Yeah, what he said!

We got home early this evening, with no more dead birds or anything weird like that. All the way across the country with no speeding tickets - not too bad!

I didn't think 2 and a half weeks was that long, but it was kind of weird coming back to our house! After being away you forget what your house smells like (everyone's house has its own smell, you know?) and driving up to the garage it felt weird to see a familiar place! I guess I got used to everything being different, that it's weird for me to see the things I was used to on a daily basis.

Unpacked the cooler and put stuff into the fridge (Amato's pickles were the first thing to go in!), then had some dinner at Coho Cafe with Ken and Laura. We're going to need some groceries.

I'm going to work tomorrow even if people think that's crazy. "Don't you need some downtime after all that driving!?" people say. I point out that driving WAS half of the vacation, and plus my job is pretty low-key so I can chill out all day and get caught up on the 600 (!) emails I got while I was gone. And another thing: it's Thursday. A 2-day week shouldn't be TOO taxing. :)

done.

home safe in redmond. more later.

Travel ideas

Traveling around to so many places has me really wanting to come back and stay longer at some of them. The black hills area of South Dakota is really beautiful, and there seems to be a lot to see there even without the uber-touristy Deadwood and similar places. Montana - particularly western Montana - is beautiful and has a lot of nice foresty places to see (and nice B&B's!). It might be a fun trip to come back up here and maybe go down to Yellowstone, at least once I convince Monk he won't get exploded in some kind of supervolcano eruption.

I also mapped out a sweet roadtrip in Streets & Trips: down the coast on the 101 through OR and CA, across the southwest (maybe hit Vegas) and back up through Utah. Maybe a week or two long. It looks like it would be really awesome! I still haven't figured out a good way to road trip down to the south, though - we might be better off renting a car to do that corner of the country, because it would take a WHILE to go that way otherwise. It would be cool to be able to check off all the states in the continental US in my MINI, though! :)

Missoula, MT

Drove from Rapid City, SD to Missoula, MT today - 716 miles. We've been doing some pretty hard-core driving the past few days! Tomorrow will be an easy 475 miles to Seattle, so we'll have plenty of time to hang around here in the morning. I think I should wash the car, because Monk has expressed some concern about how many bugs are plastered to the front. The collection included a live, twitching hornet at the last gas station we stopped at to clean off the windshield. An hour later you couldn't even tell we'd cleaned it..




We're staying at Gibson Mansion, which is really nice - way nicer than I thought it would be, and I was expecting it to be quite nice already. The owner, Tom, showed us around and it sounds like we'll be having a really tasty breakfast tomorrow! The place is a really nice old restored house with beautiful grounds and snacks laying all over the place. YUM - my kind of B&B! I took some pictures, which I will post to flickr later. I will also report back on breakfast! But I would definitely recommend the place if anyone is in the area. As you can see from this post, free wireless is provided ;)

Last night we stayed at the Coyote Blues B&B near Rapid City, SD. We stayed there on the way to Maine, but in a different room. The weather was nicer this time, so we had breakfast outside. The owners are Swiss, apparently, and they serve a great breakfast: muesli and yogurt/fruit, juice, coffee, delicious breads, a cheese and fruit platter, a meat tray, and something hot (fritatta this time, scrambled eggs last time). It's definitely an awesome breakfast! I was weirded out by their olives, which are sweet - like they were brined in a sweet pickle brine! They're good, but different.

Cattle grates

It's the one thing about Montana that's been sticking in my mind. Almost every on- and off-ramp going through Montana has a really annoying (especially if you're going 60mph, having not slowed down completely) metal grate across the road, with fences on each side. I assume it's to keep cattle from wandering onto the highway and making friends with 80mph traffic - they can't cross it, because their hooves are narrower than the grates and they wouldn't be able to walk on it.

The only places I haven't seen these are in the major cities - Helena, Bozeman, and Missoula. Everywhere else has them, and it's only now that we're almost all the way back across the state that I remember to watch out for them and not already be accelerating to 60mph by the time I reach them. :

Continental Divide 2: Tokyo Drift

There are a surprisingly large number of cops (3) that we've seen since crossing the continental divide going west. I am also amazed that we have crossed the continental divide twice in a month (by car).

Heh. Butte. Heh.

as of writing: 45.91854N, 111.56510W at 4186.35ft at 6:40pm Mountain time.

Whew. Eastern Montana has successfully been conquered. We had decided to take Rt 212 as we did on the way out to avoid the roadworks. Unfortunately, fate read our minds and decided to start huge roadwork projects on Rt 212, as well as two large oversized loads blocking up traffic, one as big as 2 lanes. We stopped for dinner at Dave's Famous BBQ which is apparently a midwestern thing. The BBQ was outstanding, and with good reason, some of their sauces won national competitions. I can believe it.
One more day of driving ahead of us. We also took tons of pictures of mountains as we are back in mountain country.

