Every trip has a “transit” day, essentially moving from Point A to Point B with few points of interest in between.

Today, as we begin week two of our trip, is such a day.

Two hundred seventy three miles, few of them as breathtaking as what we experienced yesterday, or as beautiful as what we will see tomorrow.

Transit days are boring, but necessary. So, let’s be on our way.

We leave East Glacier Park Village and head east, riding past the Amtrak station and on to Browning, headquarters for the 1.5-million-acre Blackfeet Indian Reservation.

Some of you may think the word “Blackfeet” should have been “Blackfoot.” There’s a lot of confusion about that. The Blackfoot in the US are officially known as the Blackfeet Nation. In Canada, they are generally called Blackfoot Confederacy. Whatever you call the tribes, they’re the original residents of the northern Plains, particularly Montana, Idaho, and Alberta, Canada.

Browning, population 1,000, is the only incorporated town in Glacier County. In 1895, it was named after Daniel Browning, then the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington DC.

US Highway 89 takes us southeast from Browning. In 71 miles, we roll through Choteau, named for French fur trapper and explorer, Pierre Choteau. Like most people, you’ve probably never heard of Choteau – the explorer, or the town.

Outside of its 1,700 residents, few had heard of Choteau until 1999. That’s when comedian and late-night host David Letterman made it famous, after buying a 2,700-acre ranch in 1999, and turning it into a vacation home. The Letterman ranch is actually in Saypo, 35 miles west of Choteau.

In March 2009, Letterman married Regina Lasko, his girlfriend of 23 years, at the Teton County Courthouse in Choteau. A justice of the peace performed the ceremony. Letterman announced the marriage on his TV show, explaining to the audience that he almost missed the wedding after his truck got stuck in a mud patch two miles from the ranch in Saypo.

Today, the 74-year-old Letterman and 60-old-old Lasko live primarily in North Salem, New York. They’re raising their son, Harry, in North Salem on a 108-acre estate, about 50 miles north of Midtown Manhattan. Harry, now 17 years old, is named after David Letterman’s father, who died in 1973.

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Choteau is just a few miles from Freezout Lake Wildlife Management Area. Freezout Lake is Montana’s primary snow goose staging area, a place where as many as 300,000 snow geese and 10,000 tundra swans gather and rest before flying onward.

In spring, the snow geese head for Alberta and central Saskatchewan in Canada. There, they mass with hundreds of thousands of other snow geese from Texas and assorted Gulf Coast States. In a series of shorter flights, the geese then make their way to nesting grounds on the wind swept, extreme northwest Arctic coast of Canada.

The Snow Geese usually reach Freezout Lake in early March, where they rest up from their nearly 1,000-mile flight from California.

We miss the snow geese for two reasons. One, they’ve already headed for Canada, four months ago. And two, we turn south in Choteau on US Highway 287.

This highway takes us through Augusta and to Wolf Creek, where we merge onto I-15 for the 35-mile ride to Helena, Montana’s state capital. We’re not far from the Missouri River, and Helena National Forest.

With a population of less than 30,000, Helena is the fifth least populous state capital. It has a few thousand more folks than Frankfort, Kentucky, and a few thousand less than Juneau, Alaska.

Hollywood legend Gary Cooper, after whom my parents named me, grew up in Helena in the early 1900s. L. Ron Hubbard, the father of Scientology, also grew up in Helena, around the same time as Cooper. I’m glad my parents had the good sense not to name me L. Ron. Or even L. Gary.

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In Helena, known as the “Queen City of the Rockies,” we ditch Interstate 15, and head east on US Highway 287. Off and on, we follow or cross the Missouri River, at 2,341 miles, the longest in North America. Soon, we approach the Missouri Headwaters State Park.

This park marks the official start of the Missouri River. It includes the Three Forks of the Missouri National Historic Landmark, where the Gallatin, Madison and Jefferson Rivers come together to form the Missouri River.

Here at the headwaters, the Lewis and Clark Expedition camped in 1805. On July 28, 1805, Meriwether Lewis wrote in his journal: “Both Capt. C. and myself corrisponded in opinion with rispect to the impropriety of calling either of these three streams the Missouri and accordingly agreed to name them after the President of the United States and the Secretaries of the Treasury and State.”

Thus, the three rivers: Jefferson (President Thomas Jefferson), Gallatin (Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin), and Madison (Secretary of State James Madison).

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Near the Missouri Headwaters, we join Interstate 90 for the 20-mile ride to tonight’s destination, Belgrade, just outside Bozeman. The city of nearly 50,000 has some great nicknames: The Bozone, and Bozangeles. Seriously, that’s what locals call their hometown.

Belgrade is named after the capital of Serbia, an expression of appreciation to the Serbian investors who helped finance a portion of the Northern Pacific Railroad.

The Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport (BZN) is located in Belgrade. So is Yellowstone Harley-Davidson.

And there you have it. A transit day. Two hundred seventy-three miles, in four and a half hours.

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Day Eight Summary: 273 miles. Transit time, Late Night With David Letterman, at home in the Bozone.

Click here to see today’s complete route from East Glacier Park Village, Montana, to Belgrade, Montana.

Today’s fun facts, favorite foods, funky place names and famous folks:

Montana fun fact: Montana is the only state with a triple divide allowing water to flow into the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic Oceans. This phenomenon occurs at Triple Divide Peak, near Cut Bank, in Glacier National Park. Triple Divide Peak may be the only place in the world that has water flowing into three of the four great oceans of the world – a Continental Divide on steroids.

Montana favorite food: Hootdogs. What? Yes, Hootdogs. Not a typo. Hootdogs are skewered hot dogs, swaddled it in fry-bread dough, then dunked it in a vat of boiling oil. The Lewiston, Montana, woman who originated the Hootdog, Rita Hofer, serves her creation with a side of ketchup and mustard at the Lewistown Farmers Market on Saturdays from June through early October.

Montana funky place name: Libby is a great name for a town, but it also makes a beautiful name for a human. This town — and Libby Creek — happens to be named after early settler Stephen Allen’s daughter. Her name was Elizabeth, but everyone called her Libby. Libby is in northwest Montana, in the Kootenai National Forest.

Montana famous folk: 82-year-old Ted Turner, best known as the media mogul who founded CNN, and former owner of the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks, has quite a presence in Montana. At his 113,613-acre Flying D Ranch near Bozeman in southwestern Montana, Turner has a herd of more than 5,000 bison. He owns 16 ranches in the US, and three more in Argentina – spanning a total of nearly two million acres. He’s believed to be the fourth-largest private landowner in the US. Fun fact: the world’s largest non-governmental landowner is Queen Elizabeth II, with a whopping 6.6 billion acres.

Sturgis, anyone?

Vroom.

A look ahead @ tomorrow: Yellowstone National Park.