Wednesday, 5/21/14 and Thursday, 5/22/14

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Today was our least favorite of all our days in Montana so far.  In the AM, the whole team was required to work with a county employee in order to spray/pull weeds.   Chuck and a few others donned backpacks containing weed killer and went around spraying weeds.  We were each given a small booklet entitled, “Montana’s Noxious Weeds,” so we could attempt to differentiate between weeds and flowers.  Cindy’s job was to pull weeds.  Montana’s laws are very lax compared to Florida.  We are quite certain that we would not be allowed to spray poison in Florida unless we had received hours of training.   It was the same idea with emergency services as in Florida we surely would not be driving tourists to the hospital.   And then there are the speed limits.  Even on the back country mountain roads the speed limit is sometimes 75 miles per hour.  They don’t need too many cops here because most people cannot possibly drive more than 75 mph on these roads. 

Our employer provided lunch for everyone, and then we were assigned various lawn duties for the remainder of the day.  Chuck did weed eating and blowing of sidewalks.  Cindy mowed lawns and picked up sticks/garbage.  We were glad when it was time to call it a day. 

We went out to eat supper at one of the local restaurants with three of our college inn mates.  The food wasn’t the best, but the old west atmosphere was superb.  We have set 7:30 p.m. as game time every night and invited anyone to attend that is interested.  We had three new players tonight, and a good time was had by all.  One of the players is a college student from Kansas, and he just moved into the Bonanza Inn this afternoon.  He is an intern in the living history interpretive program.  Two of the new players are locals.  Duel, our co-worker whom you “met” earlier came with his girlfriend.  After our game, he showed us some card tricks.  His old west persona is that of a card sharp, and he has spent many hours practicing his craft.  The aim in historical living history presentation is for everything to be authentic down to the last detail.  Duel said that he dresses the part of an old west card dealer and sets up shop in the old saloon.  He challenges tourists to play with him and will usually win because he manipulates the cards.   However, he is honest and tells them they have been cheated if they don’t realize it on their own. 

 

Thursday, May 22, 2014

We are through with our training and have two days off until the big kickoff event on Saturday.  This morning we did some necessary laundry and housecleaning and then walked to the post office while waiting on the clothes to dry.  It is always enjoyable to walk the old wooden boardwalks of Virginia City and peer into the storefronts.  Some of the stores are starting to open now, so we went into a general store and had a good time looking at their wide array of items for sale.  They had some beautiful period style dresses that were offered for a mere $500 each.  Even the “every day” dresses were priced at over $200.  They had men’s clothing, and the famous dusters that you often see in western movies were offered at $125.  We went into the candy shop and it was amusing to see the wide array of candy on offer.  They had an old tin of “hunkey dorey” on display.  We often say that something is hunkey dorey, but we never knew that it was an actual type of candy.  We resisted making a purchase and headed back to our dwelling to finish the laundry. 

In the early afternoon, we drove about 20 miles north of here to Sheridan as we had a chiropractor’s appointment.  The chiropractor was a young man in his thirties who treats patients twice a week in Sheridan.  The office was small and he had no personnel--he greeted us, treated us, and took care of all the paperwork himself.  Not surprisingly for Montana, he did not even want to see our ID. 

On the way home from Sheridan, we stopped at another tiny town called Alder and had a late lunch.  The food was fair, but we have marked that restaurant off our list of eateries to visit again. 

After returning home, we took another walk through town and stopped at the local ice cream shop.  The ice cream is churned on site in old wooden ice cream freezers which are turned via a belt attached to a motor.  After eating some delicious ice cream, we walked off the calories by climbing up to Boot Hill.   There are graves there of five road agents who were all hanged inside a local building on the same date by a group of vigilantes in 1864.  We took pictures of the town of Virginia City from the top of the hill.  There are 150 year round residents in Virginia City including Dave Walker who spent two years with the band Fleetwood Mac.  Cindy was working with one of the locals (Joanie) yesterday, and they spotted Dave on the street.  He looked like an old drunk hippie to Cindy, but Joanie said he was very nice.  He will be performing tomorrow night at one of the local restaurants. 

 

 Upon re-entering town, we went into the local library and guess what?  We did not need ID to get a library card.  We checked out a couple of DVD’s and walked home via a back road and looked at some more historic buildings and read the corresponding interpretive plaques.