Great Falls, MT to Billings, MT

Great Falls, MT to Billings, MT

After many trials and tribulations with something like thirty pages of new material added to pages I had previously considered done and ready to be left alone; in addition to any number of pages of work for other works, to include several books I powered through:

Colin Quinn's: The Coloring Book:

Love this book cover and its a great read. "...diversity should be celebrated not denied." #ColinQuinn #TheColoringBook

A photo posted by Brian Dykeman (@brian.dykeman) on Jul 27, 2015 at 5:15pm PDT

and My Eskimos: A Priest in the Artic By Roger P. Buliard (Research)

I decided it was time to pick up and continue on with my trip. The chapter I was currently on was fighting me with all its moving parts and like the two previous chapters that I had considered finished, I was only adding more and more material to it as I revised.

With the annual Sturgis Bike Rally in full swing during the week I planned on going through South Dakota I seemed it might be perfect timing on my part to stop by. The problem was, the population in South Dakota is said to increase between One to One and a half million people the week of the rally; all in that area of the state. The town and surrounding area (Mount Rushmore, Keystone, Deadwood, on and on) is literally chalked full of people and motorcycles. In addition to that, I’m not on a bike and I absolutely hate crowds. The compounded problem of finding a place to park my car when I arrive and finding a place to stay in a area of the country where hotel rooms and camp grounds are booked out up to a year in advance with at least a 300% price increase in some circumstances, the reasons not to go only continually added up in a Con column juxtaposed against the two items in the Pro column: I wanted to be able to say I went to Sturgis on the 75th anniversary of the Rally and I was more of the desire to drive through South Dakota than all the way through Wyoming and Nebraska or Kansas as an alternate route to reach my next destination in Lawrence. 

Against the many warnings and comments through sites such as Trip Adviser, suggesting to anyone simply traveling through to 'Go Around,' and find something else to do, I decided I was going to be bold and head that way regardless. 

On the first leg; through an area of Montana I had never been through, it was interesting to see how much of the area wasn’t just the plain and farm land I assumed it would be; even though, lets be honest, a lot of it was. The first thing of interest I came across were some… Hay sculptures, I guess you could call them, outside of Hobson.

Hay fever 2015. Closing in on Eddie's Corner. #DykiversTravels #Montana #redrum #angrychair

A photo posted by Brian Dykeman (@brian.dykeman) on Aug 8, 2015 at 6:24pm PDT

From there I stared out across the miles of rolling hill land at a giant, unfurling, grey cloud of dense precipitation rolling itself into the area like a hulking Rhino running down a dirt road in slow motion, the dirt it was kicking up forever obscuring everything that lay beyond and behind the path it had already traveled. The Rain from the incoming storm caught up with me about the time I reached Eddie’s corner; the station everyone told me to gas up at because there wasn’t a station between there and Billings, which wasn’t at all true, I counted at least four between Eddie’s Corner and Billings:

For several miles I enjoyed driving through what turns out to be one of the most ambitious wind farms in the country. A fact which was hinted at by the gigantic windmill prop laid on its side for display next to one of the town’s bars you pass coming down into the town of Judith's Gap. The figure of some 5 million pounds of rebar used in the construction of the Farm's concrete bases and 22 miles of connecting roads between the wind mills comes to mind from what I read on one of the placards in front of the prop. I can only guess the nearby picnic table was just as much for eating as it was to provide some semblance of scale to the prop. It was so massive my eyes and brain stopped comprehending its size to a certain extent; even though I was standing right there gazing upon it.

After pushing through that section of plain country I soon found myself traveling down giant swaths of what I can only best explain were mile wide culverts peppered with beautiful trees and farming communities, likes of something out of the Briar Rabbit and Tar Baby or Mickey and the Beanstock Disney cartoons; very beautiful land about ~60 miles from Billings.

Upon reaching Billings; after another stretch of flat lands, to my right I was noticing a lot of vehicles on the shoulder, but beyond a single line of tall trees I couldn’t really make out what was beyond or why all these cars would be parked there. After several hundred yards I started getting glimpses of the city of Billings, it was hundreds of feet below the top of a cliff I was apparently driving upon…  I in turn parked and made my way down a bluff to the cliff rock face below to take in the expanse of the city below. 

Via @dizzyke Snapchat (Full Battery Filter)

(To be continued)