How many legs on a Santa Fe chicken? Of course it’s a trick question. I’m in the Denver Stapleton airport typing away at my computer using the free WiFi and electrical plug-in. I picked up a snack called Santa Fe chicken for my dinner. It was boxed like a pizza and alongside the pizzas so I thought was it was a pizza but it turned out to be fried chicken wings. The answer to the question: 3 wings, no legs; told you there was a trick.
I flew from Billings to Denver with a 3 hour layover before the final flight to San Jose. This airport is immense--airplane shown at right is landing in middle of concourse B where there are 87 or so gates strung out over the Colorado prairie. There are other similarly endowed concourses.
Hard for me to imagine the time when I worked at the old Denver International Airport, which didn’t have any gates at all. That was in 1957 when I was a recently hired electronics technician for RCA. A small crew of us were re-wiring the airport control towers for a new communications system. After Denver we moved to Great Falls, Montana. Spending several summer weeks in Great Falls convinced me that I should go to college and get a job somewhere with better climate. The old Denver International was decommissioned and is now a residential neighborhood; It was replaced by Stapleton the Giant. The airport in Great Falls is still going in the same location--hope they have updated their communications system.
This morning we were up and about early. Breakfast was a Montana classic with scrambled eggs and hash browns. We checked out of the Dude Wrangler Lodge and headed off for another museum.
The old Parmly Library is now the Montana Historical Museum—it is nicely done. Outside the library sits another of those log houses that Montanans seem to drag about the countryside. It looks out of place next to the stone formality of the library/museum. The name of
the library comes from Parmly Billings son of the Billings that was president of the Great Northern and founder of Billings, Montana. Parmly died young, 25 years old, and the library was built in his honor. Nice thought as many young Montanans learned to read here could testify. The city build a new library on 27th and named it after the old library, neat.Did you know that Frederick and Julia Billings were from Vermont? Yes, they were, and they returned to Woodstock after their Western adventure to become very active in the social life of Vermont. They had money and wanted to spend it. The National Park Service recently created the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, Vermont's first national park, to commemorate the conservation work of George Perkins Marsh, Frederick Billings, and Laurence Rockefeller. Now the blog is doing historical notes, good thing the trip is almost over. No telling what could be coming next.
We stopped at Lou Taubert Ranch Outfitters where we bought Western duds. The picture at the right shows a stylish lady outfitted by Lou. I settled for a canvas vest. Yee Haw! We also stopped at a pawnshop and then an Army-Navy store. Guy type shopping. Enough said about that. It was time to eat lunch and find Budget to return the Subaru. Good car, Subaru. Had to use the cell phone to find the car return—called and the attendant said to get on the street go 100 feet down Grand Avenue and turn into the driveway. We were next door and didn’t see their sign.
At the airport there were no crowds and check in was easy, giving us time to see the Yellowstone County Museum which is a short walk across the parking lot from the terminal. Of course
it is housed in a log building that was hauled from downtown Billings. It houses a very nice collection of memorabilia from cowboys, ranchers, soldiers, and Indians. It is worthy of a stop; especially if you have a little time before your flight. The current exhibit is Wildlife on the Yellowstone--we cut that short because we had just been to the Yellowstone--we looked at the historical stuff. These deer are looking at you from the exhibit. Give the museum web page a look.www.yellowstonecountymuseum.org/
Time to say goodbye Montana—it was really nice visiting.
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