Advertisement
Published: July 30th 2019
Edit Blog Post
Today was little more than a moving day. We left our hotel at 8:30 and 53 degrees and headed south to the great old USA. There was no plan for the day except to land in Shelby, MT so that we could make another visit to Glacier National Park. This will be our 5
th time.
We decided to begin with a tour of the city. Calgary has a big city center, with lots of glitzy high-rises in glass and stone and shiny metal. And it turned out to be a lot bigger than I had imagined. Last time we were here, we stayed in the outer part of Calgary and never did see the city. Everything there looks new and shiny and modern. Even the condos and apartment buildings are ultra modern in architecture and design. And everything is built really densely. Last night our hotel was near the airport in an industrial and residential part of town. Getting there we circled the city and saw a lot of residential areas. The city is sprawling over many miles with lots of house of similar style and build and situated so close to each other, you could pretty much reach over
and brush your neighbor’s teeth. I am talking dense. And it reminded me of the 60’s song I used to sing…
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
And they all look just the same…..
Great song. Talks about the development of suburbia and the conformist middle-class attitudes. It was a hit for Pete Seeger. Anyone remember him? I sure do.
Moving on…
We drove for miles and miles through flat pastures and farms (we left the mountains behind us yesterday) and we saw lots of mustard fields, which are neat because the color is kind of a fluorescent yellow. We saw a lot of grain crops…corn, wheat, barley, etc., and grain elevators were everywhere, as were long trains of grain cars waiting for a payload to move to processing plants somewhere.
We had to make our way across the border once again and this time it only took half an hour. Well, in the middle of nowhere, half an hour seems like a long time. Only two lines were in service and our line was manned by an officer in training, so
it was moving slowly. We passed the test, only being asked if we had any fruit onboard. We discovered that our GOES card was not good enough to get into the US as we had been told. We did have to produce our passports. He said GOES is only good at the airport. Oh, well. You learn something new every day.
We landed in Shelby around 4 PM and discovered that our hotel has a casino in it. Why doesn’t that surprise me? Because in Montana there is a casino on every corner. Tomorrow, we will venture into Glacier National Park and up to Logan’s Pass, where the vistas are the absolute best.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.051s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 18; dbt: 0.0243s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Rudy Martzke
non-member comment
Montana: The Casino State
I've only driven in Montana once - at age 16. These casinos must have occurred after I was there.