2014 Road Trip – Day Four – West Glacier, MT to Malta, MT

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

Countrymen.

BNSF has become my dancing partner across the fruited plain. Tonight again we are shacking up together, closer than ever when she wants to blow her horn. I have grown accustomed to her face, her sound, her … airy indifference. Here she is again, long, insistent and noisy. 🙂 Music to my ears now. Three tracks she has for the last 300 miles. Most of that distance we were less than 100 feet apart. US 2 follows BNSF, formerly BN. I saw today one train using an SF “A” unit, the kind which led the Chief and Super Chief passenger trains when I was a youngster. Have not see one in decades. My electric train set had the standard road configuration of Santa Fe Chief and Super Chief passenger trains in those days, an A unit followed by a B unit (no cab, just engine) followed by an A unit moving backwards. Only the forward A unit had a motor.

After being spider-bit at the Best Western in Sandpoint, ID, I decided to try mom and pop motels that have good reviews and look the part. So far, all good except for the very low working surfaces and the toilets for modern children or 1940s/50s adults, who were definitely shorter and slimmer. I am over weight but not obese and I recall my parents being taller than their contemporaries. Now I feel shorter than my younger contemporaries. As a youngster, I was taller than my contemporaries. Weird they thought my soma type tall. Now for not being tall enough. And I note cars are far, far larger than they were in the 60s and 50s. Toilets in the mom and pop and even corporate hotels have not kept pace with size increases.

Beautiful Fall weather today coming out of Glacier NP. 40s, windy, overcast. Aspens/birches full Fall glory. They do “quake,” rather loudly enough to be heard from a distance of 25 yards or more. See “quaking aspens.”

Immediately east of the Rockies — my favorite mountains — is dry, rolling plain, almost totally under dry farming. After Havre, MT, a major BNSF yard and repair facility, and heading east, the plains are still dry cropped but with far more rain than to the west. And there are lots of trees, first since the Rockies.

I noticed hundreds of alfalfa rolls sitting in the fields getting wet. When I checked in here, the lady asked if I saw rolls sitting in the fields whilst coming in. When I said yes, she said the farmers in this county lost 15K rolls over last weekend when 7 inches fell and in the next counties south and east more than that because the same weekend 10 inches fell there. Heartbreaking! Now she says the rolls are self-igniting with the water and rich alfalfa and they have to let them burn because fire equipment cannot go into the soft fields. Total loss. Heartbreaking. And such beautiful rich alfalfa! I sensed a disaster as I was driving through it all. Lady said, “If you like to gamble, be a farmer.

Bill Paddock is arranging for me to stay tomorrow in his suite at a posh hotel in Minot, ND. He keeps it for when he comes to the fields.

In Browning, MT, on the Blackfoot Reservation, I was almost side-swiped by an Indian driving a decrepit vehicle, no doubt drunk. I was careful to speed up and then get back to limit quickly. Bill told me never to stop and to up windows and lock doors any time in Browning. Indians. Worst tribe in USA says Bill. All liars, none truthful (Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn, *Charade*).

I have been careful to follow to the letter the reduce speed signs when approaching hamlets. This saved me today when I did that approaching what turned out to be another Indian town but just outside a second reservation. I was at 45 by the time I passed that sign and then saw the chap in his fancy black car about 400 feet ahead clocking people passing that sign. The town was out of a Clint Eastwood western, classic dead, dead, dead. Boarded up, nothing at all but buildings, But damn sure they had a PD with fancy car on the job to slim the pickings.

Asked Jerome about an oil train I saw. Between front and rear engines and the first tanker car to them was a box car. Jerome said it is a buffer, by law, filled with sand.

Saw a VW Rabbit with four kids from Idaho whipping up US 2 towards Glacier NP. Surprised that car runs. They were trash.

Lone Trees By RR On Totally Plowed Plain

The Continental Divide is at just under 6K feet on US 2. Elsewhere in the Rockies I believe it is higher, sometimes much higher.

I have often wondered how the engineers determined RR routes in mountains. Today it occurred to me, just speculating, that probably they worked backwards from the lowest passes across a range to the 2% grade/route that would reach them. Thus BNSF at this pass rather than at 10K feet or whatnot. Still, I saw three train tunnels today, some seemingly of length, some seemingly shorter. And that is just what I could see.

Most of the day I had the road to myself. Very pleasant.

Ah, I hear the siren call of my shack-mate, two longs a short and a long: a crossing warning! And another crossing warning, closer. We meet again. The locomotive engineers seem to have their personal methods of sounding the horn. The timings are not the same as between trains. Two longs, a short and a long is the same, but not the interval between them, or their duration. Some man’s shorts are another man’s longs. Thus do we sleep the sleep of the living, attending the artistry of blowing horns.