Gas advice

In Washington, the gas pumps work like this: you approach the pump, the display says 0 gallons/0 dollars, you swipe your credit card, pick the grade, and start pumping. At least at all the gas stations I've gone to.

But last week when I bought gas in Montana, I was confused - the display read something like x gallons/y dollars, where x and y are NOT zero. So it kind of looked like the pump hadn't been cleared out and I was paying for the person who'd last used the pump. I went inside to double-check, and the lady said that she didn't think that's what was happening, but she could run my card and see if anything had been charged to it. It hadn't. So I went outside, ignored the current "transaction" on the pumps, swiped my card, and pumped my gas.

All of the other gas pumps I've encountered outside of Washington have worked this way. I'm used to it at this point (I don't think it's an underestimation to say that I have bought more gas on this trip than I have in the past year of driving my car) but I would like to know why the pump behavior is different depending on where you go. Maybe Washington has more high-tech pumps? We stopped for some gas at the Spam museum today and the pumps didn't even have credit card readers - I had to pump and then pay inside. (What is this, THE DARK AGES?!)

Anyway, just so you all know - gas pumps can be crazy!

I think I killed a thing

Darn - I was hoping to make it through this whole roadtrip without running anything down, but tonight on the way through South Dakota a crazy bird flew out into the road and couldn't get out of my way fast enough. It hit the windshield like a rock (no damage, at least..) and then went who-knows-where. I feel kind of bad, but I tried to swerve around it (as much as I could at the last minute going 80mph) but it really just flew right out in front of me to get something in the road and then couldn't manage to get out of the way in time. Dear bird: SORRY! :(

Anyway, at the beginning of this trip, I was really freaked out by all the birds dive-bombing the highway. I'd try to avoid them by hitting the brakes or turning a little bit, but they always ended up flying off at the last minute, so I just got used to ignoring them and going on my merry way. Apparently this bird was a little bit retarded, or something. Am I a bad person for thinking that the highway birdy gene pool collectively just got a little smarter? I'm no bird, but I look both ways for traffic when retrieving a tasty morsel from the middle of the highway.

Also, speaking of crazy wildlife, did I mention that South Dakota has turtles crossing the highway ALL OVER THE PLACE? Holy cow, they're cute. But some of them are also tragically squished. I saw a great one this evening going as fast as he could (quite slow) with his neck out, trying to get across the left lane. Go, little turtle, go!

I'm actually surprised that we made it through Wisconsin without hitting anything - we got a little off-track after deciding to ignore the GPS, and ended up driving along county road HH and 1D and K and some others. Basically 55 mph back roads, which are FUN but also had deer and racoons around every bend. I had to slam on the brakes for 2 separate racoons (they apparently freeze and stare straight at your headlights when you're about to hit them. Then they wait a good 5 minutes and scamper off into the underbrush - delayed reaction will clearly be the death of them.) and there were lots of deer wandering around on the side of the roads as well.

There was lots of flooding in souther Wisconsin as well - people's houses and cars were completely surrounded by water, but at least they built the houses on a somewhat raised bit of ground. Otherwise the whole thing would be under water.

Minn

as of writing 43.63792N 95.14525W at 1507ft at 2:36pm (central).

Today has been a day of roadside attractions. We stopped at the Hormel Spam Museum, took a ton of pictures, and enjoyed the gift shop. Next up was a giant green, uhm, giant statue in Blue Earth, Minnesota. The Highways in Minnesota are pretty bad, giant pot holes, and rippling bumps. However, we are lucking out with the weather: overcast but bright with temperatures in the upper seventies. This is also the part of the trip where internet connections come and go, so I am starting to queue up the entries again. Last night was a bit tricky, we missed the turn for the Grumpy Troll Brew-pup and had to navigate an intricate system of country roads (which, in wisconsin, don't have numbers, only letters). We made it to the bed and breakfast close to 11pm, and promptly fell asleep. The mini's front grill is completely plastered with mosquitos. There was some flooding in Wisconsin but not that much. Madison looks like a really cool place.

illinoised.

as of writing: 42.60852N, 88.98203W at 845.49ft at 6pm (central)
Chicago traffic was absolutely horrible. We were trapped there for about an hour. We tried to go around the traffic jam, but an arts festival and a farmer's market only made it worse. Fortunately the time zone change works in our favor. Civilization was found in the form of a starbucks at the last Illinois rest stop. Driving west also ads the new challenge of driving into the sunset. Also, we managed to weave between several storm cells. hopefully we can keep this up!

