Missoula, Montana to Bismarck, North Dakota in one day! It was quite a spectacular drive for the daylight hours, and just as the landscape started to get a bit flat and dull, darkness erased all geography and made it just me, the car, and NPR via XM satellite radio.

I left Missoula after a leisurely morning getting breakfast and enjoying the mountain air and college town atmosphere. The mountains that surrounded me changed in character once again. Many became dry and deforested (some combination of logging and fire, it wasn't always easy to tell), while still others retained their evergreen cladding. I passed through more distinct ranges. After passing through the range that Missoula sits at the base of, I traveled across a deep and dry valley before the mining town of Butte (the entire backdrop of this small city are massive amphitheater steps carved into the mountains around the city) and ascending into another range. After crossing the continental divide just after Butte (some 6000 odd feet), I plunged into another valley before hitting Bozeman and going up and down again.

Something I never realized about Montana is that the entire state is dramatic the whole way through. Somewhere past Billings I expected the mountains to taper off into rolling prairie or pancake flat farmland. Instead, I spent hours amidst a city of redrock wats to rival Ankor and slithering my way through the tortured badlands carved by the Yellowstone River. This was the landscape that one of history's famous lessons in overconfidence was delivered to General George Armstrong Custer. Driving past signs with familiar names like Bighorn and Custer, I began to appreciate the depths of his idiocy. Resupply and logistics must have been a nightmare for his cavalry. Opportunities for ambush are many, opportunities for defense are few. What a fool.

Today's photo comes courtesy of the North Dakota badlands, just north of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It's maybe one of the most ignored parks in the US, and certainly compared to its more famous cousin in South Dakota. Yet the landforms in this area are incredible. I deeply regretted not having the time to walk around, stopping when and where I please to take photos. I've begun to appreciate just how terrible the highway is as a guide to seeing the country. You see only the surface of everything, like witnessing the Great Barrier Reef from the deck of a speedboat. You see the land, you can't experience it.

By the cold economy of time, I had a great day, knocking 11 hours off my trip and leaving me with only a 7 hour trip tomorrow back to the Twin Cities. Although it's through the flats of ND and much of the territory is land I've covered already, I have high hopes for the ability of satellite NPR to keep me interested.