I started my day today driving through Anaconda, Montana. I had lost my fleece pullover, so when I saw a sign for a yard sale, I decided to take a chance that I might find a cheap replacement there. Sure enough I did find a heavy sweatshirt which was no beauty but seemed like it might suffice keep me warm. I was willing to pay up to $5.00 for it, so I had no difficulty accepting the lady's price when she said it was fifty cents. I also asked the two ladies who were there why the town was called Anaconda, since as best I could remember, Anaconda was the name of a poisonous snake. They had no idea.
It's true that every roadside town has its McDonalds or other fast food places, but it hasn't been that difficult to find local restaurants as well. In Anaconda, the main road through the town had no place that looked interesting, but I did find a very nice restaurant for breakfast when I turned off the main road and drove for a short distance on the main street of the town parallel to the highway. The restaurant was covered with beautiful paintings of local wildlife and cowboy life of a bygone era. There were a lot of older people at two long tables with new people coming as some others left. Seemed like a Saturday morning breakfast group. The waitress was very pleasant and took time to call me "honey" and even give me a pat on the shoulder, which was very considerate of her since she was the only waitress and was rushing from here to there to take care of everybody.
I had lunch at a simple roadside rest area with just picnic tables and a rest room; however, the view of the mountains in the distance was spectacular.
Sometimes it's hard to separate good fortune from bad fortune. For example, I got the last campsite available at Wayfarer State Park, within striking distance of Glacier National Park. If it had been gone by the time I got there, I would have had to backtrack to find another campground, so I suppose getting the last campsite was good fortune. I knew, however, that it was the last campsite available because most of the campsites were in a nice wooded area, but my campsite was in an open field. With the next-to-last and the third-to-last campsites not very far away on each side of me, there was very little privacy, so that was bad fortune. I did end up, however, having a very pleasant conversation with four bicyclists who occupied one of the campsites near mine and had biked down from Canada, so that was good fortune. Ah well, who knows?
I did see one very nice thing while I was at this campground that is worth mentioning. A young bicyclist in his late teens or early twenties arrived around 6:00. There were no campsites left. The person running the campground could have just said, "Sorry, we're all filled up," but he didn't. He found another spot on the lawn for the cyclist to pitch his tent and even arranged for him to use the picnic table that belonged to an RV site but wasn't being used. Now that's menschkite!
No comments:
Post a Comment