portions, transformed itself into a divided four lane road at Minot. Here, the center strip between the two roadways is a uniform distance -- about 50 yards wide -- of neatly mowed grass. Another 30 or 40 yards of landscaped lawn provides the outside border to this parkway. The first northwestern Minnesota town we drove through was Crookston. It was neat as a pin. The city fathers continue to go for the wide streets here, and the homes are uniformly attractive and well maintained. Flowers are used in abundance -- almost like the communities on lower Vancouver Island. And the house colors tend towards colorful pastels, which no doubt is a reaction to the cold, bleak winters here.

We had breakfast in McIntosh, at the Flapjack Family Restaurant, a very small town set at the edge of the road. We drove "through" it, a matter of a few blocks, and found it very tidily set up, with a couple of lovely parks and three churches (of which two were Lutheran). We had a delicious breakfast and met a very friendly waitress. She and her husband were originally from the area and, having lived in other parts of the country, decided to retire here. But only for part of the year. Then they're off to Arizona.

A sign on the restaurant wall read "If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up someplace else. This fits our philosophy precisely. Neither of us knows our precise destination, and "someplace else" sounds fascinating.

While we both responded to this slogan, Tom's poetry is quite a bit more sophisticated than mine.

We know we're generally headed to "the Northeast, but we have no real idea how we are going to get there. Some routes go north through Canada; others dip down toward Detroit. The Great Lakes at this point are more than large blue spots on the map; they are bona fide obstacles which we'll have to some how go around.

Last evening, I spent quite some time figuring mileage on different routes, and factoring in the interest quotient (is it more interesting to go through rural Canada than downtown Detroit)? for the next stage of our trip.

As we neared Bemidji, we were really entering the "lake country." I'm not sure how things could have become any greener -- but they did. Little lakes were everywhere, and no home was without a small boat.

We approached this area with more than a touch of trepidation. Stephanie has determined that it is here where we will cross the Mississippi River. This is the point where normally any vehicle which I'm driving does odd things. Just as the well witcher's forked stick tugs downward on occasion, so too does the steering wheel in my hand begin to turn itself mysteriously to one side or the other, attempting to navigate a 180 degree turn. It is well Stephanie is driving as we approach this geographical point of emotional sensitivity.

But the crossings were not of a wide and raging river; we were very close to the source of this elsewhere mighty river. It looked about the size of Clear Creek, and while Tom made the obligatory groans and fake turnings of the wheel, even he admitted it was not as intimidating as it might have been.

This country is no longer farmland; the number of lakes, streams and marshes would make farming very difficult if not impossible. Now we were in a land of logging trucks. They were loaded with scrub trees or sometimes neatly cut 8' pieces, probably destined for pulp.

And, like our previous verses predicted, we found a great campsite that night in Wisconsin at "Top 'O the Morn" RV park, located on a small, pristine lake near the town of Iron River, WI. This was one of hundreds of small rustic resorts located on one of the thousands of lakes which dot the landscape across the entire region from upper central Minnesota through the length of the Michigan's upper peninsula. At this particular park we were only one of two overnight patrons that evening. Most of the resort's clients simply park their RVs there for the summer, and pay a monthly or seasonal rate. They looked fairly permanent, with individualized landscaping around these units. Without question the favored activity is boating/fishing, with the emphasis on the latter. Most of the boats are small 10-14 foot aluminum types, with small motors. The lakes offer somewhat different fish species from lake to lake. Pike, muskie, walleye and various types of perch predominate, though there is an occasional trout as one gets further into Michigan.

As is so often the case in "out of the way" spots, these were very friendly folk. They actually offered to let Missy run loose. The campground had a good supply of large gray squirrels, so we didn't take them up on their offer.

It was September 8 when we traveled across Wisconsin and into Michigan's upper peninsula (called "UP" by radio shows and newspapers), along the shore of Lake Superior. This portion of the shoreline is very sandy and the water quite warm and extremely clear.

We spent that night well off the beaten path in a town called "Germfask" (heaven only knows where this name came from)!. It's located only a couple of miles from the Seney Wildlife Refuge, which is primarily a pond/wetland conservancy. There are two highly rated RV parks at either end of this very small village. Both are centered on canoe and bike travel into, through and around the wildlife refuge. With over a hundred miles of bike paths, and uncountable miles of canoeing waters, it would be a splendid way to "do" the wildlife area. Rising before sunrise, we drove a seven mile scenic loop trail which winds around the ponds and through the wetlands near the center of the refuge. The misty early morning sights were spectacular. Among the many creatures we spotted were at least a dozen trumpeter swans, some sand hill cranes in flight, one beaver, several kingfishers, one muskrat, one raccoon and myriad ducks. Just as we were leaving, the birds were beginning to awaken, beckoning your average avid bird watcher, but we had a long day's drive ahead of us.

Thus far, from Sandpoint, we had been on the same road -- US Highway 2. Now this road headed south to the lower portion of the upper peninsula, and we continued north and east.

Good-bye to Highway 2 was written when I thought we would indeed leave it and head east through Canada. Tom correctly pointed out, however, that Canadian TV stations do not as a rule carry American football games, and did I know just how many exceptional games were scheduled this weekend? So, today we were headed for Port Huron MI, and tomorrow somewhere in Ohio, the eastern limit of the area carrying the Washington/Ohio State game.

I was influenced greatly by the fact Washington was playing Ohio State (in Seattle) on TV -- with regional coverage. According to the USA Today sports section, Ohio would get coverage, but New York was going to get the Penn State game instead. So, rather than taking the more direct route across Ontario to New York, we opted to go around the bottom of Lake Erie, thence to somewhere as far east in Ohio as we possible without getting to the Pennsylvania border -- when the coverage would change to the Penn State game.

While this was a bit longer, the extra mileage would leave at least leave us further east for the day, and yet "within coverage" of the coveted game.

When we finally reached the easternmost part of the upper peninsula, we crossed the bridge which connects the upper and lower portions of Michigan. As we crossed Lake Huron was to our left, and Lake Michigan was to our right. We paused at a rest stop along the top of Lake Michigan, and had a close up look at the clean, sandy beaches, and the crystal waters. Lake Michigan, at this, the northernmost end, is a beautiful clear lake (in sad contrast to the lake around Chicago), with sandy beaches similar to those found on Superior's shores. Lake Michigan up here is nothing like the murky Lake Michigan we knew when we lived in Winnetka.

PART III

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