DAY #4 Billings, Montana to Fargo, North Dakota

-->

October 25, 2014

Saturday

9:00 am

Leaving Billings

Started the day by going to Albertson’s for breakfast—yogurt parfaits, banana, and waters.

We set the GPS for Fargo, ND and it took us to I 94E. Then it informed us: “Stay on this road for 567 miles.”  The interstate is good—4 lanes almost all the way and not congested but it cuts a line across the middle of Montana and ND.  In Montana the scenery is beautiful to Billings then gets flatter, more prairie like. 

12:00 noon

 We stopped once in Miles City, Montana.  Had to drive a couple miles away from the interstate.  Cute little town with farm machinery dealers on every corner.  A nice city park and a cute downtown.  We got gas and had a pit stop.  Then back on I-94 E. Eastern Montana has lots of  beautiful mesas.  And prairies….lots and lots of prairies.

Beach, ND

~1:00

Hello North Dakota and welcome to the Beach.  No sand or snorkels but a lot of truck drivers at the Flyin’ J.  We sat on the curb in the parking lot and ate the wonderful leftovers from last night’s supper—prime rib, baked potato, and broccoli. Bread, lettuce salad, and cheese quesadillas. Delish.  Took Alice for a short walk and she suddenly started sneezing with her whole body.  Serial sneezes that shook her whole self.   It was cute for me, but Emilie was concerned.  Alice finally stopped and Em gave her ½ Benadryl.  Hopefully we won’t run into that weed again!  But if we do I hope I have my movie camera ready! 

         

At the truck stop we also got a wide angle mirror to attach to the driver’s side mirror.  I mentioned previously about Henry being stuffed to the gills.  He is.  We can’t see out the back window so we bought this little round mirror and it works beautifully.  Now we can see our blind spot.  Wish it was that easy to get rid of all our blind spots in our lives…

3:16 pm

Central Time Zone so it’s really 4:16 pm.

North Dakota is much flatter than Montana or Idaho.  Lots and lots of prairie land.  There’s only a few towns by the interstate.  The people we meet are all very nice, though.

It’s now 7:06 pm.  We have gone 495 miles today!  I have no idea about the time we’ve been in the car because of all these crazy time zones.  We made a stop in Bismark about an hour ago.  I wanted to get a thumb drive for my iPhone pics because it wouldn’t let me take any more.  So we stopped at Target—where else?  We easily fell into our familiar shopping routine but also knew we needed to get going.  Our big target experience will be in Raleigh to get Em things she needs and didn’t bring.  That’s always fun.  We got a Starbuck’s Latte and some string cheese and apple slices.  Ready to go again.  Our ETA for Fargo is 9:07 pm. It’s 7:09 right now.  We have a backwards and forwards time schedule.  We will have a sandwich when we get to our hotel and go to bed.  We’re going to try to get up early tomorrow. Oh, and we didn’t see any icy warnings over bridges.  We saw one partially dry river bed but must not have crossed any  Bridges.  Are there none in NoDak?

Got into Fargo last night at 9:00 pm.  Had eaten PBJ’s on the road so we could go right to bed.  Emilie did.  I did not.  There was a Giants game on.  And we won 11-4. It was a 4 hour game.  So I got to bed around 11:30 pm.  We both set alarms for 6:30 am.  So, back to the Giants game.  I had almost given up when we were behind 2-4 but in the 5^th we broke loose and kept scoring runs through the rest of the game.  Too good not to watch.