Roll me away, won't you roll me away tonight

Day 8:

Luckily for my family, this was the first night that we would spend in an air conditioned building. It was 93 degrees and 55 percent humidity in Glasgow, Montana but we were spared the experience. The camping area wouldn't have helped: it was the motel's gravel parking lot. The other two families in our party ended up parked next to a big rig with a refrigeration unit that rumbled all night making it very difficult to sleep.

The highlight of the evening and what kept the kids going for most of the day's long drive was the hotel pool. It's a nice way to end a long hot day on the road. After a quick swim, we went to the hotel restaurant. The chicken fried steak I ordered was nothing to write home about - and I had low expectations going into it. At least I had a side of tasty onion rings to go with it.

The drive today was much the same as it was yesterday. There were long, long stretches of Montana that could have been a repetitive Hollywood background screen. Like yesterday, most of the roads were undivided, two-lane roads that were only broken up by road work. One big difference, being Saturday, was that we saw several groups of motorcycles. If this were the bay area, I'd chalk it up to the local professionals taking their toys out for a weekend ride. Out here on the northern plains, I wasn't sure what to think.

I didn't realize that we were only 30 miles from the Canadian border. We went through a small town whose biggest attraction was the large green freeway sign pointing to the left advertising a 24 hour border crossing and the route to Regina (pronounced Reg- EYE - na, not Reg-EE-na), Saskatchewan.

I caught news of the NHL draft. Pretty nifty that the Sharks went from no draft choices in the first round to TWO.

Highlights:
1. Getting to the end of our first long day on the road, a place called Devil's Lake.
2. Seeing an elk by the side of the road
3. Seeing bison!

Quirks:
1. A chain of gas station convenience stores called Kum and Go. Uh, yeah.
2. Casinos are big in Montana. It seems like every small shop advertises itself as a casino. I counted three in an attached set of six shops.
3. You see a lot more women working road construction than in California. I'd say fully half the big equipment operators are women.
4. Stores you would not see in California:
a. The Fireworks Superstore
b. The Williston Saddlery
c. Stallion Oil Field Services. There were several oil wells along the route.
d. Burger Queen. No kidding.
5. We stopped at the self-proclaimed Geographical (sic) Center of North America. The engineer in me was reeling with possibilities on how you calculate that. Weighted average by elevation? How do you account for the ice on the northern shore? What kind of accuracy do you have?
6. Our back window overlooked what I refer to as "Combine and Tractor World." We would go on to pass many such places on Route 2.