Color TV! I really should have stayed at this motel in Terry, but I had to push on. And to be fair, a new digital sign at the motel advertised flat-screen TVs.
I don't know if this contraption in Terry is the world's oldest oil pumper, but I'd like to have one. Notice the wooden wheels covered with nailed-on canvas.
It was so cold in Miles City that all of these snowmobiles appeared to be inoperable.
My weekend travels took me to the eastern edge of the state, placing me about as far from both coasts as it’s possible to be, but I still ended up getting seasick.
I was in Glendive, on the old highway bridge that is now open only to pedestrians, shooting photos of the iced-up river below. I walked out about to the middle of the old steel-truss bridge, right above one of the enormous concrete piers holding it up, and looked down.
I was on the downstream side of the bridge, and where the pier met the water there was a knife-like slab of ice, with narrow channels of water flowing on either side of it. That flowing water and the stationary pier created a powerful illusion, the sense that I was standing on the prow of a ship watching its forward edge plowing through the water at maybe 10 or 15 miles an hour. (I’d use knots if I knew the calculation.)
I’ve had inner ear problems ever since I punctured my eardrum in high school, so I should have known better, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the water and that striking optical illusion. Until I started feeling distinctly queasy—so queasy that I get a little dizzy right now just recalling it.
I staggered away from the middle of the bridge, trying to get my legs back under me, when I saw two guys in their 20s taking pictures off the bridge with their smart phones. I said hello and one of them said, referring to the river thick with ice floes, “We don’t see anything like this where we’re from.”
They were from Austin, had been up here for about six weeks. He said they were shocked by how quickly the beautiful fall had turned into a cold winter. I told him we were shocked, too, that the quick transition this early in the year was not entirely normal. I also told them about the optical illusion, and as I turned to go they were making their way to the middle of the bridge.
I thought of sticking around to hear their impressions, but it was just too danged cold. Maybe they’ve got a good story for their friends and families in Texas: saw an iced-over river in Montana in mid-November and got seasick on the same day.
As for the rest of my travels, I don’t want to spill the beans until the story appears, probably tomorrow. If anyone had asked on the road, I was going to say I was working for the New York Times, which asked me to find and interview Herb Glimt, a farmer residing near Hodges, who was reported to be the only person in North America who had not yet looked at Internet photos of Kim Kardashian’s rear end. Luckily, no one asked.
Generally when I travel for Last Best News I avoid the interstate, but even I-94 had some dicey stretches this weekend, so my off-the-interstate forays were relatively rare and short. The longest detour had me following Cartersville Road between Rosebud and Forsyth.
I had hoped to see what remained of the towns of Cartersville and Orinoco, both of which are listed in my DeLorme atlas, but I saw nothing resembling the remains of a town. If the wind hadn’t been howling something fierce across the ice-cold prairie, I might have gotten out and looked around more. I’ll have to look again one of these days.
