We planned a long travel day today. We didn't visit any attractions and most of my photos were taken moving along the interstate at 75 MPH, so they aren’t very impressive. Sorry for that. We left Helena, MT at 7:25 AM and 54 degrees. As we headed out of town, the sky was rather menacing, especially up in the direction that we drove through to get to Helena. The sky was full of black rolling clouds under a ceiling that covered the sky as far as we could see. And that is quite a long distance in the State of The Big Sky, where you can see forever.

We headed east on the interstate. To the south, off in the distance, were the Rocky Mountains, where breaks in the cover allowed the early morning sun to shine through and turn the snowy peaks into bright distant lights on the horizon. To the north, we had foothills hugged by the stormy black clouds that were hovering over them. As we moved further east, we began to see breaks in the clouds and finally hints of blue skies and sunshine.

We drove through fields of young green wheat, grain elevators, silos, John Deere tractors, tillers, and those long sprinklers. And we drove through Wheat, ND, where the local bakery sells bags of grain, loaves of bread and all sorts of pastries…where everyone in town seemed to congregate for breakfast. And I felt like the lone stranger when I walked through the door. In a town this size, everyone knows everyone.

And the topography began to change. And hills rose out of prairie exposing round yellow rock faces, smooth and swirling, like huge mounds of soft beach sand. And we crossed the Missouri River. And we finally reached the mountains that we had been looking to all morning, and drove through a mountain pass that took us to a valley of lush green carpet with stands of tall pine trees.

And the land gave birth to towers with trees growing out of rocks and fields of crops wherever there was a flat piece of land, where angular gray mountains exist beside green rolling hills beside flat-topped mesas with striated sides. It was a feast for the eyes.

By 11:00 AM we had left the Rockies behind and the land became flatter. And we crossed the Yellowstone River more times than I can recall. And I thought, the name was appropriate for the tapestry of yellow rock hills and perhaps that is how the park got its name. We passed through Billings, the largest city in Montana, a city filled with refineries, and homes and places of business unlike we had seen in Montana, yet.

We crossed the border into North Dakota and right into the Painted Canyon, where the round-topped hills rise from dark green carpets that grow up the sides of the hills to meet yellow rock faces with pink tops, like strawberry jam on an ice cream sundae. And the sign said Home on the Range.

We arrived in Dickinson around 4:30 PM and 81 degrees.