Oh yes, Montana!

Okay, so I wrote this a couple days ago when I still believed my hotel was going to provide me with wireless internet service. Ha! I'd write something up to date, but it's 11:24 pm and I have exactly 36 minutes left of my birthday. I must have better things to do with my last minutes as Queen than write a new post! Right?

We’re in Kalispell, Montana right now. Everyone said it would be gorgeous, even majestic, and they were right. Mountains everywhere, lakes, rivers, farms. Why, I asked my city-girl self, was I so reluctant to make this trip to the wilds of gorgeous and majestic Montana?

Well, here is the reason: There’s nobody out here, you guys! Okay, Kalispell is a decent sized town and it’s got a Wal-Mart, which, as my mom will tell you, is the true mark of civilization. It’s even got traffic (albeit due to construction) that puts Seattle to shame. But getting out here? Was a tiny bit dangerous. If we’d run out of gas on State Route 28, it would have been weeks before they found our bodies.

Of course, I’m the girl who starts to get antsy about an hour out of Seattle in any direction. Just about all of my friends are country transplants. They're sticking it out in the city right now, but ten years from now they'll be roping horses at the rodeo or raising hogs in Wisconsin or something. And I'm all, "What's the difference between pigs and hogs?" (And, really, what is the difference?)

We spent the night in Spokane on the way out and Spokane’s all right. Spokane has beautiful old houses, a path along the river, the Davenport Hotel, my friend the Social Worker, and the Gonzaga basketball team- all fabulous reasons to visit. Also, the Social Worker has a gigantic tub in her bathroom and if you are very nice, she might let you sit in there all morning reading Lord Peter Wimsey short stories until you are all puckered up like a giant human raisin.

But we had to leave Spokane. It took about an hour to speed through Idaho and suddenly we were in Montana. “Ah!” we thought foolishly to ourselves. “Montana! It is beautiful! And majestic!”

We had no idea, though, that it’d be another 2 and a half hours to make our way through windy state routes and endless straightaways that cut through field after field after field before reaching Kalispell. And, in case you keep track of these things, St. Regis, where we turned off I-90 to head north, was hosting a white supremacists convention.

On Saturday we’ll attend a wedding in an enormous Montana field. The groomsmen are riding out on ATVs. The bridesmaids will drive themselves over in a bright yellow ’59 Ford truck. They’ll be spraying for mosquitoes before the ceremony and I will have to head over to Wal-Mart to buy myself a new pair of shoes, because you can’t cross an acre of farmland wearing heels. What was I thinking?

*In case anyone is interested, you obtain a Chinese tourist visa by finding a travel agency who will send your visa application to a travel agency in San Francisco and then that agency drops off your application at the Chinese Consulate. You must also give both travel agencies gigantic buckets of money.

Comments

[Phillip]

Doing a quick google on the subject...

"What is the difference between a pig, a hog and swine? To the producer, pigs are light animals less tha 54 kg. Hogs are 54 to 100-105 kg market weight. Swine is a general scientific term that covers all. "

http://interactive.usask.ca/ski/agriculture/animals/swine/swine_industry.html