heading southeast then east across Montana,
we started crossing paths with Lewis&Clark, again.
doesn't sound like they were having as good a time as we were.
our midday destination was Great Falls - for lunch and for a Lewis&Clark "interpretive center." i think a while back i alluded to the city being a bit of a disappointment (reflected, mayhaps, in the historical marker above?). perhaps i was just hungry, but i was a little grouchy in Great Falls. coming down off my Glacier high, i suppose. getting back into the grit & traffic of concrete & asphalt can do that to you. after coming up empty with a couple of non-existent restaurant addresses (do things just disappear in this city?), we ended up eating over-priced pizza with a "view" of the river. well, you could see a sliver of water through the trees, i guess. the jet-skiers seemed to be enjoying themselves, at least.
but the Interpretive Center redeemed the place - it was great!
very informative with fun interactive exhibits.
& (bonus!) a much prettier view of the river.
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| apparently, they lost their pants trying to get everything over the falls. |
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| trying to figure out who said what to whom.... |
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| things were starting to be just a little bit of a blur.... |
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| who knows what in who knows where, so i took a picture. |
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| Montana Farmland. |
Destination: Lewistown, Montana
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| we had, obviously, forgotten how to cross a street. |
Lewistown was selected as an overnight because that was as far as i thought we could get our first day out of Glacier. and it set us up, if we wanted to, for taking Lonesome Highway 200 the rest of the way across Montana. & who doesn't want to do
that? our little motel (!) was situated at the north end of downtown, conveniently across from a taco joint and a place that advertised one-pound (in weight!) banana splits. yes, please. after managing to cross the street something like
four times, we left the teenagers to their devices (being slightly different than leaving them to their
own devices) & strolled downtown.
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| notice the little hoofprints on the right side of the sign. |
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| we never did see a movie in any of the old theaters along the way. |
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| Mike noticed this one, & we stood still for a moment to ponder the meaning. |
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| you can't see if from this angle, but there was a taxidermied horse in the front window. |
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| could've spent an entire day in this place - fascinating! |
the next morning, we pushed on across Montana.
but, first, i enjoyed a fortifying cup of cowboy coffee
along with our cowboy breakfast.
it ended up not being too lonesome,
even after all the warnings about 'tanking up' before we left Lewistown.
there seemed to be two possible soda fountain stops along the way,
and i had read that one of them was destroyed in a fire a few years ago.
so we stopped at the other one.
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| what's yer poison, pardner? at Jordan's Drug Store in Jordan, Montana. |
i was thrilled to find a package of
barrettes in the style i used to wear in middle-school (package date: 1993). & a mini popsicle set (because sometimes you just want a little one). i decided not to buy the eye/nose sun-guard, though i
was tempted.
the last little town on Highway 200 before we rejoined the interstate was Circle, she of the burned up soda fountain (which is really sad). it had a, kind of, miniature pioneer town and, oddly, a diorama of white plaster dinosaurs right next to it.
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| their expectations low, the boys asked if this was still a motel. |
and that, my friends, was Montana.
