11-30-08 Sunday (Dizziness)

Missoula is a nice town. It's big, yet small, if that makes any sense. It has all the major shopping chains we'd like, yet there's rural areas of farms and neighborhoods. Our first stop was to Caras Park in downtown Missoula. It featured a hand-made carousel which was created by volunteers. Next door to it was a playground.

Pictured below: The reader board about the project.

Pictured below: The carousel, housed indoors during cold weather, features overhead doors all around to open during warm weather.

Well, of course we rode it too!

Pictured below: Jim

Pictured below: Garret

Pictured below: The playground.

It's incredible that a city could come together for such a cool project. I didn't know anything about how this worked but Jim got the brass ring and then dropped it. Here's more information on this strange custom: A brass ring is a small grabbable ring that a dispenser presents to a carousel rider during the course of a ride. Usually there are a large number of iron rings and one brass one, or just a few. It takes some dexterity to grab a ring from the dispenser as the carousel rotates. The iron rings can be tossed at a target as an amusement. Typically, getting the brass ring gets the rider some sort of prize when presented to the operator. The prize often is a free repeat ride. The phrase to grab the brass ring is derived from this device.

After getting dizzy, we drove around the downtown area. I spotted a humorous sign. I assume it's a misspelling. "Pasties" ? Pastries maybe?

Maybe during lunch, Lisa dances around with her pasties on?

That's all we did today. We did a lot of driving around. Going back to the campground, we turned off the "use highway" setting so we could drive close off the interstate for more rural sighseeing.