Arrgghh... Plan B again

I was really looking forward to seeing the laser light show at the Grand Coulee Dam this evening. I thought I had timed everything right -- spent the better part of the afternoon in Butte and hit Spokane right around 9PM. The show starts at 10PM -- I'm driving along Route Two and see the sign: Grand Coulee Dam - 82 Miles. I had thought that it was around 40 miles or so. Sure, I could push the truck to 100 MPH and make the show -- after all, we have been sailing across the USA at 80 with the engine barely ticking over at 2K RPM (Overdrive and a nicely sized ring and pinion gears seriously rock) but I might also meet some of WA State's finest and pick up a pretty (and expensive) slip of paper. Well crap -- I was really looking forward to the show. Cour d'Alaine and Spokane look like fun cities so I turned tail, highballed it back to CDA and will be spending the better part of the day in these two cities. There is also a Cabella's just before the WA State border. I have ordered a lot of stuff from them via internet but have never had the pleasure of visiting one of their stores. The one in Post Falls looks amazing (125,000 Sq. Ft.). David and Ezra are most assuredly spinning in their respective graves over what happened to their company but it is nice to see someone else step up to the plate with useful and high quality gear for the outdoors. Even as L.L. Bean slides off the edge into the abyss of popular culture, Cabala's is keeping it real. Butte, MT was a lot of fun. I was planning to spend a few hours there so drove around the city -- it is built on the hill that had all of the ore deposits so every ten blocks or so there is some remnant of the mining operations. I saw the sign for the World Mining Museum and drove over to it. This is one of the best small museums I have seen. They have a small replica 'village' with representative stores and artifacts. Been there done that but still a lot of fun to walk through and a great collection. What was the amazing part was the underground tour. The museum is on the site of the Orphan Girl Mine and the equipment is still there and functional. The site is right next to the University of Montana - Mining School and the tour guide was a guy who was working on his Doctorate and has been spending a lot of time interviewing the old miners for a book. Very personable and knew his stuff. We (there were only two other people with me on the tour) donned miner's safety equipment, brain bucket and lamp and made our way into the top layer of the mine. As I said, the equipment is still fully functional and it is used for training students at the mine so there is a lot of fresh activity with people learning how to run the drills, set rock bolts to secure the walls, boring for blasting, etc... He talked about the evolution of the mining equipment, the language used by the miners, the superstitions. An amazing hour. The aboveground part of the mining museum was also a lot of fun as they had the original hoists and heavy equipment as well as (interesting for me) a lot of the blacksmithing tools used to maintain the mining equipment. Some very large power hammers -- makes my new hammer look like a child's toy... If you are ever traveling past Butte, be sure to stop and check it out. You will not be disappointed. So I take this moment to declare Fatwa on K-Bob's steakhouse in Raton, NM as the trip was perfect up until then. I got the bad case of food poisoning there and the weather went to hell and I missed the damn laser show. Pouting and heading off to bed for an early morning. Tomorrow night in Ellensburg and then swing by Seattle City Light surplus yard and then home Wednesday afternoon.