Holy Toledo! (almost)

As of writing: 41.33149N, 82.66320W at 667.29ft at 9:55am (Eastern Time)
Thanks to Stef's amazing nocturnal driving last night, we managed to reach cleveland around 1:42am. We Stayed at Glidden House Inn near CWRU campus. After a tasty breakfast this morning we grabbed what would probably be the last available Dunkin Donuts coffee and Doughnuts from a drive through and got back on (sigh) I-90. The sigh is due to road construction being "attempted" from basically the PA border to Indiana. Many places don't actually have any construction going on, just barrels up. We plowed through 2 storms yesterday. Today's outlook is a bit less predictable, as the heat and the humidity of the plains can cause storms to pop up, and then just as quickly disappear. Next stop is a restaurant in Indiana where they make their own root beer (!)

That's Erie!

As of writing: 42.18555N 79.83438W at 1146ft at 11:56pm Eastern time.
We made it through NY without a speeding ticket. We are now whizzing across the Erie lakeshore.
Niagara falls was fantastic, and filled with Indian tourists! We took tons of pictures. We also made it through a fairly substantial rainstorm. Not severe, just annoying.
Next stop cleveland!

Weather.

Karma is annoying. After being very luck with the weather going east, we are now hitting 2 storms as we go west. fortunately they are not very wide bands.
I feel bad for the motorcyclists we keep passing. Also more cops seen on the NY portion of I-90 taking the northern route than seen across ALL OF AMERICA going the opposite direction and a more southern route. Sheesh. Thank goodness for cruise control.

Go West!

as of writing: 42.144451N 72.73399W at 254ft at 2:00pm Eastern Time.

We left Maine this morning (about 10am) and are now winding our way westerly-ish.
Massachusetts is wider than I remember, but we are doing pretty well. Niagara falls is our first stop, then Cleveland. We stopped at a state park and had sandwiches.

A few pictures

I thought I'd be cool and post all kinds of pictures tonight, but it turns out the "high-speed" internet at our place is anything but. So I just posted a few - the rest will have to wait until we get home, so look forward to everything else on flickr being uploaded from my iPhone until then.

Check out what we've got so far at our roadtrip set on flickr.

Hitting the road on June 21st

We'll be heading to Cleveland on Saturday by way of Niagara Falls. That should be quite a sight! It will be a long day and we'll be rolling into Cleveland around midnight, but it will make the rest of the trip seem like a breeze! It will be nice to stop at Niagara Falls as well - I've never been!

Today we went on a mini roadtrip with my sister, to see the Edward Gorey House in Yarmouth Port, MA. It was pretty cool! Well worth the 3-hour drive (each way...)

Friends

It's been nice seeing friends (when we can - sadly there are friends in so many places that we can't feasibly fit all their homes into our trip) as we go across the country. We stayed with Cindy and Chris in Cleveland, who were good enough to let us re-freeze our ice packs and refrigerate the cooler contents overnight AND had some sweet A/C after we came from super-hot Chicago.

Dan and Laura let us stay with them in Connecticut and took us to a super awesome brew pub in Willimantic that's housed in a big old post office - nice! I had some super-tasty mussels and a cider. They also brought us to an awesome cop-themed diner for breakfast where they had many police patches from all over:





Willimantic apparently has an amazing boom box parade each year where everyone walks down the street with boom boxes, all tuned into some radio station playing patriotic music. Isn't that awesome? I wish we'd done our road trip near the 4th of July now! :)

Also, more cool Connecticut trivia (Dan and Laura definitely win in this department!) is that they call their liquor stores "package stores". What?! Laura said that it's because they used to sell packages (i.e. cases) of booze rather (or as well as?) bottles, which makes sense.

We won't be stopping to see any friends (at least not planned!) on the trip back, but now I'm thinking it might be cool to drive somewhere down south (maybe down the west coast and up the east coast or something) and see the friends we've got in other places. Definitely worth thinking about.

It's also nice seeing my family after a year (!) - it's amazing that it's been so long, but it certainly gives you plenty to talk about. I wish I could visit more often! I also feel kind of bad that I've forgotten how to get around in what used to be my hometown. I would be making a lot of wrong turns if it weren't for our GPS. I can manage to get around in the area that we're staying at (grocery store, highway, etc.) but last time I was here I got lost trying to get to my grandma's house! Duh... probably because I decided to take the highway, which I never used to do.

Tomorrow my nephew is graduating - that is awesome! It makes me think of high school and college - both places definitely brought me a big group of friends scattered all over the place, and it's cool to see them all and be able to pick up right where we left off even if we haven't seen them for months or years. Hooray for the internet!

At the beach

Woo! We're here! Today's drive was quite short, but filled with crazy drivers from Massachusetts going 95 mph. Once we got to Maine, everyone chilled out.

We're staying in a nice house near the beach - as soon as we got here, I could smell the ocean and the pine trees, which totally reminds me of my childhood. (I grew up here and spent a lot of time at the beach as a kid.)

We brought my filthy car to a car wash this afternoon and got some groceries so we can make breakfast tomorrow. I resorted to one of those automatic car washes even though I detest them - I'm a microfiber mitt and bucket of very soapy water kind of gal usually, but I didn't bring my car cleaning stuff with me and I figure going through an automatic car wash once in a while won't destine me for swirlmark city... hopefully.

