A Viking’s Walkabout – Day 08 – Viking Navigation LLC

Fort Benton, Mont. to Calgary, Alta.

Distance: 352 miles / 566 km

Time: ~6h30m

The Fort Benton Bridge over the Missouri River. I crossed many wooden decked bridges on this trip, but this was one of the first ones. There was no bridge here during the steamboat era, but after the construction of railroads the bridge was built to preserve the importance of Fort Benton. The original bridge as a swing bridge to allow for navigation of the river. That bridge washed away in the floods of 1906 and this bridge was built in 1921 to replace it. This bridge was open to vehicular traffic until 1962. In a few days, many of the bridges I will cross will have timber decks.

Free beer in Fort Benton!

Montana Air National Guard display near Great Falls Airport as I dropped Kristi off. This is an F-89J Scorpion built in 1953 in Hawthorne, Calif. (Hawthorne is now the HQ of SpaceX). The Scorpion is shown equipped with two inert AIR-2A Genie Air-to-Air nuclear missiles. Yep. That was a thing.

This same Scorpion became the only aircraft to fire a Genie nuclear missile equipped with a live warhead during Operation Plumbbob. The marker notes without irony, “The test proved that the Genie could be safely detonated over populated areas.” Bwahahahaha! The Wikipedia page notes, “On the ground, the Air Force carried out a public relations event by having five Air Force officers and a motion picture photographer stand under ground zero of the blast, which took place at between 18,500 and 20,000 feet (5,600 and 6,100 m) altitude, with the idea of demonstrating the possibility of the use of the weapon over civilian populations without ill effects.”

From there I headed to the Heavy Metal/Hard Rock-themed Roadhouse Diner. Totally worth it. Eddie clearly agrees. Every time I meet with Adrian Smith, I disambiguate between the bassist and the politician. Also, the first of four places I ate that were featured in a Guy Fieri show.

Crossing the border between Montana and Alberta at Del Bonita. I picked this crossing because there is a grass air strip right on the border. Half in Canada, and half in the U.S.

Special shout out to Mike Freeman in the office of Gov. Greg Gianforte and Tim Conway at Montana DOT for educating me on the history of this strip. My initial suspicion was that it was built during WWII as a workaround to the Neutrality Act, but it was actually constructed after the war according to Mr. Conway.

The first of six times I would cross the border. I like how someone backed into it…

Plains between Del Bonita and Lethbridge in Alberta.

Wind turbines in Alberta. My goal was to reach Lethbridge and stay there for the night. This was the only night of my trip where my goal to stay in a town was frustrated by a lack of rooms or poor planning on campsites. I wanted to photograph the Lethbridge Viaduct. I planned poorly for this shoot…

…turns out this thing is really big…

…really, really big…

I was really struggling to get this thing in frame…

It is simply massive. One of the biggest things I have ever seen.

War Bus dwarfed by one of the thirty-three steel towers!

OK, fine. Panoramic shot it is. It is hard to explain how big this thing is. Wikipedia notes it is 1,623.860 m (5,327 ft 7+1⁄2 in) long and 96 m (314 ft) above river bed. As I noted on the CMR bridges yesterday, I am not sure we are capable of similar feats anymore.

Sunflowers and massive bridges seem to be my jam.

Evening sky south of Calgary.

I did a bad job of taking pictures in Calgary. I was fascinated by the diamond plate footprints welded to every sidewalk grate in town. That seems like a good idea.

I followed the paddy-wagon back to my hotel.