THE DAY OFF

So we had a day off; something unusual for the whole bunch of us at the same time lately.

The Folks are in town for The Kid's 8th grade graduation (I think I mentioned that in another post), and we've been doing a little of this and a little of that.

Today, we were up and out of the house by about 9:15 a.m. -- not bad considering I live with a bunch of non-morning people.

The plan was to head over to Anaconda to check out the smokestack. The thing is bigger than the Washington Monument, and they have a viewing area that shows both the bottom and top dimensions. You can't actually get to the smokestack because it's in one of those federally declared disaster zones. You know, like the Hanford Nuclear Reservation clean up and other area where we've polluted the environment. Let's just say it's nasty there.

From there we drove the Pintlar Scenic Loop which runs south of I-90 between Anaconda and Drummond. It's an absolutely gorgeous drive. We stopped at St. Timothy's Chapel on Georgetown Lake.

From there we drove on to Philipsburg where we had lunch. This was really the only down side of the day. We decided to get lunch at a place that served both food AND ice cream. Sounded like a good idea, but apparently they weren't actually ready for customers on a holiday. It took us an hour to get our lunch. Several people walked out. We kept thinking that that would speed up our order. It didn't. We did get a free milkshake and one of our sandwiches free. That helped, but I'll probably not go back to that place again.

After hour long lunch break, and a quick stop at the candy store, we moved on to Deer Lodge, because we had to visit the prison. Deer Lodge is home to the original Montana State Prison. It was originally right downtown, but in 1979 it was finally given a new building about 3 miles outside of town. Actually a good thing, because that building had been in use since about 1870. The original complex is now a museum complex of the prison, a car display and a bunch of other stuff. We only went through the prison section; but if you're into old cars, I hear that that is worth a visit also.

From there it was back home. All in all we spent about 12 hours toodling around a small part of the state. And next week we have some dude from Hawaii coming to visit, so we'll have to figure out something for him to do as well.

Oh . . . did I mention it snowed today?