Old Orchard Beach is C-R-A-Z-Y in the summer; on the way to Shop N Save we were stopped at a 4-way intersection as about 50 Corvettes with a police escort drove by. I haven't seen any MINIs around here, though. LOTS of tourists speaking a lot of French, though. The highway signs are all in miles and km, and all the machines around here (ATM's, etc.) have English, French, and Spanish options. On the west coast it's pretty much just English/Spanish.

Now we're going to chill out and have dinner with my parents! Yum... I vote for clams or lobsters.

We made it!

We are safely at the beach-house in Saco, Maine. (43.492N, 70.448W). Whew.
That was fun! Now for a vacation! Thanks to everyone for their comments and emails.
more updates and pictures to follow once we catch our breath.

Tri State!

As of writing: 41.35585N, 74.68227W at 508ft at 3:27pm Eastern Time.
We managed to make it across the state fairly easily. It is very hot (88-92F) and sunny. I slept across most of the Appalachians. We managed to find a Duncan Donuts, so we are stopping there for some coffee.

Leaving Ohio

Cindy and Chris' house on the west side of Cleveland was wonderful, and they were both outstanding hosts: extremely patient with Stef and I being groggy and snuffly, and generous with their food and beer. Their house was also beautiful and comfortable. Definately a good time was had. Once again we are outrunning storms which are now hammering Toledo, Ohio.

Indiana!

Chicago was a pleasant surprise (buckland at least). Very nice, friendly people, good food, good beer. Great bed and breakfast. However Illinois marks the beginning of toll country, which is annoying at best, and also I think I am starting to catch stef's head cold. no chance of avoiding that really, as we have been within two feet of each other for the past week. Next up, driving through Indiana without stopping for just about anything and arriving in Cleveland. Once again, giant storms are behind us. Can we keep this up?

Ray's Bucktown B&B has delicious breakfast

OK, I can finally smell/taste a little, and breakfast this morning was super tasty. I got a HUGE greek omelet, bacon, and breakfast potatoes and Monk had an omelet and turkey bacon (sucker! That's not real bacon :) which he loved. They also had fruit and pastries for everyone to share. And coffee, of course. I like the idea of having a menu that people can order off of.

I think I'm going to go downstairs and use the steam room - it might help me rid myself of the last of this stupid cold. I think I got my money's worth of tissues at this place, though - I finished off 2 boxes. :\

The bed here is very comfy! We'll probably take off around noon and head for Cleveland. Streets & Trips says we will get there around 5:30 if we leave here at noon. It might be later depending on if we stop for food (which I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't, since I can barely taste anything! Boo.)

La Crosse, WI to Chicago, IL

A "short" day became a bit longer as we decided to stop at the Grumpy Troll pub and House on the Rock on the way to Chicago. Except it wasn't really on the way, so we got to our next B&B at 8 instead of 5. Oooops - there was a note by the door with a number for us to call, and the person who answered gave us the code to enter to get inside. It's like a secret mission! :)

This B&B rules, by the way. It's great, and quirky, and filled with candy and cats! YES! AND... their cat has a lion cut to help him with the heat. He looks super cute.

We went to a place called Piece and had some non-deep dish pizza. It was good - and by 'good', I mean texture-wise, because I haven't been able to taste food since last night. Yeah, I developed a head cold in South Dakota, and it's been with me for the past 2 days. I feel better now (no more scratchy throat or stuffy nose) but I have a bit of a headache. Bad timing, you stupid cold. It's not that bad, though - Monk was smart and brought some Aleve, so I took some of that this morning and felt pretty good all day. But now it's night, and I think I might need some more.

Chicago's highway system is a maze of tolls and having to bear left or right to continue on I-90. Everyone drives 30 mph faster than the speed limit. They have a cool train system that runs in the middle of the highway (note to Seattle: having your trains go to the same places as cars go IS A GOOD IDEA.) and collect random tolls every so often. We paid $1.00, then $1.60, then 30 cents, then 80 cents. At least it's not as weird as Maine, where you pay based on where you're going - leave it to Mainers to prefer scratching their heads for 5 minutes trying to figure out exactly how much to pay so they don't get ripped off, instead of just paying a convenient flat fee to go wherever they want. (Also leave it to them to minimize the number of toll booths, which would also solve this problem, because building more toll booths is expensive!)

We're finally starting to see higher-octane gas again, and it's even better than the 92-octane stuff I usually get in Seattle. Yes, the last 2 tanks of gas I've put in my car have been 92-octane. Happy birthday, car!! (I will have had it for 2 years on June 27th :)

Chicago rules

Actual conversation while walking past a fire station late at night, where a bunch of firemen were hanging out in folding chairs out front:

Fireman 1: (In the best 'DA BEARS' Chicago accent you can imagine) 'Yeeeeah, I got deh spandex racing shorts...' blah blah bikes...

