Livingston, Montana
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The quickest route from Whitefish to Livingstone would have been Interstates all the way, but after another hearty breakfast at Echo Lake (high end lakeside properties and cherry orchards) we felt able to tackle the two-lane highways. We were so glad we did as we saw small communities, some reasonably prosperous-looking, some very much not, and more varied scenery. Finally reaching the I-90 for the home straight we turned off into Butte (no idea how it should be pronounced) in search of a pitstop. The historic end of town is streets of miners wooden cottages which have definitely seen better days. The whole place seemed depressed and the scars of the town's past loomed on the hillside above the town. Mum and Dad’s first motel experience has been the Livingston Super 8 (I’m easing them in gently – Motel 6 tomorrow!) Livingston’s town centre was a mix of fake and attractive original "wild west" fronted buildings and looked like it should have been bustling, but was very quiet – Monday night to be fair. We went to a popular steak and chop house for supper. Dad and I had baseball steaks, which actually were the size and shape of baseballs! And were very tasty. Mum, unfortunately had a disaster, gambling on a Montana special – chicken fried steak – which is either mince or thin steak, we couldn’t tell which, coated in KFC type breadcrumb and fried, then smothered with country-style gravy which, for the uninitiated, is white sauce made with stock instead of water, with lots of pepper in it. It’s a big favourite here (I saw someone having it on biscuits for breakfast) but it looked like sick on the plate and tasted absolutely revolting – not even worth taking for Harry.
