I know I have failed to mention it until now, being that it just seemed like a fact of life out there, but during our entire time out west, the temps rarely went below 94 or 95 during the day, and it was not uncommon for it to be in the low 100's for much of the afternoon for all of our Idaho/Montana/Wyoming trip, which may explain the seriousness of the wildfire situation out here. It was never supposed to be in the 100's in Montana of all places, but it didn't bother us till we got to Miles City where the thermometer hit 109. Took this picture because I knew you wouldn't believe me.
Somehow, based on the AAA description of Miles City, I let my imagination run wild with east coast cowboy fantasies and was once again disappointed by having set the bar too high. I know that the heat didn't add anything to the ambience of this kind of mundane, utilitarian, not particularly enticing place, but it didn't take long for us to realize that at any rate, it didn't seem like a good place to spend the night, even at the kind of creepy historic Olive Hotel, so after walking the empty streets for an hour or so, we bit the bullet and hopped on the Interstate Highway 94 and made the 150 mile run to Billings. With the 75 mph speed limit, it wasn't as bad as it seems at that point in the day. So here is a quick tour of Miles City along Main Street (really) before moving on...
Beside the oppressive heat, the lack of activity on Main Street could be attributed to the large number of empty store fronts and lack of meaningful commercial activity to draw people down town. Not a shoe store in sight. If you need anything, it can be found on the access roads leading into the city there the box stores have it all, China cheap, Chinese slave labor making the cheap shit we think we want. Why pay Americans when Chinese prisoners do it free, driving our workers to the bread lines and strangling yet another once vibrant, prosperous, busy little American city. A drama being played out in every small town in America. One day we will all "owe our souls to the company store", Walmart, and their primary supplier, China. No matter how many American flags they drape around the store, the only thing made in America at Walmart is the havoc they reap and the suffering they sow. Who cares if Chinese dry wall is toxic and corrosive, if Chinese drug additives are poison, if Chinese lead painted children's toys are toxic, if the Chinese are killing our dogs by the hundreds with toxic foods, if their toxic unfiltered coal fired air is poisoning the world and killing their own expendable population by the hundreds of thousands, what do they care, there are billions of them, and for that matter, what do we care. We no longer have air pollution, because we no longer have factories making anything. Take a look at where your iPhone is made. But hey, $299 plasma TVs, $5 tee shirts, BOGO cheap everything!!! Hope we don't do anything to offend them. If we do, and they lay siege to our country, our shelves will be empty and we will be walking around barefoot naked, and bewildered. That's why there's no one on Main Street anywhere in this blog.
But so far we can still go downtown to drink our own whiskey and watch Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwartzeneger save the world, for now anyway.
Pablo
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