2014 Road Trip – Day Two – Sandpoint, ID to West Glacier, MT On US 2

Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000

RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

Well, the BNSF mainline is a thousand feet away now with crossings at both the east and west of here, thus horn blasts.

Vista Motel, West Glacier, MT.

And when one idles near here, as just recently, the windows shake. Windows are the old 1950s glass, single pane, makes me nostalgic. Two tracks here, one must be a siding? Usually this whole route rail is one track. Ah, the windows shaking again as another goes by.

Trains mostly oil, coming and going to/from the Bakken in ND. Bill says every bit of that oil moves from the wellhead to rail-adjacent tank farms by truck and from the tank farms by rail to market. None of it is piped. NIMBYs in ND want the oil from their lands but not their lands dug up temporarily for pipes.

I am reminded of the scene in Good, Bad and Ugly where Lee Van Cleef goes to kill the old man who lives next a train yard whose iron horses shake his whole house as they roll by.

Still, far fewer trains here than in Sandpoint, ID, who also hosted AmTrak.

Did not realize I was in MT until I reached Libby and wondered why all the MT license plates.

US 2 to this point is mixed quality. MT especially is on the low end of “mixed.”

But MT scenery lovelier than ID’s and WA’s IMHO.

[Still, ID’s Panhandle and especially the Kootenai River that transits it are beautiful. The Kootenai and Yellowstone Rivers are the most beautiful of my experience.]

Libby, a mining town of some size but not general affluence, has a small casino almost every block on the main drag, which is US 2. Many next to one another or across the street from one another. Then I recalled, MT in thrall to Democrats. They live off the poor and ignorant while claiming to be for them.

This put me in mind of one of my favorite movies lines, from Brando’s and Scott’s The Formula: Seit wann glauben Sie auf Gott. Since when did you believe in God, spoken by General Kladen to an SS officer who entrusts him to a mission with the words Gott schütze sie (God protect you.)

Seeing all those casinos in one town I thought regarding Democrats and their professed caring for the poor, Seit wann Sie für die Armen kümmern?

It is the west-bound trains that shake the windows, the ones presumably laden with oil, not the east-bound trains, the ones with empties returning to the Bakken. Spectacular. This one is shaking the walls, and still going, longer than earlier ones.

Kootenai River at Bonner's Ferry, ID — Kootenai River at Bonner’s Ferry, ID

National Forest Campground On The Yaak River, MT

In general, the RRs follow the rivers and the power lines and US Highways follow the RRs.

Yaak River, MT - Very Low Water — Yaak River, MT – Very Low Water

Trees can live in what appears to us as solid rock. This I find a great wonder. There must be water in there, not as solid as it appears.

Very dark now except for the motel sign. In the country. And the parking lot is unlit.

The Kootenai is one of the most beautiful rivers I have seen, something about her. All her course that I can see. The Yaak is a tributary. I had to go far into a US Forest Service campsite — all one lane road, no campers — to reach the Yaak, which, in spate, would be where I drove/parked next her. I stayed for a while, very quiet, so that one hears the least sound of something happening and turns to see what is it.