On the trip out

I have a little book in the car and just wrote down some images that we saw on the way out to Seattle...images that represent the life people have along the way.

• A town named Blue Earth.
• A gate or "arm"permanently fixed at the bottom of the interstate ramps that when lowered would indicate that the interstate is closed.  At first I thought the obvious: interstate is closed when there's so much snow, ice, or wind on it you can't travel safely.  I did a little looking on the Internet and saw that sometimes the interstate is closed because the Blue Angels are performing and they want to eliminate the possibility of accidents.
• Road sign:  Gusty Winds
• Another road sign: Chain up area
• Flathead Indians, Flathead County, Flathead cherries - "Despite their name, the Flatheads do not, and never did, have flat heads. This paradoxical statement is explained by the fact that the Indians of the Columbia region, most of whom formerly compressed the head by artificial means, considered their own heads as pointed, and contemptuously applied the term 'flat-heads' to their neighbors in the mountains, who had not the custom, but allowed the skull to retain its natural shape. " (http://www.omaha.lib.ne.us/transmiss/congress/flathead.html)
• Taxidermy "salons"
• Little homes nestled in a cocoon of evergreen
• Isolated clusters of bee hives, usually protected (from wildlife?) by a wire fence.  Looking online I found pictures of bee hives in Montana...

  and an article about "sniffer" honey bees that are trained to "smell out" land mines (http://www2.umt.edu/urelations/rview/spring04/honey.htm).  According to the Montana Dept. of Agriculture, Montana usually ranks in the top 10 states producing honey in the US.  Who knew?

• Lots of casinos and gambling venues
• Lots of "expresso" outlets in little free-standing modular buildings, often in a parking lot.
• "We meat your needs" (Sign on a small meat processing company)
• "Booze and Bait"  - Store name in Troy, MT, about 14 miles from the Idaho border.
• Wood sheds with wood packed in and arranged, artfully sometimes, by size.

• Moon Shadow Road (Idaho)
• Park and Sell - For sale by owner lot
• "Correctional facility.  Do not pick up hitchhikers."  (Sign along the interstate in Washington.
• Also in Washington, crop name labels on the fence beside the interstate.  How neat was that!