Awesome.

Another fireman was typing away on a laptop while the other two were just relaxing. Nice :)

Monk Sweat?

As of writing this 43.03811N 89.38414W at 905.21ft at 6:05pm Central Time.
We some cool discoveries today: a brewpub named The Grumpy Troll (they had an awesome belgian called "monk sweat" and a nice malty blend called "Curly." After that we went to a house designed by a very eccentric man (Alex Jordan) called The House on the Rock. It was very very "fallingwater"-esque, with balances. Small spaces opening up to huge spaces and lots of stone and stained glass. Also very low ceilings, which is odd considering how tall he was. also Frank Lloyd Wright's "Talesin" was right around the corner and we didn't even know it.

We are really lucking out with the weather, storms bearing down on us just dissolve as long as we get to a more urban area first. My guess is that the head dissipates it or something. Or God is just being nice to us. Also noteworthy is that some MORE of the areas we were just in are now under interesting weather warnings. Chicago ahoy! we now take a dip southward.

Ah, I see.

Well, the Iowa bed and breakfast was flooded in, so we figured we'd press on to the one in Westby, WI, right? right? uhm. actually NO. we'd be arriving too late for them. So, as storms were closing in on either side, we pressed on to La Cross, WI, where we were told the Radisson was an excellent hotel. So excellent in fact, that there was a police officer convention, so no more available rooms (as of 11:59pm, when we rolled into town). The desk clerk validated our parking and suggested we try the (quite large) holiday inn, across the street. Turns out they had two rooms available: A suite, and a king size bed complete with Spa. why yes they do offer a AAA discount. So we have a very strange room with a hot tub right next to the bed. I am not really bothered by any of this, as I find the whole thing quite amusing, the travelling company is excellent, and the vehicle is a fine steed. Plus judging by the weather systems we are constantly leaving behind, the best course of action is to keep moving. So we're in Wisconsin... zany!

Road Conditions

(hit your throat lightly and rhythmically as you read this)

Dear Minnesota: Please fix your horrible interstate road conditions. especially the horizontal lines every few feet.

weather.

the X is where we were yesterday. the bullseye is where we are right now(ish), and the red parallelogram over where we were yesterday is a tornado warning. whee!
So yes, right now there are storms above and below us. Oh, and Iowa (the state to the south of us) is flooded, including where we were going to be tonight. So we are puttering on to LaCrosse, WI to spend the night there. Huge praise to Ken for helping get my phone internet working from the road. hence this post. Don't worry, we're fine. And we had a great meal at applebees, which surprised both of us. Stef also found a carwash to blast the bugs off the front of the car, during which time I called my parents.

aggro

As of writing this: 43.60892N 96.4457W at 1740.18ft 6:11pm, Central Time
For the record, I don't like Eastern South Dakota. There are very "in your face" anti-abortion billboards every mile or so,
swarms of bugs magically attracted to windshields, and using my credit card in this state caused my credit card company to think I was commiting fraud or something. The highway is also RED in places, which is a bit eerie. Also, the wind is a constant gale, so anytime you try to have a snack at a rest area, everything goes flying away. About the only good parts are the woody western parts of the state. We are now in Minnesota though, so things should start getting better. Whups, spoke too soon, just drove by another anti-abortion billboard. The slight irony is that sandwiched between the "God loves YOU, good works don't matter" (really, we saw one that said this) and the socially-conservative political billboards are numerous signs for 24 hour "Adult Novelty stores." I am not trying to be political, it is just very surreal as I don't remember any billboards like this growing up in PA. Oh, and we stopped at a small coffee shop we had high hopes for, but it was mainly a bored woman and her bored son looking surprised to see customers. Still, the lattes were pretty good. We used up our sandwiches at lunch, so we are stopping at applebees for dinner. I think we will both sleep well tonight.

Wall Drug!

As of writing this: 43.89717N 99.97629W at 1790.03ft 2:38pm, Central Time
This morning has been quite busy! We left the Coyote Blues Bed and Breakfast, run by a very kind but slightly overwhelmed Swiss family. We stopped at Wall Drug, a kitchy tourist trap, but in a fun way.
I had my picture taken with six foot tall rabbits, We bought some souvenirs, and marvelled at all the weird stuff.
Back on the highway we saw a sight that drove some early pioneers slightly mad: horizon in all directions. There is no shelter out here. You are totally exposed, and each mile looks like the previous ones. Seeing a tree makes you say "Whoa! A tree!" and then "There it is! a tree!" and then "hey do you remember that tree we passed 30 miles ago?"
A new time zone was also hit: Central time zone. Which puts us one our behind Eastern time. Ken kindly pointed out I was using the modem wrong, so hopefully after I fiddle with it tonight, I might be able to update from the room.
Also: billboards for hotels out here are quite strange. Apparently business is so cutthroat, that each hotel comes up with all kinds of added perks (free coffee! free meals! free waterpark!) just to get people willing to stay. All of this is completely loss on us with our string of bed and breakfasts/crashing at friends. Also we've been averaging contact with between 7 to 11 GPS satellites. Which beats the heck out of the 4-5 I usually see in seattle. Hooray for open skies.

