…I’ll try to get to church for critical mass
The Trip to DogCon 3: Day 6, Part 2, In which we support small local & wierd business, are boarded by the police and see our critters eat for free.
(Note: All comments by Flash are in italics)
Well, it took many hours and 438 miles, but we are finally in North Dakota. Williston, ND, to be exact. The Buffalo Meadows RV park, to be exacter. No, there are no buffalo or bison here. There are three Holstien cows not far away though.
After we left the field full of pronghorns, we stopped 4 times at various tourist traps and once for lunch. The list follows…
Havre: We stopped here for gas, sightseeing and to visit The House Made Of Whiskey Bottles. There is actually no charge to see it, since the city of Havre owns it. I was expecting a small bungalow, but no, this place is 7 rooms and 2 stories tall, plus it has a 10’X 15’X 8′ shed next to it. That all took a shitload of booze bottles to build. Of course, I reckon there wasn’t a hell of a lot to do but drink whiskey in Northern Montana in 1880-85, when it was constructed.
Malta: Here, we stopped for lunch (burgers & shakes) and to visit The Lighthouse, which is in fact, a lighthouse. Now, as you might imagine, lighthouses are few and far between in landlocked states like Montana. Nevertheless, there it was, 75 feet high and looking like every New England lighthouse I’ve ever seen a picture of. Which figures, since it was built by a former fishing boat captain from Maine who moved to Montana and made big money in cattle. Both Grace & Sharon declined the heart attack inducing climb up to the top, but being not of sound mind, I trudged up. The Girls couldn’t go, but Flash did by riding on my shoulders. The view from the top was great, once I sucked in enough oxygen for my vision to clear.
I really enjoyed the trip up, despite Dad wheezing and gasping for air and calling himself a halfwitted idiot.
Wolf Point: This is the home town of The Famous Performing Albino Mules and sure enough, we paid $3.00 each to see a 35 minute show featuring 10 of the best trained mules I’ve ever seen, all of them albinos. After the show, we were allowed to pet them and sit on them for pictures (an additional $5.00 each). To avoid anything remotely like the “Squirrel Incident” all of our critters were on lockdown until we left.
Whatever happened to “paid you debt to humanity, now you are free”?
It was also in Wolf Point that we had an encounter with the local police. When we got back to the bus, there was the Sheriff waiting for us. My first thought was “what the fuck did the critters do now?” and my second was “or is John Law gonna just check out them hippies?”.
Turns out, I was wrong on both counts. He just wanted to see how we had the bus tricked out because he had a line on a used bus and was nearing retirement. I showed him around outside and inside (after switching off the TARDIS unit, because some shit is just too hard to explain to mundanes) and he was pretty impressed. I had to make up some off the cuff technobabble to explain the paint job, but he bought it.
Culbertson: This was our final tourist stop in Montana and it only took a few minutes, because it just doesn’t take long to look at an 80′ wide, 20′ tall mural of Montana settlers made out of pop bottle caps (circa 1958).
By the way, for those of you keeping tabs, we bought 9 more fridge magnets, 3 t-shirts, 16 postcards and a ball cap with a white mule on it.
By the time we reached our destination in South Dakota, it was 6:15 PM and we were all hungry as starving tenrecs. With that in mind, we went to Bob & Patty’s Family Buffet. Business was slow, so they told us if we sat on the patio, we could bring the critters with us and they’d give them something to eat at no charge. I have never seen dogs & cats eat so much pasta, fish, veggies, beef, pie and cake. By the time we left, they all looked like furry basketballs.
I love those people! Sweet Ceiling Cat above, they were the most generous humans on Earth! I ate a slab of cod as big as my head, then a slice of cherry pie, then a bratwurst…oh man, it was great!
Beat as we were from the long day, it was early to bed for everyone. But as per usual, I woke up later and decided to write this.
More bloggage tomorrow.
Destination Sign: Altair 4
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