We spent a mostly cold sleepless night wishing we had brought our sleeping bags with us for the cool nights on the train. We woke at daybreak in North Dakota 1 ½ hours behind schedule due to uneven tracks, but we feel pretty good anyway. The ground is flat here, near Minot, but the uneven tracks have made the train slow down as it sways from side to side on the slightly uneven tracks here. With the dry weather here, farmers are forced to leave one field fallow, while they plant wheat in the other, mostly in long strips of land. According to the docents, spring and winter wheat, and barley are the only profitable crops. Occasionally, we’d spot a prong horned antelope. It's 40 mph top spped, makes it the fastest animal in North America.
The train continued for hours on end across the flat plains until we entered into the front range of the Rockies, and into the Bob Marshall Wilderness area, a place where there are no roads, and only horse and foot traffic are allowed.
In the evening we crossed the continental divide at Glacier national park where the train climbed to a mile high in altitude, and was surrounded by mountains and fast running clear streams.
The photo, from the window of the train, is a stream where the plains start to end.
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