Dateline: Great Falls, Montana. Today was some fine driving, we decided to go further west on US 287 instead of up the Gallatin on US 191. Then we cut off two sides of a triangle by taking MT 69 to Boulder, and then up I-15 to Great Falls.
We stopped in Helena to buy a couple of new deep cycle 12 volt batteries for the RV, the old ones lasted over 4 years before dying. The fellow who installed the batteries told horror stories about border harassment driving into Canada, I'll let you know what we experience.
This was another beautiful drive. We saw a lot of resort property we wouldn't mind owning, places with gorgeous lake and mountain views. We had to keep reminding ourselves that Idaho and Montana have state income taxes, unlike Wyoming.
We saw a very interesting thing as we drove. Along the Missouri River as it flows south from Great Falls there is a railroad track. The track is no longer used for scheduled trains but it isn't derelict either. Instead the railroad has stored well over a thousand flatcars of the sort used to transport shipping containers. We drove for mile after mile looking over at this track full of these empty yellow flatcars, owned by TTX and DTTX.
At our campground this evening we ran into a young man who works for the railroad. So...we asked about all the parked flatcars we'd seen and he responded "It's the recession. Nobody wants to ship containers full of manufactured goods so those cars get parked. The ones you saw aren't the only ones." Wow...that vast rolling stock parking lot is the most graphic representation I've yet seen of our economic downturn.
The Chinese, who make most of the stuff we import in containers, must really be hurting bad. A good economy has been the bribe China's Communist leaders have offered their people to keep them happy. What happens when full employment ends and the standard of living no longer grows, but shrinks? It's a question the leadership in Beijing never wanted to answer.