Weather

Since leaving Seattle, we've had excellent weather for driving - sunny and warm, except for a few cold mountain passes. Only a few sprinkles so far. Even though it's looked like we were heading into some heavy rainstorms on a few occasions, the highway keeps veering off in the direction of nicer weather.

We arrived in Rapid City this evening just on the heels of a severe thunderstorm, and after leaving Mount Rushmore this evening we saw some really awesome lightning in the distance.

It would be nice if we managed to have good weather during the entire trip, but it sounds like the midwest is getting a lot of rain. And some rain would rid my windshield of all the squished bugs. :\ But I'll take the sun while I can get it. Coming from drizzly Seattle with its winter-like weather in June, I am liking the sun and warmth!

Personalized Plates

I need to take pictures of all the personalized plates I'm seeing at we drive. So far:

• CELTICS (I wonder if they were headed to the East Coast, too?)
  
• PNY PWRD (Mustang :)
  

Grumpy Troll Brewpub

In a couple of days, we'll be driving through Iowa and Wisconsin on our way to Chicago. Along the way is the Grumpy Troll Brewpub. I asked Monk if he wants to go (we'll probably be mostly out of food at that point) but I think the fact that they have a beer called "Monk Sweat Belgian-style Golden Ale" sealed the deal.

Mt. Rushmore!

I thought I was too cynical to enjoy Mt Rushmore, but it is really quite breath-taking, especially at night. We found out it was open until 10pm, so we hopped in the car and saw it. The park itself was only 20 minutes away! We arrived just as 1) a movie narrated by either Avery Brooks (Capt. Sisko from Star Trek: DS9) or James Earl Jones (Darth Vader), I couldn't tell, and 2) a strange old man broke wind excessively and continuously while walking in front of us. It was horrible. We couldn't escape. So we bought ourselves ice cream from passive aggressive ice cream vendors who Really Didn't Want to Be There. We took a ton of pictures of the monument. I will link to those once we have a chance. Us visiting at night is also good as it is one less thing to do tomorrow. Woo!

The MINI show

My theory that "interest in my car" is inversely proportional to how close we are to a MINI dealership is proving true. The last town we stopped in for gas in South Dakota proved this true - pretty much everyone who drove by was gawking at us (maybe it's the Barnslig on the dashboard...) and yet another rest stop patron inquired as to what kind of car it was.

So besides that person and the "Can I sit in it?!" lady from Washington, I also had a dude roll his window down and give us an enthusiastic thumbs-up while driving through Montana, and lots of peeking in the windows at rest stops.

We've only seen 5 other MINIs in the 1000+ miles we've drive thus far - the best one was this afternoon in Montana after driving 10 miles on an unpaved highway - I waved (ask Monk why the window was down! :) and they honked back and gave a big wave back. We'll probably see a lot more apathetic MINI owners once we get closer to Chicago, at least if it's anything like Seattle where half the MINI owners there just look confused if you wave at them. Even the low-key "hand-half-off-the-steering-wheel" wave. Lame...

Also, there are lots of turtles crossing the highway in Montana and Wyoming. Who knew?

"Short" day

Drove from Helena, MT to Rapid City, SD today. We left around 9AM (keeping with the hour late trend) and arrived at Coyote Blues B&B at 6. We're also staying here on the way back (but in a different room). They apparently have 2 cats, who I should go upstairs and meet. But first we're sitting in our room, being antisocial for a while. (What!? We're from Seattle...)

Breakfast this morning was delicious, if cheeeeeesy - a cheese and veggie omelet with fruit and a warm slice of rhubarb bread. Mmm. With OJ and coffee, plus a mug of coffee to go for me.

My car's engine took a few seconds to start - I don't know if it's this dumb 91-octane gas (Seattle 'super' is 92) or the crappy Montana gas (no Chevron, no Shell, not even a Mobil or Exxon, my last-resort gas choices. Yes, I'm a savvy consumer...) sold at the stations with the dinosaur logo. Though I do like the fact that they're selling something made from dinosaurs! HAH.

We're having the last of our sandwiches for dinner tonight, which leaves us with a cooler full of salads, veggies, hummus, and protein bars. And boiled eggs. Lots of snacking will be in order, apparently. The stuff in the cooler is still pretty darn cold, so that's good. Did I mention how much I love the chicken and bacon sandwiches? It's just chicken, bacon, and chopped tomato and lettuce in a whole grain wrap (not those 250-calorie monsters, either; think flatbread) so it's got lots of protein and won't make me fall asleep at the wheel from eating too many refined carbs.

