(3521 miles driven) We were on the road today at 9:05am after a night beside a busy BNSF mainline. It seems they were working on the snow sheds during the day and once night fell the trains started running again. There was a train about every thirty minutes all night. After leaving Izaak Walton Inn we drove through Whitefish, MT and then headed for Virginia City, MT stopping for the night in Butte, MT. Butte was once the copper capital of the world and is dotted with very deep mines and open pit mines. We went to the viewing stand for the open pit mine, but it started raining so we just took a quick tour of the town and headed for the hotel stopping at 5:00pm. We will try again tomorrow if it is not raining.
This is the Whitefish Amtrak station. It is an original Great Northern station. We toured the museum and I provided some information to the attendant about an error they had on one of their signs. They had an Y6b (a steam engine) as being built by the Northwestern at Roanoke, VA. I corrected them to change it to Norfolk and Western at Roanoke, VA.