June 10 and 11, 2010 – Casinos Everywhere You Look, Always Have a Backup Plan For Your GPS, Brother Can You Spare a Beer

The rain was light as we left the hotel and seeing as how we were on an American Indian Reservation, we had breakfast in a diner that didn’t require reservations. It just seemed right. The diner had on a radio station that alternated between Top 40, country/western and American Indian Chants. Very entertaining.

Riding along US-2 and then US-87, we made our way west and south to Great Falls, MT. We passed many Casinos along the way with my GPS failing in the middle of a county road paved with something resembling stones varying in size from pea-gravel all the way up to rocks the size and shape of caltrop things they used to drop on roads in the Middle Ages to injure the hooves of knight’s horses. With the GPS on the blink, it was incumbent on me to navigate by the sun, moon and stars with my trusty maps from the local realtors that you can find free in the supermarkets and C-Stores (Convenience Stores) along the way. You stop in the store, buy a beef jerky stick and a Red Bull, pick out a map and Go Your Own Way for 40 miles or so, then repeat the process. I was able to successfully chew the jerky sticks into usable bootlaces, inspired by the way Inuit people render seal and walrus hides.

Casinos are everywhere and each has its contingent of folks hanging-out near the entrances. They like to strike-up a conversation and make remarks like, “As soon as my cousin/brother/son/father/friend/plumber/proctologist comes by to pick me up, we’ll be on our way to go fishing”. You spend some time working the saddle-sores out of your posterior and chat and realize it’s been 20 minutes and there’s been no sign of the cousin/brother/son/father/friend/plumber/proctologist whose arrival was imminent, so you ask. One thing leads to another and before you know it, you’re passing the guy a couple of bucks for smokes and a can of beer. It’s a much more civilized method of panhandling than we have back home. You get a reasonable life story with a potential Happy Ending (they’re going fishing, after all!). How can you not help a brother out?

Made it to the Great Falls of the Missouri River. This was probably more spectacular when the original Lewis & Clark visited here, because the hydro-electric dam wasn’t yet in place. Electricity was that thing Ben Franklin found while flying a kite in a storm. Nobody knew you could obtain electricity directly from water like they do these days and so flying kites in storms was very popular for many years. On our way out, Lewis became keenly interested in a passing deer and wanted badly to chase, slay and devour it. It would have been more than he could handle, so I shackled Lewis to the truck and let him run along behind Dad as he drove. That wore him out. Lewis, that is.

Here’s the route:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=US-2+W,+Wolf+Point,+MT&daddr=47.36664,-110.08617+to:great+falls,+mt&hl=en&geocode=FUnN3QIdgOCz-SmPamHUskC2UjHAUsLkLfWeog%3BFfDB0gId5jdw-SkZ1nfyDRFBUzFboJaMOua3Qg%3BFcvL1AIdOK9d-Sk7uIxljTdCUzGoRVmOsVbe1g&mra=ls&sll=47.420654,-106.550903&ie=UTF8&ll=46.882723,-109.220581&spn=2.819604,4.938354&z=8&via=1