(Sorry I’m way behind here. Wi-Fi spots in Montana are like Dr Pepper in New York City—hard to find, and incredibly delicious when you come across them.)

I woke in the Murray Hotel at the leisurely hour of 8:00, and woulda done even better if I hadn’t forgotten to close the window blinds the night before. Stupid sunlight. Enjoying the feeling of an actual bed for a couple of minutes more, I finally carted my things down to the car, turned in my room keys (they were actual keys!), and left Livingston behind.

Westward through still more beautiful country I drove. By now I’d trained myself not to pull over the car for every incredible vista, lest I be stopping every five minutes for the entire day. The weather was still fantastic, but the wildfire smoke—from fires currently burning in Oregon—was not. It made the vistas hazy, and made me selfishly annoyed that I hadn’t avoided the wildfire mania plaguing my buddies back in 512.

Somewhere outside of Livingston, my trip odometer passed 2,000 miles.

So something to understand about Montana: it’s very big, and it’s very empty.Take Texas, and chop off about 25% of its land area, and pretend the 25% you chopped off was the part containing all the people: Houston, DFW, Austin, San Antonio, and Waco. Lubbock, Amarillo, and El Paso gotta go too. Midland can stay, since it’s got about the same number of people (108,000) as Montana’s largest city, Helena. Put another way, Texas has 30 cities with more people than Helena, including metropolises like Pasadena and East Jefferson.

Even then I got a skewed perception of the state on Thursday, since I drove through six of Montana’s ten largest cities en route to Glacier National Park. (Kalispell, 30 miles from the park entrance, clocks in at 7th with a population of 19,927.)

But the cities I did drive through were incredibly nice, each with an adorable little historic downtown that, unlike those in Texas, still seemed to be in actual use. The whole state must have some kind of Kitschy Neon Sign Preservation Act, which I totally endorse. Bozeman and Anaconda were especially nice. So was Butte, with one glaring and ignoble flaw: Butte is home to the Berkeley Pit, a defunct open-pit mine that is now the world’s largest toxic pool. And big means big: a mile across and 1,700 feet deep, with the acidity of Coca-Cola and the healthfulness of antifreeze. I paid a two-dollar admission to walk onto the observation platform; the surface of this artificial lake shimmered like a giant oil slick. Still, the tourist pamphlet (no doubt written by the mining company) assured me that everything is fine, nothing is ruined, and there’s no way this epic puddle of sludge could ever leak into the water supply.

That’s another interesting thing about Montana. Mining culture is everywhere. Giant smokestacks jut out of random hillsides. Mining derricks stand in the middle of towns, much like oil derricks in Texas. In Butte, I saw an picture from the 1970s that I’m still not quite able to comprehend: a giant mining-company bulldozer burying—not demolishing, but BURYING—a church, along with an entire Butte neighborhood, to make way for mining expansion. Bizarre.

As before I took the scenic routes parallel to the interstate, so as to experience more Americana.

On a last-minute suggestion I detoured 30 miles to Pony, Montana (not to be confused with Tony Montana), a ghost town with an abandoned mill and mostly-vacant set of downtown buildings. Interesting if you’re into that sort of thing, which I am.

I was chased by rainclouds into Missoula, where I made YET ANOTHER resupply stop at REI (yes I’m officially addicted to that place) before turning north for the final stretch to Glacier National Park. I listened to Judge John Hodgman as I drove around Flathead Lake, grumbling at the wildfire smoke that made the views too muddy to get a proper photograph.

As the sun set I reached West Glacier, technically a town but really just a restaurant and gas station at the entryway to Glacier National Park. Before driving through the gate I stopped at a bar with a hand-painted “FREE WIFI” sign out front, and enjoyed a beer while I updated my blog and watched the Packers beat the Saints in wacky season-opener fashion. I met a guy from the Hill Country who had been in Montana for a month; we talked Texas wildfire gossip, barbecue minutiae, and he gave me dining recommendations.

With an embarrassing buzz—I forgot what a lightweight I was until I went so long without drinking—I drove back in the darkness to Glacier National Park. My first choice of campground was closed; I found an empty spot at the second, Apgar, on the southern edge of Lake McDonald. I went to sleep happy, but cognizant of the coughing, snoring, and going-to-the-bathrooming of the other campers at the site. This isn’t it, I thought. I’m not really alone, not yet.

One more thing to report: I suffered my worst injury of the trip so far in Missoula. Bears? Rabid marmots? No, I stood too close as I slammed my car door in Missoula, catching myself in the ribs and drawing blood even through my shirt. This was not the reason I envisioned having to raid my first aid kit.