Losing our Walmart Virginity

---

Today, we had found out was thanksgiving in America, Canada celebrates on a different day earlier in the year. We realised that none of us really knew what thanksgiving was. I have just googled it and apparently Thanksgiving Day is ... a harvest festival. Traditionally, it is a time to give thanks for the harvest and express gratitude in general.

As we checked out of the hotel we walked passed the kitchen. A large sign read "Hunters if you leave your game in the fridge please put your name on it." For some reason in my head I imagine an old lady going to put something in the fridge and craping herself because as she opens it it is overflowing with a huge stag carcus.

We drove off south passing through a place called Wolf Creek. We thought it best not to stop. The scenery changed from fields to valleys and soon we arrived into the state capital of Helena. It was pretty hard to get excited though as the city was covered in a morning fog making visibility poor. We did manage to find a Walmart which excited Andre no end. We'd never visited before so all lost our Walmart virginity at the same time. As we entered we saw a family with two boys. The first was about a 1 year old and had a leather jacket, the other would have been about 3 and had a slicked back mullet. I wanted to take a photo but Nic reminded me this is not really tolerated, and besides their Dad looked like he was probably packing heat. To make the shop more excititng we decided to buy gifts for each other for less than $5. Nic and I dabbled in the toy section before finding the hunting and fishing section. We managed to snaffle a couple of hunting face masks that were ridiculous looking. In return Nic got given a jigsaw puzzle of America with the 50 states on it. I received a ninja set with ninja stars, plastic of course. Otherwise someone would have got hurt. Most likely me.

Gardiner was our next port of call and is on the Montana side of Yellowstone National Park. After finding accomodation we headed to the famous park. We were a bit gutted to hear that parts of the park were closed for winter including Old Faithful, the geiser. We soon cheered up though when we started to see huge buffalos, elks, mountain goats and the best of all ... a grizzly bear. This was a fortunate spotting as most bears were hibernating for the winter, only the largest stick it out. The sighting was through a telescope that a friendly local named Ralph had perched atop a high viewpoint. What made it better was that the bear was ripping a deer carcus to shreds. Pretty brutal and impressive stuff.

Watching all that eating made us hungry. We headed back for a swim and a spa before tucking into a sumptuous thanksgiving roast dinner. At the time when I didn't now what thansgiving dinner was for, I was thankful to be having a good feed, for spending time with good company and that I wasn't that grizzly's dinner.

---