Sadly, we couldn’t make it work.
But it just gives you another excuse to return to North America. This time, Canada coast to coast; Victoria BC to St. John’s, Newfoundland; roughly 8000 km, or 5000 miles. Now there’s a car trip—I should know, I’ve done it. That time, we will definitely meet!
Thank you for the cultural points about Great Falls. They sound interesting and they’re good to know for when I visit next.
21:30 Mountain Day40 Kalispell rust.rescue.dwell
Bit of a mixed day.
Made a good start and, with the required paperwork made the 40min trip to the entrance to West Glacier and start of GTTS road by a bit after 7am.
Then I was given a lecture, well pretty much harangued, by the ranger at the gate over some sort of anomaly and was sent to the shuttle carpark where another attendant gave me version #2. Still don’t know what the issue was but fuck 'em, I went back to town. It’s a road up a hill driving into the sun. First time as a tourist in the US I’ve felt that I was an impediment or detrimental to their vocation.
When I parked I was approached by a local who noticed the AZ plates and joking asked whether I had brought all the hot weather with me. On advising him I was actually from Australia, he responded that the situation was worse than he he’d thought.
So I wandered the main drag of Kalispell, where I thought there was a pleasant cooling breeze. Out of familiarity rather than expectation I went to Starbucks and ordered a cappuccino, which turned out to be undrinkable swill. Scolding hot cup of over roasted beans. Should have complained, I just walked out. You know, when the Italians arrived in numbers in Australia after WWII they taught us about quality seafood, pasta and coffee. Didn’t this happen here stateside?
On the corner of Main & 6th there is the 1st Presbyterian Church, St Matthew’s Catholic Church, Flathead Lutheran Church and the Johnson-Gloschat Funeral home. Hatched, matched and dispatched all on the same comer. 
Called into the coin and bullion dealer and left with some fiduciary mementos. The owner said that there had been a run by people buying gold and silver bullion. I guess that if the red-necks of Montana were cashing in their greenbacks for metal that might be construed as a positive sign.
There was a local art gallery where they had a good range of works by local artists. Left with a Victorian table runner which will be both appreciated and critically assessed by Mum who is an accomplished quilter in her own right. Also procured a nice piece of a Montana landscape by the artist who happened to be on shop duty. Hopefully it can be shipped back to Australia in mint condition.
Went back to the Montana Club for dinner but the high standard sf the previous day for both meals and beverages were not sustained. Que sera, sera.
Tomorrow is on to Spokane, WA where I have been asked by my boss to get him a pro-Trump t-shirt, as appalling as possible. I would have thought this would be readily available there.
There was an extensive range of nasty, politically incorrect and comic ones in Custer. e.g. one with (a bust of) Trump “More Jobs”, Obama “No Jobs”, Clinton “Blow Job”, Biden “Nut Job”. The owner noted that my accent gave me away as a non-local. She conspiratorially told me that actually she was a registered LIB but couldn’t turn down the commercial opportunities though she suspected most were actually sold to DEMs.
Hey, fleecing the rubes is a lucrative field.
What? They stopped you from driving over the road?? That’s really fucked. It’s one of the most stunning drives in the country! I’m so sorry you missed it. 
I can’t think what reason they’d have for doing that.
Please don’t judge our coffee based on what you get at Starbuck’s. Most of us don’t like it, either. You’re soon arriving in Dutch Bros. country. They have little kiosks on many corners throughout the Pacific Northwest and are now expanded into California, too. Definitely drive through one if you get the chance. They should redeem your opinion about what many Americans prefer for their morning slurp.
I’m seriously bummed you didn’t get the chance to do GTTS Road!
The U.S. absolutely had a lot of immigration from Italy, but the biggest wave of them came earlier (from 1880-1914), and maybe they didn’t bring coffee along with them. 
But, seriously, modern “coffee culture” in the U.S. is from the last three decades or so, and I think it was primarily the product of U.S.-based companies, with less influence coming from Europe.
And if you think our coffee’s bad now, you should have tried it back in the 60’s or 70’s.
Some specific places I’m sure had good coffee. But the standard was a sort of weak brown substance; or occasionally a very strong boiled substance.
– yeah, I wouldn’t go by Starbucks. If the area has a local indie coffee shop, I’d try there.
Absolutely. That’s a topic that Thule and I discussed when we met for dinner as he was passing through Chicago. Nasty, bitter, robusta-based coffee was the norm in the U.S. in that era, and was a major reason why entire generations didn’t pick up coffee drinking until later, when Starbucks, Peets, etc. started marketing better coffee (or, at least, better than the gross Maxwell House or Folgers of that era).
Quoted for truth, and that in large part, it was Starbucks that created the coffee culture for a generation. So people have grown up expecting over-roasted coffee as the norm. -sigh- I wish Barnie’s had won, at least as far as chains went, they still did a lot of over-sweet stuff (and I’m someone who likes their coffee on the sweet side!) but they had a much wider array of roasts, with less dependency on flavor shots to make it drinkable. And as others above have said, it’s still largely better than what was often served at the time. The whole “they can’t tell it’s Folger’s Crystals!” instant coffee commercial probably says all you need to know.
Then again, my wife worked for Starbucks for years, and our stock is one of our few big nest eggs…
LONG LIVE THE STARBUCKS CORPORATE EMPIRE!
(I’m still not going to drink it unless I have no other dependable option though)
Obviously something was wrong with the permits I had. But don’t know what and I wasn’t interested in taking a shuttlebus.
