Day 4: Billings to Glasgow

Today we left the interstate highway system and launched into the wilderness. We are on course to where Jim's mom was born and grew up and to where his parents met and were married. Jim's cousin warned us to fill up with gas before we headed north. There is nothing for over a hundred miles.

There were two towns before we got to the nothingness stretch, Roundup and Grass Range -- this is cattle contry, if you haven't guessed. Roundup was a small town with an old mainstreet. It had gas and a motel. We noticed several businesses, "Rowdy, Ropin, and Repair" and Jim's favorite, "Snively Law Firm." We thought we would take a rest stop at Grass Range assuming it would be similar to Roundup. Mistake. All we saw were three buildings and then nothing for miles and miles.

Nothing means vast grazing lands with cattle and white-tail deer and large farms with wheat fields. It also means 5 or 10 minutes between encountering another car. Very quiet, peaceful, lonely, and beautiful country. Along the way were several "Historical Points" that we used as rest stops. This one is for the Little Rocky Mountains, also called "Island Mountains" because they pop up here and there as a small group of mountains in the vast plains. The Indians used the islands for fasting, praying, and vision questing. The outlaws, such as Butch Cassity used them for hide outs. And then they discovered gold...

And oil. We saw a lot of oil rigs. And even passed through a county named "Petroleum." I'm adding that to my list of awful names for cities/counties along with Weed, Drain, Boring, and a Montana city I added yesterday, Phosphate.

We finally came to Malta and civalization. We celebrated by having lunch at the Dairy King. Then proceeded on Highway 2 East to Glasgow. Jim's parents were married at the courthouse there, so we set out to find it and take a picture. We found it, but hadn't stopped to think that since the building would be over 70 years old, they might have rebuilt it. They did. It looked like it had been build fairly recently. We did ask someone and found out it was rebuilt on the same land. So we went ahead and took a picture.

Jim's parents met at Fort Peck where they were working on the FDR project to build Fort Peck Dam in the thirties. We saw a sign for "Historic Fort Peck Hotel" and visions of the Timberline Lodge came into my mind. So off we went on the 17 mile trek. Number one - there are no trees here, none, nada. So the lake looked nothing like Detroit lake as I was envisioning and the lodge was interesting, but not a Timberline. Number two - everything closed down here on Labor Day. So it would have been a good place to stay, but we had to head back to Glasgow.

Not before exploring the dam. Fort Peck Dam is the largest hydraulic earth-filled dam in the world. It rises 250 feet aove the riverbed and is 21,026 feet long and 4,900 feet wide. It is located where the Missouri and Milk Rivers meet at a spot described by Lewis and Clark from their expedition.

Back in the Cottonwood Motel and RV park in Glasgow, I read that Valley County has more livestock than people. Also some interesting weather statistics. The coldest temperature recorded was on Feb. 15, 1936. It was 59 degrees BELOW ZERO. The average temperature for Feb. of 1936 was -15.8 degrees. Jim's parents were married in August of 1936 and they moved to Seattle by the end of the year. I told Jim, "No wonder they left."