9/5 day 2 of East coast trip

9/5

Early in the morning we had breakfast with Benedict and his partner. They are on the first leg of a multi leg rail trip across the US and back to Seattle. Benedict was a boat chief on the Coast Guard ice breaker Polar Star for many years.

At Whitefish, MT we got a seat in the observation car before the train to heads for Glacier National Park. There are park service rangers on board and they gave a lecture on the park.

The depot at Whitefish was built by the Great Northern Railway in 1928. It was later renovated by the Burlington Northern railway and now maintained by the Stumptown historical society. The original name of Whitefish was Stumptown, called such since they were in such a hurry to establish the town they did not clear all the stumps.

The views from the train are gorgeous. We see lenticular clouds over the mountains, forests, fast running rivers an interesting shade of blue. Even though it is called Glacier National Park, we did not see a single glacier as we are passing along the southern edge of the park. I did not see any wildlife either though Rich claims he saw a deer. It is different seeing the park from the ground in contrast to the view from the air when we flew with Doug in his plane.

After the park we passed though the Blackfeet Indian Reservation with long, gently rolling hills of grass and wheat with a few cows studding the landscape.

Between Havre and Malta, Montana the train slowed to a crawl. Burlington Northern is working on the tracks so we need to go slowly. Unfortunately. We are now a little over a hour late arriving at our next stop, Glasgow, Montana. We hope that between here and Chicago we are able to make better time so we do not miss our connecting train to Pittsburg.

As we ride down the tracks and see cows in the distant I am reminded of the Gary Larson cartoon about cows. In the cartoon, there is a cow on lookout for people while the other cows are standing on their hind legs smoking cigarettes. When the lookout cow signals, they all return to 'normal' cow behavior, eating grass. I wonder what the cows are really doing when we can not see them.