Yeah well, I did both Beartooth and Chief Joseph a couple of days ago so … 
Alas Starbucks has been my semi-reliable source on tour. The only exception was that lady in Goldthwait, TX. Yeah I’m a bit of a snob but less so than many of my Aussie colleagues.
But never order large, it’s just small with twice the volume of scalding hot water. I presume the US baristas make lattes with skim milk too.
In the odd hour of desperation, I have resorted to making my own concoction the mocko-expresso-latte.
You get a standard small percolated brew, which is usually 16oz (double what small means to me). Pour about 1/2 of the contents out, refill about 1/2 the volume from a bottle of iced coffee (and throw the rest of that away too.) In the US you can only buy whole milk by the gallon. The result is a mongrel that tastes like a mongrel but I can finish the cup.
By default, yes, but you can ask for Whole Milk, which I always do.
IME, the default is 2% milk. Skim/nonfat milk makes it a skinny latte.
21:30 Pacific Day41 Spokane simple.dome.vital
Well that was an interesting day.
It started off as I was doing my room check to see whether I had collected all my bits and bobs. I haven’t been too bad this trip though there might be a bread crumb line of trinkets behind me which I haven’t actually missed yet. The biggest loss was a very nice coffee cup from Bristol Caverns which only got as far as Appomattox.
Anyhow, I check the beside draws where usually there is a Gideon Bible. There isn’t a bible, but there is a full tube of KY jelly. I didn’t realise it was such a family values motel.
As usual on this westerly leg of the tour Katie suggests using the I-90 to the south, and as usual I select the more circuitous route going north through Libby, Troy, Bonners Ferry and Sandpoint.
A bit after Naples in a more open area I notice an osprey nest beside the road and pull over and get out of the car with the camera. I manage to get a shot of both birds, one on the nest. Only having my 55-250mm lens on the trip it’s of amateur grade only. But then something runs across the road about 50m away. I managed to fluke a photo of what based on its size, shape, colour and gait I believe is definitely a wolverine. Apparently quite rare in these parts.
Took lunch of a couple of rounds of sandwiches and a mocko-expresso-latte at Post Falls before the run into town on I-90. This trip would have been a whole lot different if I’d stayed on the warm, reassuring embrace of the I-90 after leaving Chicago.
So having found first time my hotel and with a couple of hours to kill before check in time I turn Rog north on Division St. Just to see the sights. I stop and wander around the Northern Mall where I get some classical reading material from “Barnes & Noble” of Bennett, Camus and Capote. Then to demonstrate I can be as gauche as the best of you, from the “Flags and Rags” shop procured some MAGA apparel for my workmates back in Sydney. Not as skin-crawlingly politically incorrect as the stuff in Custer but sufficiently so.
Then for the overview of the city I wound up the residential streets to Fairwood. Spokane has the reputation of being very pro-Trump but I saw only a couple of US flags, much less than in other mid-west cities and zero Trump lawn signs … but saw none for Biden either.
Get back to the motel about 4pm Pacific and check-in and commence my evening documentary routine of dashcam, photos and notes when I get a message from @needscoffee and suddenly there are not one but two mini Dopefests (Seattle and Eugene) to help co-ordinate.
So tomorrow is on to Seattle for two days ten Eugene.
At this stage my schedule for flying out of LA on the evening of 5th Aug looks on track.
Pretty sure the Gideons leave those, too.
Not around here. Gallon, half gallon, quart, or pint. Sometimes half-pint.
It does depend on the particular store. They don’t all carry all sizes. And it may depend on where in the country, I don’t know.
So soon! I’m going to miss this thread.
Expect that’s true but given the logistics involved, shopping around for milk isn’t a viable option. Have a Kalispell Kreamery whole milk pint with me now which has made the last two days bliss.
The full American breakfast is one of beautiful excess but not often seen at the top of my hotel budget. Most offer a breakfast sans milk which I would have thought a contradiction in terms.
I think a lot of people here think of milk as part of a children’s meal, not necessarily of an adult’s.
And there has been so much (IMO misplaced) emphasis in recent diet advice on ‘animal fats are bad for you!’ that I think many people have gone off drinking milk for that reason – skim milk’s pretty tasteless.
Sorry, you’re correct, this is what I get when I do my last post before heading to bed! My tired brain, long past any mid-day caffeination, set skim = 2%. Which doesn’t mean I was incorrect in saying that whole milk is the better option for taste. Personally, I’m convinced they set the default to 2% for every bit of help the could get when they started publishing the kcals on the menu.
Thank you for the correction though. I’m going to go add more caffeine to my blood stream to increase my processing power before it’s too late.
I had the Milk Processor Education Program as a client for several years; they’re a quasi-governmental agency, funded by the dairy industry, which promotes consumption of milk, and they’re the ones who did the “milk mustache” ads for years.
This is exactly the issue that they have identified: the perception that milk is a good beverage for growing children and teenagers, because of its nutritional value, but that it’s unnecessary for adults, many of whom also find it to be unpalatable to drink.
@penultima_thule if we meet up this weekend I’ll be sure to bring you a pint of whole milk from our local Umpqua Dairy
Right, so remove a half pint of milk at 4.5% fat from breakfast and replace with a gallon of HFCS, fry everything that moves, with supersizing and wonder why your kids can’t fit in an airline seat. And chop down forests for wood pulp to print books on fad diets. ‘Tis a wonderful circle.