Day 6 September, 1: Havre Montana to Dickinson, North Dakota

Today’s coffee story, we walked next door to the hotel to a little local coffee shop. The women behind the counter was busy with drive up business when we walked in. After the person left the drive through, she said she would be with us in just a minute and then spent time looking for a fly swatter to get a wasp that was buzzing around her. We decided we did not want bee carcass in our coffee, so we walked out and hit the road. About an hour east of Havre we found a cute little roadside coffee place that was bee free and got our cup for the road.

Traveling east from Havre along route 2, paralleling the Northern Route for the railroad and within 20 miles of Canada, we passed through the Blackfoot Indian reservation and later Sioux country. When we hit North Dakota, the landscape turned into oil fields. I read a book last year about the boom times that came to this area as the oil fields opened up because of fracking. The book was a cautionary tale of people moving to the oil fields for good paying jobs, but a lack of housing led to most people moving here to spend all their money on housing and drinking, and going back home with no more money saved.

We entered Theodore Roosevelt National Park – at the North Entry, called the North Unit. When I did my 48 days trip, I went through the South Unit. The units are not connected by road, so this was a whole different park for me. We found the North Unit to be a really nice park, with views of the little Missouri river and the badlands of North Dakota. We went on a 1.5-mile hike which was nice, but hot, as it was 90 degrees even at 4:00pm. We were also surprised to see large herds of buffalo, more than we saw in Yellowstone, and walking on the road at some points.

We are spending the night in Dickinson, North Dakota which is a cute University town, right on I 94 and close to the southern unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.