![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeWe are now about two-thirds of the way to Winnipeg. Today's travel was exclusively within Montana, but that doesn't mean it was a short trip. Indeed, today's travel was the longest single segment of the Fernley-to-Winnipeg trip in terms of distance.
It was a relatively straightforward plan, and there were no significant hitches, although there was an interesting diversion or two along the way.
The overpriced Super 8 didn't even have a continental breakfast, although they had a "grab and go" consisting of a packet of instant oatmeal, a bowl in which to mix the oatmeal, and a couple of food bars. Fortunately, Lisa had hard-boiled the leftover eggs from yesterday's breakfast and stored them in the electric ice chest, so we had those instead. I had coffee from the hotel downstairs. Lisa planned to have some of the milk left over from last night; unfortunately, she discovered the hard way that the milk had gone off overnight, thanks to us having accidentally turned off the power to the mini-fridge when we were trying to get the TV working last night. (She was okay eventually, but had lost the rest of her appetite for a while.) But once again, that motel was bad value, and I do not expect to return.
On the way out of the hotel, I got a coffee and a breakfast burrito from the Starbucks across the street, and we drove into downtown Livingston to have look at the former Northern Pacific Railroad station, now maintained as an event center. It was not open on Sunday, but we had a look around outside of the lovely building.
Here's what the station looks like from the downtown main street side. It's a big building and difficult to photograph.
To have photographed this building from the track side would have required standing in the middle of the rail yard, so instead I shot this short video panorama.
The Northern Pacific's yin-yang logo is worked into the lawn at the station.
As always, click through to see more photos.
After exploring the station area, we continued through downtown and got on I-90 eastbound.
We moved along at a rapid clip, although not at the 80 mph speed limit. While the Astro can at a pinch get up to 80, it started to get very loud over 70. Minivans like this are not really meant to go that fast. We mostly stuck to about 65, or slower in the many areas of road work where the road was reduced to a single lane, sometimes running in two-way traffic with the opposing lanes, or in two cases taken off the freeway entirely and routed through an off-ramp and back up the on-ramp as part of bridge rehabilitation.
We also stopped around once an hour at a rest area or a truck stop for toilet breaks and cold drinks. With no air conditioning, we needed to keep drinking lots of fluids, inevitably leading to more toilet breaks.
Around Reed Point, signs warned of an "incident" and said not to stop on the road. As we approached the "incident," we could see what they meant, and Lisa asked me to get off at the next exit and back-track up the frontage road. We drove around the signs warning that the road was closed to through traffic, and soon enough we saw what was happening.
Crews with heavy cranes were in the process of trans-shipping a Boeing aircraft fuselage from the specialty rail equipment normally used to transport it to the Boeing plant near Seattle. They lifted it onto a heavy-haul road vehicle, which then drove it across the freeway lanes (which were temporarily stopped, of course) before going into the westbound lanes and taking the load slowly west on I-90.
Why was this happening? Well, according to a story from a local television station, a train derailment on the Montana Rail Link (former BNSF, former Northern Pacific) wiped out a bridge on the MRL. These aircraft fuselages are critical components, and I think there may not be alternative routes due to clearances. So MRL and Boeing are working with the heavy-haul people to use trucks to move the components around the collapsed bridge from one set of specialty rail equipment to another. It's obviously slow, but Boeing needs those pieces to make airplanes, and can't wait.
Lisa took more photos and some video of the rail-to-road movement that I will post later.
After our detour to view the unusual rail-to-road movement, we returned to I-90 and continued to Billings. There we found the Cost Plus World Market, where we bought a dozen bottles of Lisa's favorite drink, Curiosity Cola. We had packed all of the bottles we had on hand before leaving Fernley, but Lisa had already gone though them, so we stocked back up. There, we saw something that made us laugh, but that we couldn't share with anyone else.
