Day 8: Billings MT to Dickenson ND

Course Correction

As has been hinted in previous 2 posts.  Several days of non-stop geologic wonder has taken their toll on our well being, on our clothing, on our ice chest.  In Billings we had made reservations at what ended up being an incredibly well run hotel with a fantastic hot breakfast included in the price, blazing fast internet, and . . . a laundry room.   I would describe this all in better detail, but a travel blog is not best place for couples to air out their dirty laundry. 

Whole justification for this trip is to make my classes work better.  I am not necessarily living up to that end.  So we abandon Turtle Mountain and the 49th parallel and the confluence of the Yellowstone + Missouri rivers and make reservations for Dickinson ND.  I'll still get my ND fix just not as thoroughly.

Farewell to Billings

It takes us awhile and we're not on the road until nearly noonish.  like I say our journey is fairly short today.  Billings looks like it has a lot going on and people are friendly here.  Somehow the fear of "Californication" has not made it this far East.  I have had some success hitting up drive through espresso bars and Billings has its share.  I would have loved to photograph the railroad lines, the river the places where old meets new, but I am recovering.  So instead I photographed this rock

Down the Yellowstone river

I-94 from somewhere far upstream of where we started to Glendive follows the Yellowstone River, usually remaining above the valuable croplands along the flood plain.  We do this for ~ over 200 miles.  It would be monotonous, but there is variation at every step.  As we head out the way of the Great Plains the geology never goes away, it just grows more subtle and expresses itself on different scales of space and time.  

initially it's some Juniper forests alternating with grasslands.  The tress like these north facing slopes.  I see similar all up and down the high plains.  Elevation and latitude create this climate all up and down a region from Texas to Alberta.  

Anita notices early on that the same layer appears in outcrop after outcrop.  Cretaceous and Tertiary Sediments representing various stages of erosion from the rocky mountains

As I look at the river now I wonder how much of its sediment represents ongoing weathering of the modern day Rockies?  How much is the riverbed iself eroding.

while not as desolate as Eastern Oregon it is dry here, but punctuated with sometimes very heavy storms.    I start to understand that the river is also eroding the valley both downward and sideways with its incessant meanders.  Everything else flows toward it

Miles City Reflections

We stop in Miles city for Anita to photograph the river. I too have yet to truly photograph the river. With Anita At the wheel I get my chances:

Montana towns have a certain charm to them that reminds me of places I've long forgotten and never quite knew.  Lots of Victorian houses, brick buildings, trees.  It's almost as if I recall a time growing up there.  This is not really my memory and many of these towns seem like they have seen better days.  WHile Billings grows at breakneck pace, these other towns seem trapped in a time that almost was but never came.  I keep finding myself impressed with the shear size, swiftness and muddiness of the river.  We have lost nearly 700 feet in what feels like a flat drive.  We will continue to go down, crossing several more tributaties.

Towns are now about every 20 - 30 miles.  Still empty here just a little more human than the watelands of Oregon and Idaho.   Even the Freeway here is empty.  We sometimes travel miles seeing only a few cars in our own direction and nary more coming the other way.

We are travelling back in time very slowly as we descend from more recent Tertiary deposits into older Creataceous deposts.  Although the layers appear flat there is a dip that a good filed geologist will spot (I checked some maps) some dip as we approach Glendive MT and some older rocks.

KT boundary part 1

Past Glendive, I-94 leaves the river valley and sets out east toward Bismark ND (whose distance has been noted on every road sign since the freeway began 5 mi E of Billings).  The river will join the Missouri near Williston ND.  We will cross the Missouri in Bismark (and will know the exact milage to said crossing hours in advance.)

Climbing out of the river  valley Anita is moved by the beauty of the Badland buttes and I take as many photos as possible. Upon later inspection I learned that we have an exposure of the KT boundary here:  this is the layer of iridium rich dust that marks the imapct of a large meteor and the end of the dinosaur era 66.5 million years ago.  This area was a shallow sea back then, long before the Rockies had risen up.  In some  places there are also Tsunami Deposits.  If it is in this pic it will be a dark line.

Farewell Montana

We are now fully on the High Prairie.  Lots of rolling, moderately eroded land.  Apparently there exist coal deposits that were scarred by fire, there are ancient soils.  For us it appears as mostly grassland.

North Dakota 

North Dakota greets us with open views of flat expanses, punctuated by the occasional low butte.  We are gradually going more down than up and will do so until we hit the ocean - a long ways down the road.  

Then the badlands:  As we approach a river, the increased steepness allows for an erosion rate more rapid than that at which the climate here can make soil.  Many old sedimentary rocks from the Cretaceous are exposed around us in many colors detailing the lives lived in an ancient interior seaway.  Theodore Roosevelt NP has many places to explore these, many of which we would partake of if more time was allowed us.  Furthere east the decay of life buried in this long lost shallow sea decays into oil and natural gas.   We see pumpjacks working overtime to extract this long buried carbon for reuse as fuel.  There are many rabbit holes I would have wandered in a time with more time.  As it was we stopped a scenic Overlook and hightailed it for Dickinson for an early bed.