EVANSTON, WYOMING – Despite the enormous odds against them, Utahns by the carload flocked to states like Wyoming and Idaho to try to get a piece of the billion dollar jackpot in the Mega Millions Lottery.
Dozens of Utahns say they took the day off to travel to Evanston, Wyoming, even though most of them admitted they had no hope of winning.
One man from the Beehive State says, “Basically, we didn’t feel like working, so we decided to drive out to Wyoming for lottery tickets.”
That man and his friend didn’t spend a lot on tickets.
“We spent ten dollars, each,” they said. When asked if they felt they had a good shot of winning, they laughingly responded, “Not at all.”
On one corner of Front Street in Evanston, there is a Maverik and a Chevron where people can get tickets. Some people in line say the wait really wasn’t as bad as they expected. They were in and out within 20-30 minutes. One woman tells KSL she’s spent up to three hours in the past.
Convnience store managers need to be prepared for massive crowds when the prize is this big. Maverik Regional Manager Roger Packer says when the jackpot gets extremely large, they have to bring in employees from stores in the center of the state to work in stores closer to the border.
“We had one store that just shut down so we scattered their employees all around to help with that,” Packer says.
According to the Mega Millions website, the odds of winning the jackpot are one in 320,575,350. Your odds of being struck by lightning are much better than that.
