…but not about the skunk cake
CritterCon 2025 (#18)
Trip Day Three
In which we amuse ourselves while crossing the vast boring miles, find more places to stop at than we expected, eat a very tasty lunch, view a colorful pile of rocks, and finish the day with motorcycle carnage.
I’m tired and a touch tipsy, so this entry is just a list of the day’s events.
1: We ate our breakfast at a place called “Red’s Diner” in Miles City, Montana. Good food, and we were pretty much the only customers. Red, the owner, was an old cowboy camp cook, and looked to be made mostly of old leather, sunburn, questionable life decisions, and grease. Really nice guy, though. Gave all the kids a cookie.
2: We stopped in Sidney, Montana, to see “The Cowboy On The Rock.” The rock was about the size of a small house, and atop it was a carved wooden cowboy and his horse. It was a very good carving. We took pix as we walked around it. No charge, and we were gone in about 15 minutes.
3: Having decided to take local roads instead of the highway, because you’ll see the same shit anyway, we started playing a trivia game. Unavoidably, this lead to some of us going off on tangents. I have no idea who won the game.
4: In Stanley, North Dakota, we saw an old timey sod house, so we took a look at it. Turns out it was the centerpiece of a brand new park. We took pix and listened to an old timer talk about the family that built it. Pretty interesting. We also stopped at the local gas station and bought sodas.
5: On the way to out next stop in Minot, North Dakota, we did such diversions as…sliding in the Slide Room…talking about the RPG hobby and business…watching old comedy movies…visiting the Zoo Room…and eating ice cream.
6: In Minot, North Dakota, we stopped to eat lunch on the bus (Mexican or Chinese, take your pick), drive around the 4th largest city in the state (population just over 34,000), and see some really nice gardens at the Minot Gardeners Summer Tour. That took us about 90 minutes. Amazingly, they had t-shirts for sale. We ended up buying about a third of their stock.
7: Heading out of Minot, we saw a Giant Muffler Man outside the Minot Garage and Used Cars. Of course, we posed for pix. I suspect the fellas working there thought we were nuts.
8: We stopped in Leeds, North Dakota (population about 850 in 1964, but under 500 in 2025), to see a large pile of rocks in front of the home of Arthur and Francis Doyle. Folks, this pile of rocks is 11 feet acrosss at the base and about 9 feet tall and has rocks of every color. They range in size from 4 inches across to 18 inches. It was hella impressive. As we stood there looking, a few neighbors came over to tell us the Doyles were not home, but we could go into the yard for a better look. It seems thary Art, Francis, and their 4 kids take off every summer and drive somewhere for a vacation. Early on, they started collecting rocks of different colors. What we were looking at was the result of about 24 summers of rockhounding.
We got the impression that the locals were a bit scandalized by all of this traveling around. Note that it was the older locals who sounded like that. The teenages spoke of it wistfully. That probably explains the steep decline in population.
9: Upon reaching our destination for the night, we dined on The Bus. Dinner was a seafood extravaganza, of which we heartily partook.
Our entertainment for the night was to get all of the kids into the Theater to watch the live streaming of we adults as toons doing a madcap race across Central California, from Fresno to Monterey. We were on big motorcycles, armed with one forward facing weapon, one rear facing weapon, and a coupla of personal weaons.
The 12 of us took off and for the next 2 hours, we basically beat the crap out of each other, our bikes, innocent bystanders, the cops, and the local environment. Mrs. Hudson reported that all the children laughed pretty much non-stop, then fell asleep within 5 minutes of it being over.
At which point, we adults went to Prima’s for drinks containing whatever we wanted.
More trip hijinx tomorrow.
Destination Sign When We Started: Mysterious Island
Destination Sign When We Stopped: The Hall Of The Mountain Thing
QM Radio Station: WONG Chinese Reggae
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