People talk slow in Montana

I took to calling Alberta "Canadian Texas," and all the locals agreed. It's very wealthy, very full of oil, the "welcome to Calgary" sign has a cowboy hat on it, and there are suburban housing developments everywhere. I drove over one hill in Calgary to be greeted with the sight of five-foot-long yard, housing development houses as far as I could see. And it's flat there, so I could see pretty far.

I've crossed back into the US. Washington Mutual's "fraud prevention" froze my debit card while I was in Calgary (but would still let me withdraw from ATMs, what the crap). I found the first place in Montana with cell reception so that I could spend a half hour on hold with them. It was this town called Browning. That place is a shit hole. I don't believe I've ever come across a shittier hole. About two of every three buildings are "for sale" or just boarded up and abandoned. Drunk people roam about in the middle of the street at all hours of the day. People ride around on crumbling, backfiring old ATVs, presumably because their cars have long since failed. It was impressive in a very sad way. I got out of there as soon as possible, looking for Egg Mountain. It turns out the mountain was recently bought by Museum of the Rockies, and no longer open to the public. very large frowny face. I did get the chance to be exposed to Montana's slow talking, large belt-buckle showing populace. I now have a much more solid knowledge of the fact that the Pacific Northwest is my kind of place.

Although Egg Mountain was a failure, I saw the World's Longest Dinosaur (world's largest was last time) but couldn't bring myself to sing about this one.

Glacier National Park had a really nice drive, the road that goes through the park is called the "going to the sun road" and has some awesome sights, as well as driving through caves. It took some deft peripheral vision to both enjoy the scenery and watch out for people being retarded in the road as they risked life and limb for pictures of themselves.

This post comes from Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. I am on my way back towards Seattle and Bellingham - I plan to hang out there for a bit and see if I feel like traveling further. Two months (well, almost) has turned out to be a long time and I need a break from my vacation, ha.

Photos (look up Frank Slide, it's some serious history)