Traveling to Glacier

May 26, 2022 – On the way to Glacier NP – Ray, MN to Grand Forks, ND

Elizabeth:

We left Ray, Minnesota, population 750, where we stayed in Voyageurs National Park, truly feeling if we lived closer than roughly 1,800 miles away we would come back often…in the summer. The pleasant, grateful, hardworking people; lake access; remote location being 20 or so miles from Canada and 100 miles from any town bigger than 5,000 people. This area is made up of mostly entrepreneurs, dependent on one another to survive. Even more importantly, they want to help their neighbors.

We stopped for lunch at a small diner and then took a stretch break at Bagley City Park on Lomond Lake in MN, pop. 1,000. Rangeley loved jumping off the docks and Elizabeth took pictures of birds. We crossed the Minnesota/North Dakota line and stopped in Grand Forks, North Dakota for the night at a hotel next to the University of North Dakota.

May 27, 2022 – On the way to Glacier NP – Grand Forks to Williston, ND

Elizabeth:

On the way to our next stop – still westward ho toward Glacier National Park – we passed familiar town names from our home state of Vermont. In North Dakota we passed Norwich and Burlington to get to our hotel in Williston, ND!

North Dakota oil and gas production extracted from Bureau of Land Management and leased from some private farms have been severely reduced when permission to lease the land was halted when Biden became president. ND is losing billions of dollars in lost revenue. They sued Biden in 2021 to be allowed to obtain their own state’s natural resources but no change yet. ND is, was?, the second highest producer of oil and gas after Texas. We stayed one night in Williston, ND which is surrounded by farm lands and loads of oil/gas rigs.

May 28, 2022 – Almost to Glacier! – Williston, ND to Havre, Montana

Elizabeth:

We pulled into Havre, Montana where we will spend our last night before reaching Glacier NP tomorrow! We randomly picked a restaurant close to the hotel that likes dogs, 40 Below Public House. We walked on the patio with Rangeley but there were no tables open. There were three 30 something guys who offered their table and graciously moved to bar stools, they were done their meal. We asked each other where we were from, one conversation led to another and we found out that one of the men had been a high school student at Essex Junction HS in Vermont. Gary’s nephew, Mandi, graduated from that high school and, Alex, the guy in the restaurant, knew Mandi and Mandi’s dad Armando (Gary’s brother-in-law), the principle at that school. Another of the guys at the restaurant went to UVM (University of Vermont) where Gary and I graduated from. All three are living in Washington State now and took the train to MT to enjoy a few days of bicycling. Small world!

I hope you enjoyed following along on our roughly 1000 mile Route 2 road trip from Voyageurs to Glacier National Parks. Next post – Glacier National Park Montana!!