While at Cost Plus, I used the restrooms. They have two single-occupancy restrooms, but they're labeled separately for men and women. Lisa and I observed something happen here that we found amusing. Montana is one of the states that has been rather pointedly in the news for the raft of anti-trans laws they have passed. Their Republican-controlled legislature kicked a trans member off the floor and banned her from speaking for having told them that they'd have blood on their hands if they passed their hateful bills. That didn't stop them from passing those bills, saying that they had to protect people from the horror of having "men" (by which they meant trans women) in the "wrong" toilet. After I came out of the men's room, a woman who was waiting (the women's room being occupied) announced that she was going to use the men's toilet. Now personally, I think that all single-occupancy toilets should be labeled as gender-neutral; it's more efficient. But in a state whose legislature made a huge deal about the sanctity of "women's" spaces, it did seem ironic that at least one woman didn't see anything unusual about using the "wrong" toilet.
We continued through Billings and refueled at the Pilot Flying J, then continued east on I-94. We still had about 200 miles to go until our destination tonight.
About 7 PM, we got to Glendive MT, and on our way to the Holiday Inn Express, we passed the BNSF Montana Division headquarters in the former Northern Pacific station. Ordinarily, we would have stopped to take more photos, but we had been on the road since 9 AM and really wanted to get to the hotel.
My IHG platinum status got us upgraded to a mini-suite, much appreciated after the overpriced, undersized room at Livingston. Once again, we got drinks from a nearby mini-market, ordered pizza (coincidentally, there has been/will be a Pizza Hut in every planned overnight stop on this outbound trip), Lisa got a bath, we had dinner while watching a video on the room TV to which I was able to connect with my HDMI cable, and we relaxed under the air conditioning.
For the next two days, I have to work a half-day on Day Jobbe, and as I move east, the hours when I have to work will shift as I have to match the team. I'll manage. The good part is that I can get up an hour later thanks to being in the Mountain time zone. The bad part is that we will get started later on the next leg of the trip. We have a shorter trip planned tomorrow due to two museum stops we want to make in the Bismark area, about which more tomorrow night.
It was a relatively straightforward plan, and there were no significant hitches, although there was an interesting diversion or two along the way.
The overpriced Super 8 didn't even have a continental breakfast, although they had a "grab and go" consisting of a packet of instant oatmeal, a bowl in which to mix the oatmeal, and a couple of food bars. Fortunately, Lisa had hard-boiled the leftover eggs from yesterday's breakfast and stored them in the electric ice chest, so we had those instead. I had coffee from the hotel downstairs. Lisa planned to have some of the milk left over from last night; unfortunately, she discovered the hard way that the milk had gone off overnight, thanks to us having accidentally turned off the power to the mini-fridge when we were trying to get the TV working last night. (She was okay eventually, but had lost the rest of her appetite for a while.) But once again, that motel was bad value, and I do not expect to return.
On the way out of the hotel, I got a coffee and a breakfast burrito from the Starbucks across the street, and we drove into downtown Livingston to have look at the former Northern Pacific Railroad station, now maintained as an event center. It was not open on Sunday, but we had a look around outside of the lovely building.
Here's what the station looks like from the downtown main street side. It's a big building and difficult to photograph.
To have photographed this building from the track side would have required standing in the middle of the rail yard, so instead I shot this short video panorama.
The Northern Pacific's yin-yang logo is worked into the lawn at the station.
As always, click through to see more photos.
After exploring the station area, we continued through downtown and got on I-90 eastbound.
We moved along at a rapid clip, although not at the 80 mph speed limit. While the Astro can at a pinch get up to 80, it started to get very loud over 70. Minivans like this are not really meant to go that fast. We mostly stuck to about 65, or slower in the many areas of road work where the road was reduced to a single lane, sometimes running in two-way traffic with the opposing lanes, or in two cases taken off the freeway entirely and routed through an off-ramp and back up the on-ramp as part of bridge rehabilitation.
We also stopped around once an hour at a rest area or a truck stop for toilet breaks and cold drinks. With no air conditioning, we needed to keep drinking lots of fluids, inevitably leading to more toilet breaks.
