Beautifulled Out!

After a day and night in Calgary, and the luxury (For Us) of the Royal Calgary Hotel, we debated what we might do next. We weren’t far from Glacier National Park in the US and that might be a great way to finish out our 3 month sojourn. Then we recalled how the girls just seemed to be all “beautifulled out” during our time in Banff. We opted to point the nose of the Landcruiser home and drive. Glacier and points North, South of us in Alberta, would be fuel for another trip; another adventure.

Gas prices in Canada were quite a bit higher than in the US, so, from Calgary, we drove down South, Southeast through Lethbridge, Alberta and into Montana. The border crossing was uneventful, which was nice, because I’ve had some interesting crossings into the US after spending extended time in Canada in the past. But that’s another bunch of stories altogether.

Still wishing to stay as far away from crowds as we could, we opted to cross the Northern parts of Montana along Highway 2, so from Shelby, Montana, we headed East across the high prairies of Northern Montana. The highway is mainly a two lane highway that was fairly smooth and did not have a lot of traffic. Perfect. It is also part of the “Dinosaur Trail,” which is a series of museums and visitor centers in Montana that celebrate the rich fossil history found in the Montana rocks. Our girls love Dinosaurs. Our girls love rocks, so it seemed a fitting activity for the drive home.

Our first stop on the Dinosaur Trail was in Chinook, Montana at the Blaine County Museum. This museum has a notable collection of dinosaur fossils on exhibit. It is a small-town museum, like you find in many small towns in Wisconsin, but the dinosaur exhibit was very well done. There was a skull of a large predatory dinosaur known as Gorgosaurus (Fierce Lizard), which is a Tyrannosaurid dinosaur. Tyrannosaurid is just a fancy word for the group of dinosaurs that look like the most famous dinosaur of all time: Tyrannosaurus Rex.

From the Blaine County Museum Website

The Blaine County Museum also had an extensive exhibit on the Battle of Bear Paw, which was a battle between the Nez Perce and the US Cavalry in 1877. The Battle of Bear Paw was the end of a four month long flight of the Nez Perce from their homelands in Idaho through Montana while attempting to cross into Canada. After the Battle of Bear Paw, Chief Joseph famously said, “From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.” The sheer amount of battlefield artifacts at the small museum is impressive and citizen science played a big part in collecting the artifacts from the battlefield.

The curator of the Museum was a friendly young woman who said that if we could only see one more museum on the route; the Fort Peck Interpretive Center and Museum was one of the nicest museums on the entire Dinosaur Trail, not just the northern portion. We would later learn that she was right.

During the drive along Highway 2, the road follows the Milk River Valley and it is amazing to see what the river does for this often dry area of Montana. All along the winding, rolling valley, the effect that reliable water has on the landscape is apparent. There are farms and wildlife on the small hills around the river valley. Pronghorn Antelope and livestock seem to coexist in the green fields adjacent to the Milk River.

Between Chinook and Fort Peck we found a fantastic little burger joint in Glasgow, Montana called Flip Burgers and Treats. It was a fantastic little place with great food and nice people. It was the lunch rush, so we got to see a lot of local people going about their daily routines, man was it great to be re-entering the hustle and bustle of American life in a place like rural Montana!

Mosasaurs are one of my favorite animals from the age of dinosaurs. I mean, what’s not to love? Their ancestors were land animals and then they chose to go back to the water. Once they were back in the water, they became the most dominant predators in the sea for 20 Million years! Some species of Mososaurs could grow to be 60 feet long. I certainly would not be a kayaker if these creatures existed today, since they likely inhabited the coastal environment favored by the sea-going variety of our tribe! Luckily for us kayakers, and unluckily for the Mosasaurs, they were likely wiped out by the K-T meteor that struck the earth about 66 million years ago.

Fort Peck Interpretive Center

When we arrived at the Fort Peck Interpretive Center, Petra got yelled at by the Ranger manning the kiosk. Immediately upon walking in, you’re confronted by a full size Tyrannosaurus Rex in a very intimidating stance. The excitement of the sheer size and scope of the exhibits were just too much for her.

Petra is usually a pretty quiet, reserved observant kid, Olive is often the rambunctious sister, but every once in a while, like after Petra gets an adrenaline dump from riding a big rollercoaster, or when she gets, “So excited about science,” Petra can shed her usual reserve and run around like a hyena on meth. Petra was literally running around the exhibits with a constant high-pitched verbal torrent of everything she knew about all of the creatures on display, before I had even made it into the building. I was finishing my ice-cream smoothie from Flips!

Before either Sarah or I could corral the little speed freak, the woman working in the museum told Petra she would have to leave if she didn’t calm down. It was a little embarrassing as a parent, to have such a misbehaved child, but how can you not also be proud that you’ve raised a child for which SCIENCE is what makes the kid THAT excited. I also blame the huge sugar dump that came from the ice-cream treats we got at Flips after lunch.

Petra later smoothed everything over with the ranger by apologizing, sharing how much she loved the center and telling the ranger all about our trip. So all’s well that ends well. The Interpretive Center is located near the Fort Peck Dam and Reservoir, which was built between 1933 and 1943, and was part of the “New Deal.” It was an amazing feat of engineering and the coastline of the Fort Peck Reservoir is longer than the coastline of the state of California. The dam project was photographed by Margaret Bourke-White for Time Magazine and her image of the Dam adorned the cover of the very first Issue of Time Magazine.

First LIFE cover November 23, 1936. Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

The project became an icon of American Ingenuity and promise. Here is a link about The First Time Magazine Cover Story. After Fort Peck, we wove our way down Southeast through Montana along Highways 24 and 200S. It was a drive as rural and remote as any in the US, but compared to where we had been on this trip, it felt as though we were driving back into the modern world. Some of the “Badlands” environments we drove through were eerily beautiful.

Once we connected to Interstate 94, it was full-bore for home. The area around Buffalo Gap and Theodore Roosevelt National park in Western North Dakota were beautiful and may warrant further exploration. The juxtoposition of badlands and grasslands is an interesting mix. One thing about being in the modern world was that the pace of the roads and amount of traffic was new to us again.

When we were driving along roads in the Northwest Territories, Yukon and even British Columbia, if we saw something we wanted to film or photograph, we could likely stop safely and make that happen, right along the main road. On the American Highway and Interstate system, it is a lot more difficult.

As we got into Eastern North Dakota and then Minnesota, the greener and greener it became. We transitioned from the American West to the American Midwest. Sarah commented about how much she loves the green of the Midwest. We finally crossed into Wisconsin at Hudson and there was a feeling of being nearly home. The final 200 miles was easy after so many.

As we pulled in, this can’t be made up, we were greeted by white tailed deer, turkeys and a great blue heron. It was good to be home. Almost immediately upon getting home, the girls began running around the yard and asked if they could take their rescued canoe out on our lake to catch turtles.

I feel like we’re doing some things right!

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More soon ~Umingmaq