The southeast corner of Montana is chock full of deer - we were passing through around 5:00 and there were huge herds of them on either side of the highway, hanging out in the cow/horse pastures and eating. It's funny seeing huge crowds of them, but they're all standing as still as possible because there's a busy highway next to them. "Maybe if I stand real still here next to the 4-lane highway in broad daylight, no one will see me!" Even though they're all small and white, not HUGE and brown or black like all the cows. EXCEPT we saw this awesome all-white steer. Cool!

Big Empty

As of writing: 45.40260N 105.35835W at 3259.19ft (4:00pm local time)
The beauty and majesty of western Montana eventually fades to rolling grasslands for miles and miles.
The kind folks at the bed and breakfast suggested we take route 212 instead of I-90, as I-90 does as weird
dip to the south instead of going east as much as possible. This was largely good advice as I-90 was suffering roadworks. The only problems with 212 were that parts of it stopped being paved for no discernible reason, and it went through two Indian reservations, which were quite depressing due to the poverty of the area. As I write this, we are about 50 miles from the border with Wyoming, after twenty more miles, we will scoot into South Dakota and be done for the day. We also managed to stop at a nice forest park named after the late General Custer. I think I like the mountains more than the plains. Stef's windshield is bordering on terrifying.

Broadwater County

As of writing: 46.32497N 111.524499W at 3891.73ft (9:14pm local time)
We left the bed and breakfast at around 8:30 am local time. We had a delicious omelette with fruit for breakfast.
For a state capital, Helena is quite small and quiet, with the school lunch menu in the town paper.
Dry hills and large grazing fields are plentiful here. So now we head south until we hit I-90 again.
Then, east again to South Dakota.

Night shift

Looks like I'm the official night blogger! Drive by day, post by night. Monk's posts are all during the day, at least while there are wireless access points available.

Our B&B rocks - they have a big clawfoot tub, which helps the driving-all-day neck cricks and helps put me to sleep.

I have one thing to say about Montana: they need better signs. All of the historic/scenic/whatever points just have a generic sign, and there are so many that you just stop thinking "Hey, I should stop and check it out!" after about ... the second one. And then you drive past the stinkin' Contental Divide. Oops!

We went out to the car this evening around dusk and there was a huge deer wandering around the neighborhood! Very strange for what seems to be a historic neighborhood in the capitol of Montana, but I don't know the place very well, so this might be a common thing.

We left Seattle this morning with about a half tank of gas, since I knew it would be a lot cheaper once we got out of the city. Redmond is about $4.55/gal for the 92-octane expensive stuff (my gas tank says I have to!), but even once we'd driven about 150 miles to George, WA it was still $4.50 or so. We filled up again near Clinton, Montana, where 91-octane (highest available) was less than $4.00/gal. According to the gas buddy website, that will probably be about the norm for the middle of the country, and then it will probably go back up to Seattle prices on the East Coast.

As for fuel efficiency, my car is getting about 30 mpg on average, but it is tempting to cruise a long at about 80mph when the speed limit is 75. And then my car's computer shows the average going down to about 25. If I stay closer to 60, it goes up to 30 mpg. On the one hand, it's nicer to get more for your money, but on the other hand it's also nice to get where you're going faster!

I need to get to sleep so we can wake up at 6:30, have some breakfast, and hopefully head out for Rapid City, SD around 8am! That's near Mount Rushmore.

I will report back on breakfast, don't you worry! Our room has a little blurb from Bon Appetit magazine about the tasty food.

time bandits

What time is it???

I asked this after glancing outside at the bright sun and then looking at my cell phone (which is supposed to automatically update) which said it was 10:00. Eh?

Our GPS and both phones said 8:30 when we arrived, though the clock in our room said 7:30. Despite the odds, I trusted the B&B clock more.

At "10:00", we went downstairs where we were told by an antique clock that it was 3:something. Hmm, not helpful. The security control panel in the living room said 9, though, so that further convinced me that it was indeed 9, not 10. Also, if you Google for <place name> time, it will tell you what time it is there. So the clock in our room is right, and now I won't be late for breakfast :)

In Helena

We drove ~500 miles to Helena today (on less than 2 tanks of gas - not too shabby I guess) and are chilling at the B&B, which (obvious) has free wireless. Looks like we're the only people here so far - not surprising for a Sunday night, though.

More driving tomorrow - so far the mini has been comfy. We stopped for gas in George, WA and a lady asked if she could sit in my car. NO JOKE. I have only seen 4 MINIs since Seattle, and one of those was parked in front of the library when I dropped off my books before leaving town.

The B&B is really nice. I am looking forward to breakfast that doesn't come out of our cooler :-)

Continental Divide!

