Our first morning view today was of grey skies and driving rain in North Dakota.
A landscape of large fields, sparse vegetation and then the occasional oil field.
The discovery of oil in this area in the 1950's created a huge benefit to the State in terms of wealth but required additional housing and infrastructure to support the additional workers being brought in.
In Williston, the centre of the oil rich area there are substantial storage and refinery buildings.
As we moved on and into Montana the clouds lifted and the landscape brightened up.
For several hours we passed huge golden fields of crops, mostly now cut - and very large grain silos.
At last we started to see mountains on the horizon..
Towards the end of the day we travelled through Glacier National Park - the pass rising to more than 5,000 feet to cross the mountains.
It has been a long journey - we have another night on the train and leave it on Saturday morning in Seattle.
It has been an experience! In the photo below, David is standing underneath the window of our sleeper 'roomette'.
It is a long train but we are in the first sleeper car - which accounts for the fact that our sleep last night was frequently punctuated with engine whistles - 2 or 3 for each road crossed, however minor.
Looks like quite some journey and that is quite some train. A great journey I should imagine.
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