Drummond, MT

Last night, we found a Shilo Inn in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, using the Expedia app on my phone. The app is awesome and the room was pretty decent, for what we paid. This morning, we enjoyed a quick, free breakfast and then hit the road! We knew we wanted to make a stop in Drummond, MT, at a burger place we'd discovered on our last trip to Montana, so when we got hungry for lunch, but weren't quite there yet, we stopped at Subway and shared a 6 inch sub. 

Zoey wanted some, too!

The sub sandwich did it's job and held us over until we made it to Drummond. Drummond is a small town of about 300 people and the burger place, Parkers, offers almost that many burgers! With 101 selections, and also a "regular" menu, the task of choosing your lunch can be daunting. I finally chose the Cobb Burger (lettuce, tomato, bacon, avocado and blue cheese crumbles!!) and Michael chose a Hawaiian burger with shaved coconut and some other undesirables. I also knew that I wanted a vanilla milkshake to go with my burger and side of tater tots, but told the waitress I'd hold off and see if I still wanted it after I was done eating.

First trip to Montana!

Daddy, stealing kisses :)

Turns out we made fantastic meal selections (Mike devoured his, "so he could hold Zoey and give me a chance to eat". Yeah, right ;). Everything was so good, and I didn't even make it through the meal before I ordered my 20 oz. milkshake! 

As we were wrapping up, we started hearing some chatter about a parade that was going to be coming through town. I thought I overheard someone say that it was going to consist of children from all of the neighboring school districts. There is only one way out of town, on the road that Parker's is on, so we hurried to the car so that we wouldn't get caught in the parade. Although, if we were stranded for a bit, at least we knew we wouldn't starve!

Well, turns out we had absolutely nothing to worry about. As we headed down the street, the clock struck 5 and the parade had begun. We couldn't believe our eyes! It was the smallest parade we had ever seen! Haha. I mean, I guess we should have known, but the way people were camped out and lining the streets, we though we were in for a real spectacle. Instead, what we saw was this...

Kids riding on the town firetruck...

The football team in the back of a pickup truck...and

A few homemade floats and what looked like, the high school King and Queen of Drummond, riding in the back of an old convertible!

This is what all the ruckus was about?? Well, bless their hearts. They were the happiest looking people we had seen on the trip so far! Good for them. 

We watched the parade as we got gas, and 5 minutes later, it was over. By the time we got gas and pulled around to the side to feed Zoey, all of the participating vehicles were already circling back! And about a minute after that, the only remnants of the festivities was a big pile of horse poop in the road, left by the horse and it's young rider, who had proudly led the parade through town! 

The sun had a beautiful orangish red glow

It was pretty hazy off in the distance, due to all the smoke from the nearby wildfires :(