Around Reed Point, signs warned of an "incident" and said not to stop on the road. As we approached the "incident," we could see what they meant, and Lisa asked me to get off at the next exit and back-track up the frontage road. We drove around the signs warning that the road was closed to through traffic, and soon enough we saw what was happening.
Crews with heavy cranes were in the process of trans-shipping a Boeing aircraft fuselage from the specialty rail equipment normally used to transport it to the Boeing plant near Seattle. They lifted it onto a heavy-haul road vehicle, which then drove it across the freeway lanes (which were temporarily stopped, of course) before going into the westbound lanes and taking the load slowly west on I-90.
Why was this happening? Well, according to a story from a local television station, a train derailment on the Montana Rail Link (former BNSF, former Northern Pacific) wiped out a bridge on the MRL. These aircraft fuselages are critical components, and I think there may not be alternative routes due to clearances. So MRL and Boeing are working with the heavy-haul people to use trucks to move the components around the collapsed bridge from one set of specialty rail equipment to another. It's obviously slow, but Boeing needs those pieces to make airplanes, and can't wait.
Lisa took more photos and some video of the rail-to-road movement that I will post later.
After our detour to view the unusual rail-to-road movement, we returned to I-90 and continued to Billings. There we found the Cost Plus World Market, where we bought a dozen bottles of Lisa's favorite drink, Curiosity Cola. We had packed all of the bottles we had on hand before leaving Fernley, but Lisa had already gone though them, so we stocked back up. There, we saw something that made us laugh, but that we couldn't share with anyone else.
While at Cost Plus, I used the restrooms. They have two single-occupancy restrooms, but they're labeled separately for men and women. Lisa and I observed something happen here that we found amusing. Montana is one of the states that has been rather pointedly in the news for the raft of anti-trans laws they have passed. Their Republican-controlled legislature kicked a trans member off the floor and banned her from speaking for having told them that they'd have blood on their hands if they passed their hateful bills. That didn't stop them from passing those bills, saying that they had to protect people from the horror of having "men" (by which they meant trans women) in the "wrong" toilet. After I came out of the men's room, a woman who was waiting (the women's room being occupied) announced that she was going to use the men's toilet. Now personally, I think that all single-occupancy toilets should be labeled as gender-neutral; it's more efficient. But in a state whose legislature made a huge deal about the sanctity of "women's" spaces, it did seem ironic that at least one woman didn't see anything unusual about using the "wrong" toilet.
We continued through Billings and refueled at the Pilot Flying J, then continued east on I-94. We still had about 200 miles to go until our destination tonight.
About 7 PM, we got to Glendive MT, and on our way to the Holiday Inn Express, we passed the BNSF Montana Division headquarters in the former Northern Pacific station. Ordinarily, we would have stopped to take more photos, but we had been on the road since 9 AM and really wanted to get to the hotel.
My IHG platinum status got us upgraded to a mini-suite, much appreciated after the overpriced, undersized room at Livingston. Once again, we got drinks from a nearby mini-market, ordered pizza (coincidentally, there has been/will be a Pizza Hut in every planned overnight stop on this outbound trip), Lisa got a bath, we had dinner while watching a video on the room TV to which I was able to connect with my HDMI cable, and we relaxed under the air conditioning.
For the next two days, I have to work a half-day on Day Jobbe, and as I move east, the hours when I have to work will shift as I have to match the team. I'll manage. The good part is that I can get up an hour later thanks to being in the Mountain time zone. The bad part is that we will get started later on the next leg of the trip. We have a shorter trip planned tomorrow due to two museum stops we want to make in the Bismark area, about which more tomorrow night.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-17 11:12 pm (UTC)When the Texas Legislature was debating one of those "bathroom bills" as though it were a matter of supreme urgency, I phoned my legislators to ask why their first priority, before addressing any of the real problems in the State, was to make a criminal out of my 95-year-old grandmother. Grandma has no qualms at all about using the "men's" if there's a line for the "ladies'" — life's too short to waste time that way!
no subject
Date: 2023-07-18 06:28 am (UTC)