Gillette, Wyoming

      Since we won't get to a WiFi connection each day, we won't be posting daily entries.  Making this the first catch-up day. 
   Before we left Portland, I saw a squirrel hitchhiking.  It ran under a Honda SUV stopped at a light.  Light changed, Honda drove on. --- squirrel gone.  No squirrel, no squirrel debris = hitchhiker.
   We successfully made it past the Great Bambi Brother massacre of 2008  much to our relief.  Otherwise we haven't had any stand-out moments. 
   A few curiosities from the road : 
   A few miles east of Coeur d'Alene (CDA to the cognoscenti) next to the freeway is a life-size statue of an old-time photographer with view camera.  Commerates someone I'm sure but at freeway speeds, I couldn't read the sign.
   The Old Mission of the Sacred Heart at Cataldo Id.  A lovely Jesuit church (now a state park) built in 1853 -- All the timbers and boards were cut and shaped by hand -- post and beam / mud and waddle construction.  About 1870 a local lumber company became involved and it got gussied up with some fancy wood work, hand printed linen as wall paper, some paintings, etc. 
   Kellogg ID has sculptures of a knight lancing a dragon, a miner, something I don't remember and a broken figure of some sort.  All of the found-object, welded-stuff style -- life size and interesting in a who-on-earth did all this stuff sort of way.
   Wallace ID has the Stardust drive-in with a vast array of signs, neon and otherwise and a real tin spaceship you can sit in to eat your burger.  Wallace also has the 10 Commandants (6' X 4' granite slab) in front of the courthouse.
   A few miles east of Wallace -- again beside the freeway-- is Elmer's Fountain.  Two 1' X 15' pipes with a few circular things and smaller pipes welded on -- All planted in the ground and fountaining water.  I'm guessing the whole thing was built by Elmer.
   We went to Anaconda MT and saw the tallest masonery structure in the world.  A smelter chimney.  (It should be understood that nearly everything in the west is the biggest, tallest, deepest, richest, or somethingest in the world)  We couldn't actually get to the base (which is a state park) because ARCO was doing some important stuff up there.  -- ARCO bought out Anaconda Copper -- so we looked at an information kiosk and admired a couple of mountains of tailings and slag.
   In Butte we stopped to see (for $2 each) the Berkeley Pit. What's left of the Richest Hill In The World.   1.25 miles long by a mile wide by 1700 feet deep.  Filled with 1000 feet of red water further filling with a lurid yellow waterfall.  ARCO (nee anaconda) assures us that the water is nearly harmless -- not much different from coca cola (which might be true) --  particularly if you ignore the arsenic, iron, cadmium, etc, etc, (and dead birds) in the water
   A freeway reader board east of Bozeman "arrive alive -- don't text -- and drive" -- I guess it's a problem when you're driving 75+ mph.
  East of Billings (we're driving on I-90) we were passed by a Mini Cooper from Alberta -- it was going 90 or so (we were at the speed limit +3 to 5 mph)  Later in Wyoming we passed it while it was stopped getting a ticket from the Wyoming HP.  Yes!  DA