The Great Train Trip- part the Thirty-Eighth

Okay,it just got weird! I just had lunch with a couple from . . . ( wait for it) MOLINE! On the train coming from Seattle! How is that for coinsidence? It is truly a small, small world. We are now somewhere in the middle of Montana. The sun is gone and it’s cloudy and the mountains in the distance are only a suggestion. What ever they farm in Montana is still being planted in neat rows and there is a lot of it. Since I only know corn or beans I haven’t a clue to what it might be but they seem to have it well under way. Occasionally you will see a horse standing in a field, which brings up an idea that I have considered for awhile what if they are not horses at all. But alien life forms studying us from those fields? They are always alone, they are fairly patient, but they do eat our grass, drink our water and breathe our air. If this is true what kind of intelligence are they gathering about us and this planet? What’s more, where is the mothership? Maybe it’s those big red barns! If it is, I’ll bet the cows are surprised when it blasts off! Then again, what if the cows are in league with the horses? Especially those big black and white ones!
As time passes, we now are on the eastern side of Montana and the landscape has changed from flat and no trees to more trees and more variation to the land scape. And this would mean we are in the high plains For all practical purposes, this is a desert but since it gets its share of rain and snow the land scape is green but the dirt under it is sandy. There are shallow ponds around, in the old days these might have been “Buffalo wallows,” now they are just depressions in the ground where water collects. Off in the distance there are the shadows of mountains, gray and purple.
The trip is sort of winding down! We are coming back the Central time zone! Oh my! this adventure has been going fast but then again that is what makes it work is a couple of days, a bit of transport, a couple of nice hotels and you are back in your own bed, just like that. Modern conveniences. I have the distinct feeling that I am not the first nor the last to do this kind of thing or enjoy the challenge of it. The closer we get towards North Dakota the more the land begins to shift to what one might call “Midwest.” The dirt is just a bit darker, the trees are more plentiful. Although I still don’t recognize what is being planted and grown.