At time of writing 46.57638N, 112.20361W at 4401.01ft 6:20pm (seattle time)
We just crossed the continental divide, which is the point at which the rivers flow in different directions (so any rivers to the west flow west, any to the east flow east). This is quite exciting for me as I have always wanted to see it for strange historical reasons, but instead have only flown over it before. Stef and I took a ton of pictures at a nice lookout point. Hopefully we will be able to put them together into a giant panorama later. Although we are only 6 miles from the capital of the state, it is still very rural. Also, giant billboards featuring Jesus and the Ten Commandments can be seen from the highway. Another weird trivia fact is that Montana has different speed limits depending on if it is day or night, most likely due to the abundant wildlife (we saw a bear warning posted at the gas station)

More Montana!

At time of writing: 46.59700N, 112.93431W at 4205.33ft 5:36pm (seattle time)
So, my phone says we have moved 2 time zones over and that the actual time is 7:36 local.
We are largely out of the really huge mountains, and more into the smaller, greener mountains.
There are a lot of small towns nestled in the valleys. Signs for the annual testicle festival are everywhere.
I wish I were kidding. Apparently they are quite tasty, but I have no desire to put this theory to the test.
We stopped for gas and got most of the bugs off Stef's windshield again.
The directions on the GPS unit, which had been saying "Turn in 380 miles" are now saying "Turn in 3.7 miles"
We are getting close to the end of the day's driving. sort of.

Montana!

At time of writing: 47.23647N, 115.02510W at 2736.88ft 3:46pm (seattle time)
State tally gets boosted to two. We crossed into Montana from Idaho.
My concepts of time and space are radically altered as we crossed a time zone in a car,
which is really weird. So I have no idea what time it "really" is.
I-90 shadows the border between Idaho and Montana, there are Mountains in all directions.
currently we are about 66 miles from Missoula, which is the next city.
My phone says we have good 3G service, but I can't get a modem connection.
The speed limit is largely 75-80MPH out here, but it doesn't really seem that fast.
The other strange thing is seeing the same traffic over and over again. We just passed
a truck we must have passed 4 times previously.

Flooding.

We can really see the effects of a heavy winter in the mountains: the lakes are very very full. some trees are standing in a few feet of water. We were worried about this flooding the eastside of seattle, but that didn't really happen.

Idaho Ahoy!

We crossed our first state boundary at 1:45pm.
Welcome to Idaho!
Oh, click on the maps to make them bigger.

internet!

We are in Spokane! It seems very boring, but it has 3G wireless. So I am posting like crazy!

back toward the forest

as of writing this, 47.44451N 117.77648W at 2281.48ft 1:08pm local
So it turns out that the access points aren't free. boo. Also haven't been able to connect via the modem, so I am just going to queue up posts and post them all up as soon as I have access.
We stopped for lunch and had tandoori chicken wraps. There were signs everywhere urgently warning us not to feed the seagulls and it was easy to see why, they were aggressive and tenacious. The driving has started veering northeast again to avoid the mountains. This also has resulted of more forest and less desert.
My naive assumption of internet from coast to coast on the highway appears flawed. I guess the distances are just too vast.
Also: Stef's windshield looks like a work of modern art.

We are also taking pictures with the camera but are going to post those on flickr and link in later.

Cities are a lot less of america than I expected, really most of it is the space between.

In the Desert

as of writing this, 47.10356N 119.69152W at 1178.81ft 11:21am local
We passed through the mountains, and stopped briefly in Vantage, WA for gas. A couple asked stef about the mini, and oohed and aahed over it. There was also a very creepy sign at the gas station that said, "We've been expecting you!" eek!
The cell modem appears to not work with edge connections, only 3G connections. This means I will only be able to use it near cities. The good news is that I-90 rest areas all seem to be wifi enabled. This blows my mind as I had no idea the government could do something this useful.

I say we are in the desert, but really large portions of it are farmlands irrigated by the Columbia river. The gas station attendants were talking about how rattlesnakes were around, but generally harmless. I have not seen any so far.

note: You have to park really close to the hut, otherwise no signal.

Weather Tracking

Sometimes all the dry runs in the world don't compare to actual usage. Recently I purchased a copy of StormLab, the same software used by many weather centers at many TV stations. It has some neat features, including the ability to download radar information for pretty much all of America. It also downloads weather alerts in real time from the NWS. It also has GPS interactivity, but currently Streets and Trips is being a bit piggy about access to COM5.

Map 1 - Western Washington approaching the mountains

Underway!

We left the house at around 8:36am. A bit later than planned, but there is always the last minute stuff to do. Stef filled the tires to pressure, and currently we are at 47.56229N 122.09300W at 167ft above sea level. This puts us on I90 East around exit 15. The mountains are looming large ahead of us.

Welcome to Monks Across America!

Starting on June 8th, 2008. Stef and I plan to drive from Seattle, WA to Portland, ME.
We will be stopping along the way at various cities.
Hopefully, via the wonders of 3G compatible phones acting as modems, we will be able to update from the road.