Monday, August 06, 2007

Finally, More Pics






After I wrote the last blog in the badlands, I searched and searched and searched some more for a place to stay in Yellowstone. There was nothing! Well, there where campsites, but some jackass took that possibility away from us. I found a Super 8 almost 2 hours away, for $230. That was the only thing available. Super 8 is where out stuff got stolen from, so even if we could have justified spending the money, I currently have a bad feeling about Super 8's. So we talked it over and decided to skip Yellowstone for now. We're close enough now to just come back next year when we have our camping equipment and we can do it the way we want to. We spent the afternoon driving all the different scenic routes of the badlands. We saw wild buffalo, dear, and prairie dogs. We went into a field with a million prairie dogs and they went crazy over Bruce. Bruce went crazy over them. We had him on his leash, and they knew it, because they weren't scared or backing down. When we walked into the field, they all popped out of their holes and started barking their high pitch bark at us. Halen barked back. Bruce just whined. He wanted to chase those little buggers.
We got up the next morning and headed out early. We covered so much ground!!! We got through South Dakota, Wyoming, and into Montana. Montana is beautiful. Dan and I both want to move there. We don't want to live there during the winters though. We stopped in Billings Montana the first day, saw an awesome skate park, and ate at a health food store cafe that was really good. the girl who took our order was stoked to meet some vegans. She's been vegetarian for a few years and really wants to go vegan, but the only vegans she ever meets are people travelling through. That would be hard to be the only vegan in town. There was actually an article on a solo vegan in a free weekly paper in the Dakotas. It was real big on the cover, 'Being Vegan in the Dakotas.' There's two places for her to eat out and she has to order a bunch of her food for home cooking. Yikes. There where several pro-fur billboards on the side of the road in the Dakotas, and one that said something like, 'the Dakotas denounces animal rights activists.' We felt real welcome. Anyway, back to Montana. We stopped and slept in the small town of Bearmouth. We stayed in a tiny motel/lounge/gas station. We didn't have our own bathroom, but the view was wonderful and it was cheap. There was this great river running right in front of the place. It was freezing when we woke up in the morning. I did a load of laundry in the laundry room so that Halen would have some pants to wear. We left there pretty early. We found this great health food store in Missoula, MT called The Good Food Store. It was good food. Major thumbs up! I ordered a custom made sandwich that had this amazing store baked tofu in it. While waiting for my order, I saw that you could also get vegan breakfast burritos made to order. They looked amazing. I went and found Dan and told him that he had to get a burrito! He did! It was amazing! We got fruit breads and cookies and chips and got back on the road. We finally made it out of Montana. We spent many hours driving those beautiful curvy roads. Idaho was short and sweet, with a beautiful litttle lake town that you wouldn't believe! