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Day Three: July 3, 2005: On to Montana
Our primary goal today was to arrive at Kala's brother's ranch in Montana tonight. It was to be a long day of driving, with only one planned sightseeing stop, Still, we managed to capture a few slices of Americana along the way, helping us to pass the long miles between Lehi, Utah and White Sulphur Springs, Montana.
For starters, can anyone explain this billboard we saw along Interstate 15 between Ogden and Brigham City?
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After pondering that display of adolescent desperation and then stopping to wonder just what kind of enormous fish might populate the local rivers, we continued north to Preston, Idaho, "Home of Napoleon Dynamite." It is truly remarkable how fame can change a town. The sudden success of the movie seems to be ushering the community rapidly into the '90s. We had hoped to find a game of tetherball but were out of luck. The local bowling alley did sell tater tots, though, and we did manage to photograph a few memorable sights before setting off again.
Montana has been called "Big Sky Country," and, indeed, the sky is so big that the sun can hardly find a place to hide. As we made our way toward Chris and Cate's ranch, we marveled at the lateness of the hour and the brightness of the sun. A local community, anxious to begin celebrating our country's independence a day early, waited until ten o'clock for the sky to be dark enough for them to begin their fireworks display. Even when we checked the horizon half an hour later, a few stubborn streaks of sunlight remained in the sky, refusing to go to bed. Perhaps they wanted to stay up to see the fireworks, too.
Finally, after getting lost and having to ask for directions from a border collie (who was no help, and who, we suspect, may have deliberately misled us), from a gentleman who flagged us down from inside his living room at close to midnight, and from another fellow, a member of the neighboring Hutterite colony, we arrived at our destination, Schendel Ranch. We had to negotiate passage with two cows in the road, but we eventually reached the house, bluffed our way past the menacing guard dog, and woke our host, who had expected us hours earlier and had fallen asleep waiting. Chris greeted us warmly and helped Andy shelter our car from troublemaking cows determined to use it to satisfy their own destructive purposes.
Now for some much needed rest. We will be taking the day off from traveling tomorrow so that we may celebrate the Fourth with Chris. We'll tell you all about that in our next post.
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