Today was the worst day of my drive. I found myself incredibly restless, tired, lonesome, and out of place.

The drive from Bismarck to Bozeman is mostly high grassland, which is nice for a little while, but sort of feels like someone is pulling a Hollywood set, for a boring movie, alongside the car. The weather today didn’t necessarily cooperate with my body’s interest in oxygen consumption, either. It was in the mid-50s for most of my drive and if you know me well, you know that warm weather suits me better than anything under 60 degrees. 70 degrees, really. And really, when the speed limit is 75 mph, it’s hard to drive with the windows down and hear your podcast/NPR/music.

Some of you may have seen my video blog from beneath Salem Sue, the world’s largest fiberglass cow. Salem Sue was not a victim of the federal government shutdown as it has yet to achieve National Park status (get on that, Hoeven and Heitkamp). Setting aside the stigma of roadside tourist traps, it was the highlight of my drive, save for the 50 miles or so that I talked to Amanda tonight. The air was cool. The view was lovely. It was all very relaxing.

Where I think I’m going wrong here, besides the fact that I’m traveling across the entire country alone, is that I’m driving too much every day. If I were breaking this down into two 3-hour driving sessions with an hour break in between, I’d be much better off. But I’d also be back somewhere in Minnesota right now, and spending more money on hotels, food, and gas. So you take the good with the bad, I guess.

Notes:

-You can add New Mexico, Washington, Wyoming, and Guam (yes, Guam. In Miles City, Montana) to the list. Kansas really needs to get with the program.

-I tweeted about this (@midatlanticbias) in the morning but at the complimentary breakfast, I saw a man  fill a plate with breakfast potatoes and then proceed to cover those potatoes in: cheese, four packets of butter (“my butter fix,” he said to an old man), mayonnaise, an egg, and an incomprehensible amount of salt. If the Midwest had a flag, I’d want that man’s plate on it.

-I saw my first snow between Bismarck and Dickinson, ND. A lot more snow on the mountain tops here in Montana.

-There’s a place called “New England, North Dakota.” It’s like a combination of all of my hells.

-Another thing I tweeted: the cowboy hat thing. Maybe it’s just my big city, East Coast way of thinking, but every time I see a man in a cowboy hat, I assume he’s just some ironic hipster from Greenpoint. It just doesn’t seem real to me. I know that it is.

-Pete seemed to be a big hit yesterday and I thought a lot today about his “polite but unfriendly” line and it really rings true. I find myself getting a lot of looks at gas stations and rest stops (license plate and funny looking car probably do it) but no inquiries. I’d really appreciate an inquiry rather than a “look.” I like to feel like I belong, wherever I am, and I do not feel like I belong in the middle of these United States.

-I always assumed that Eastern Montana was going to be beautiful like the rest of Montana. Come to find out, most of that part of the state is just an extension of North Dakota and that makes for some really boring driving….

-…and then, all of a sudden (not really, but go with me here) I turn and I see MON-TANA. Wide open space. Snow-covered mountains. Horses. Cattle. Water. And a highway sign that says, simply, “Crazy Mountains.” Indeed

-Finally, I am sure that there are typos and words that unintentionally spit out to my fingers that I’m not proofreading here, so thanks for bearing with that. I’m doing the drive, then writing about the drive. Proofreading the drive, well, I just don’t have the energy.

-Tomorrow will take me south for the first time in this trip, to Salt Lake City, where I will, for the first time since Tuesday morning, see familiar faces, in the form of Brian and Ali Spittler. They’re going to get the Raw and Uncensored Story of Pete from Bismarck. Be jealous.