Day by Day Breakdown - Day Three

Day Three is the route from Grand Forks, North Dakota to Malta, Montana, about 550 miles. I do plan a stop in Minot, North Dakota to visit a sister newspaper in the Ogden Newspaper chain. I had the pleasure of meeting Bart Leath, the relatively new publisher of the Minot Daily News during the summer of 2008.
So, there's a very good chance that we'll stop by the newspaper, perhaps talk to a reporter and/or photographer and Bart. If I make a big enough deal out of this, perhaps Bart will arrange a meeting with the Mayor Zimbelman. It would be our first opportunity to meet with 'real' people and spend at least a few minutes doing what I really want to do - which is find out what these people are really all about across our great country. Perhaps this is cheating a little. When I was there last year I got the chance to talk to quite a few of the locals and found them to be very gracious. Perhaps this was when I realized that maybe my pre-conceived notions about backwater country folks was probably all wrong.
Of course, this is assuming that both Bart and the Mayor are available and see any value in meeting with me. I keep forgetting that I'll be 'on vacation' and they'll be working.

It's about 6.5 hours from Minot to Malta and there's not a lot in between. This is a very historical area, in fact, many of the cities/towns were created as part of the railroad western expansion. This is also Lewis & Clark territory. I believe this leg of our trip crosses the northern-most portion of the Lewis & Clark trail west. Being a big history nut, I have a feeling that this 6.5 hours will probably take us a bit longer.

While the scenery looks to be rather bland, I've seen some wonderful shots on Google and there does seem to be a number of really interesting places to have a Kodak moment. In fact, Day Four looks like the day where we'll see the terrain start to 'rough up', likely within a few hours after we depart Malta. Don't you just love the name "Malta"? All I can think of is Malt Liquor when I hear that name. In fact, Malta is known as "Dinosaur Capital" as the home to the Judith River Dinosaur Institute. I mean, I'm old, but I'm no dinosaur (yet). It doesn't look like we'll have too much to worry about in downtown Malta. It's also the scene of a Butch Cassidy train holdup in 1901. Actually Harvey Logan ("Kid Curry") was the robber and he made off with about $60,000, which was about the same as $1.5 million dollars today!

Anyway, enough of Day Three for now.

Hey, is this little day by day preview living up to your expectations or not? Lemme know.