Day Three: Been Through The Desert On A Horse With No Name

Third entry of the trip started us off at Fargo, ND and landed us in Billings, Montana. Drove about 1000 km.

As soon as we had gassed up the car the entire day was spent on the interstate highway, which had the benefit of being fast and clear of traffic and well paved, unlike some of the previous stretches we had travelled across back east. I'll say this for the Americans: they take good care of their roads. The downside to this is that our route followed basically a straight line almost the entire day, with a rare little hill perhaps as the only thing to break up the monotony. We ended up playing around with the cruise control settings on the car since I can't think of another situation better suited for road testing stuff like that, but we suspect it burned more fuel that we ought to have as the engine automatically downshifted every time we mounted an incline.

Flatness, flatness everywhere

Towards the end of the day we passed out of North Dakota and into Montana, reaching a region of "painted canyons" which were really pretty to look at, though I suspect not good for much else. There's a reason they call it "badlands".

The painted canyons: what drove ancient Americans to decorate these cliffs? Modern man may never know.

ATE AT: In the little town of Forsythe, Montana, next to "The Town Pump" (a gas station, not a prostitute), there was a little diner called the Eatery. Weak coffee and deep fried, cheese smothered everything. I had the special, which was chicken-fried steak sandwich on whole-wheat but looked a lot like white bread to me, with a side of doritos. Brian had a roast beef sandwich with too much horseradish (he was wheezing and tearing up from the bite of it). The people there were friendly but struck us as the folk who had been born there, grew up there, would marry and eventually die there, their lives filled with daytime TV and beer. I'm going ot move on now before I get depressed.

ROAD KILL: Racoon (x2), Maybe possums(?)(x3), At night we passed a big buck with an impressive rack of antlers standing next to the highway in a pose that suggested he was waiting for the perfect moment to launch across the road. I was fully anticipating that he was about to charge my car as we drove past but thankfully my Hyundai remains un-gored.

LISTENED TO:
*The Dead Authors Podcast an earlier episode interviewing Carl Sagan, which even cranked up to max volume we had some issues hearing it clearly over the road noise. Still had many good jokes though, my favorite being that any number over 4-billion (which could then qualify to be described as "billions and billions") is now called "A Sagan".
*Monster Talk Two episodes, the first was a biography of the almost-forgotten 1950's horror-host Vampira, who established the format for characters like Elvira and the Crypt Keeper in decades to come. It was interesting but I am always greatly bothered to learn of any classic media which has been now lost forever because the film reels were too expensive to store and the TV execs didn't think anyone in future generations might have a historical interest in the earliest TV programs.
The second episode was a short one, a Christmas special apparently, which was a reading of Ambrose Bierce's short tale "An Inhabitant of Carcosa", which later evolved into Chambers' "The King in Yellow", Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, and now is known to modern audiences best as a major plot point in the first season of "True Detective".

Also a note for all the readers who are suggesting podcasts I might like more, your comments are certainly appreciated but I can't actually act upon them during this trip, since I already burned all the podcast episodes onto CDs for the trip before leaving Ottawa. Downloading and preparing more would require me to unpack my computer and hook it all up, which is just infeasible until I reach our destination.

TALKED ABOUT: Seeing as we were thick into cowboy country, our conversations revolved around the stories of the Alamo, General Custer's Last Stand (which we passed about 50k north of) and the impossibly rugged President Teddy Roosevelt, whose national park we also passed through during today's drive. Some old western TV shows that Brian used to watch also sprang up in conversation, notably "Here come the brides". Apparently one of the characters on that show was a distant ancestor of Star Trek's Mr. Spock. Look it up, it's canon!


ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS: North Dakota sure is proud of the mighty buffalo herds that don't exist anymore. They put them on their license plates, on their road signs, on their restaurants, and notably we passed by a buffalo reserve or zoo of some kind in Jamestown that boasted not one, but TWO albino buffalo (Breaking news: I've learned that they've just added a third baby albino buffalo calf this year that isn't on the billboards yet).

READING: Still making slow progress through "Supergods", enjoying the dissertations on the golden age of comics that saw the first appearances of characters like Captain Marvel, Captain America, Flash, Green Lantern, Namor and the Human Torch. Also learning what a kinky bondage freak Wonder Woman's creator William Moulton Marston was. Read that wiki link before you see her in the upcoming "Batman v. Superman" movie!