Packer game in Great Falls MT

Sunday morning found us sleeping in a bit, and hitting the local diner for a egg & pancake breakfast (not something we usually do when we travel!).  We left the Theodore Roosevelt National Park and started a straight drive across Montana.  Thinking that we would fly through, due to the high MPH on the freeway, we set our sights on watching the Packer/Viking game in Great Falls, our stop for the 2nd night of our trip.  If you haven't driven through Montana, you are truly missing something.  The great plains were surprisingly interesting - you could literally see for miles in each direction, with cows dotting the landscape.  Then, when you least expected, rocky formations stuck out and the road swerved around them.  It looked like a moonscape.  Then the rocks disappeared and the plains reappeared.  It was totally crazy!  I tried to get photos, but it just looks like half the shot was golden (the fields) and the other half was blue (the sky).  The three-dimension was lost in the picture-taking and did not do the scenery justice.  As it got later in the afternoon, we tried to pull in any sports radio channel to listen to the Packer game, but no luck.  Our son Brian was home in Milwaukee, calling us with radio station numbers hoping we could find something that would at least give us the score.  By 2:20 p.m. (remember that Mountain time is one hour ahead so the game started in our car at 2:15 P.M.) we realize that we would not be able to hear the game, so we stopped looking at beautiful scenery and started concentrating on getting to Great Falls by half-time.  We then called our other son Josh in Louisville, and asked him to text us updates.  One was "Woodson pick - the crowd starts cheering Go Pack Go".  As we neared Great Falls, we used Bill's phone to find a sports bar.  We found one - TJ's - and I gave turn-by-turn directions to find it - it was CLOSED!  We kept driving - Josh kept giving us updates and asked us to call him when we were actually watching the game.  Finally, we saw a Holiday Inn sign that advertised "NFL Ticket", drove in the lot and practically ran to the bar and found a seat in time for last few minutes of the 3rd quarter.  Luckily for us, we sat next to a full table of Viking fans - yeah, we cheered and clapped!  Game over, day saved!  Decided to stay for the night at the Holiday Inn (they gave us an upgrade - a "senior" discount!).  Great scenery aside, a Packer win (7-0!) against the Vikings was a great way to end the day (the Alaskan Amber beer wasn't bad either, after the 7 hour drive!).  Updates coming soon...   Sharon