For over ten miles, the whole damn shoulder was rumble strips!
In case it's not clear in the photo, every option is Mountain Dew.
I prefer the museum-like display above the dairy case, personally.
Day 115
Terrain-appropriate hay bales
July 19th, 2010
Look how they match the landscape on their side of the road!
Finally, a way to keep the damn cattle out of your mail.
They're pieces of prune coated with dark chocolate, and they're pretty tasty. But I have two issues with the package:
1) Prunes seem to be called "dried plums" now (across the board; not just on this package), I guess to avoid the association with geriatric bowel movements that prunes have acquired over the years. The idea of rebranding something that grows on a tree seems silly to me, although I'm sure it's been profitable for Sunsweet.
2) The bar graph indicates that PlumSweets, consisting mostly of dark chocolate and prunes, have a higher antioxidant content per gram than either dark chocolate or prunes! I know a responsible corporation like Sunsweet would never lie to the public about something as important as nutrition, so there's only one logical resolution here. There must be some other ingredient(s) in PlumSweets with such an extraordinarily high antioxidant content that it raises the average to the level indicated on the chart. So, without further ado, I present to you the four other ingredients in PlumSweets, the four candidates for the title of Mega-Antioxidant Superfood: sugar, corn syrup, tapioca dextrin, and confectioner's glaze!
But I still couldn't bring myself to buy one of these cans.
I've picked up a few things since I started my walk:
- New shoes. This is probably what people are most curious about. I started out with a new pair of boots and an older backup pair, as well as a pair of sandals. I had also purchased two other new pairs of boots, and I left them with my parents. My mom brought me one of them when she came to visit in Minneapolis. I put almost 1200 miles on my first pair before switching. My second pair wore out faster, probably because of all the gravel roads I walked in North Dakota. (Roughrider State? More like the Roughroad State!) They lasted about 1000 miles, and were considerably more worn out when I finally ditched them. (They're the pair you see in the picture above.) My mom mailed my final pair to the post office in Great Falls, and they should last me the remainder of the trip. I've probably only put a combined 100-150 miles on the backup pair and sandals, so they still have a fair amount of life left in them as well.
- New rain pants. The pair I started with turned out to be rather leaky, so I bought a new pair in Chicago.
- New inflatable sleeping pad. My first one sprung a leak I couldn't patch, so my parents sent me a new one (actually my dad's slightly used one) in Jamestown.
- Bear spray. It's basically a highly concentrated pepper spray. I picked up a canister in Minneapolis. Hopefully I won't need it, but I wanted to be prepared.
- Bear-proof food container. I ordered this and had it shipped to Jamestown. It's useful for keeping animals of all types out of my food.
- Oh, and one thing I forgot to photograph. Back in NJ, Raul at the hardware store in Boonton gave me a toilet plunger handle to fend off stray dogs. I've only had to use it to look threatening; that aggressive stance has proven effective at keeping all would-be biters at bay.
Rick: How we gonna advertise this place?
Carl: Truck on a pole.
Rick: Obviously. But how we gonna make our truck stick out?
Carl: Owls.
Rick: I like it.
People often ask me how much my cart weighs fully loaded, but I don't know. I've never had a good opportunity to weigh it. I thought today might be my lucky day, but the cart (plus me standing next to it) was too light to register on this truck scale.
Therefore, all we can conclude is:
CartWeight < (TruckWeight - MattWeight)
Larry and his wife saw me on the road yesterday and invited me to stay with them, but they live a little too far off my route. Larry was on his way to the Catholic church in Fort Shaw, which is right on the highway, so he checked with Father Marcel to see if I could stay there. Father Marcel let me sleep in the church last night, and he made me a mean breakfast this morning, featuring enormous blueberry buttermilk pancakes.
Brigitte saw me walking through town (Simms, MT) and invited me in for lunch. I was still stuffed from my pancake breakfast, so Joe packed me up a humongous bag of food for the road.
From left to right: Brigitte, Pam, Joe
Jen, Kailey, Sydney, and Kendall made me a card to encourage me on my trek.
Just to be clear, I should note that I've met many more friendly, generous people than I can fit on the blog. In addition to what you've read about today, I've also received water, soda, candy, a sandwich, an invitation to lunch tomorrow, and countless honks and words of support.
While this will hardly be the first major drainage divide I've crossed on this walk, it will certainly be the most dramatic. At an elevation of 5610 feet, Rogers Pass should literally be the high point of the entire trip.
