For this trip I planned to make a third attempt to visit Glacier National Park, a park that I thought was rather remote from much of the U.S. However, I learned shortly before going on this trip that I would miss getting to go to Glacier because the National Park Service had a "lottery" going on for months to get entry tickets to the most visited parks (and I was too late to get the tickets) with Glacier beingone of the most visited park!!!

I also planned my second attempt to visit Big HOle National Park before going to Glacier. It is also rather remote. The night before going there, I checked that park on the NPS.org website. Said visitor center closed but park is open sunrise to sunset. I got there about half an hour after sunrise. It was abour 35 degrees. Barricade at park entrance said park is closed. Oh-for-two here.

Montana is a really wide state -- around 650 miles. It ranks fourth in square miles for the U.S. states (AK, TX and CA are bigger).

When I left Dillon MT the car said it was 35 degrees. As I got further west, and up some in elevation, car said 24 degrees. I did note, both going into Dillon and leaving Dillon that I-15 traffic was mainly me and a buch of semi trucks.

As I headed towards Great Falls after leaving the Big Hole National Park (and went through Butte and Helena on I-15), I noted that the mountains were getting shorter and shorter until none, just flat farmland. It was fun in that, twice, the highway crossed this Missouri River. Big deal because the MO River is a major -- maybe THE major -- geographical feature in my home town of Kansas City.

Montana, like other states in the west, have an 80 MPH speed limit. However, when in a construction zone, most states have drivers slow to 55 MPH although Utah only slows to 70 MPH. On the other hand, Montana has drivers slow to 35 MPH. Yes, half of what Utah requires!!!

The third thing I wanted to do was drive through the northeastern part of this very large state because it is a portion of the U.S. that I had never been. It was quite out of the way to do this -- basically I added a full day to my route home since Big Hole was my last planned stop to visit someplace. So, I decided to go through the U.S. just a bit south of the border with Canada until I got into North Dakota where I began to head a bit southeast. The northeast part of Montana, the non-mountainous portion, has much good farmland and pastures. There are a few small mountains between Glasgow and Wolf Point. Then, going further east, they become large treeless hills.