An all-day train ride was scheduled, departing East Glacier at 9:30am and arriving in Minot at 10pm.

 

We rode past many small towns, some of which had a train station and we stopped for 10 minutes or less. We saw the special barrier at “The Browning Bend” that our tour guide told us about yesterday designed to prevent the trains from being blown off the tracks by the fierce Chinook winds. We passed long freight trains and we pulled over on a side track to let freight trains pass us. The rainy and gray weather continued but there were still some beauiful sights including “amber waves of grain” and bodies of water reflecting nearby trees and clouds.

 

We had a 12-minute 'stretch break' in Havre, MT—our last one for seven hours. In front of the station is a statue of a man with the moniker of “Empire Builder.” That’s the name of our train and James Jerome Hill was a railroad builder and entrepreneur who created the Great Northern Railway.

 

We rolled into Minot late, at 11pm, but found an Uber in less than two minutes and rode to our hotel.

 

 

 

After a lazy morning and complimentary breakfast, we checked out of one room and moved all our stuff to the other to use as a base camp until our 10:30pm train. We walked in the rain to a restaurant for lunch, to a nearby mall to kill time, to Sonic for some dessert, and back to the hotel.

 

 

 

 

We waited around until time to head back to the station and found out there were no Ubers available. Eek! The hotel desk clerk gave us a few leads and we found a very nice man who is part-time driver and full-time Christian — our angel. It had only been 23 hours since we arrived at this station and now we were back and ready to board for the next leg of our journey: Minneapolis/St. Paul.

 

 

 

 

The only badlands any of us knew of before now was the national park in South Dakota. Today, we learned that badlands are “barren land characterized by roughly eroded ridges, peaks, and mesas.” And there are badlands on every continent except Antarctica. So our lunch restaurant was named for the local badlands in ND and specializes in “western North Dakota style and flavors.”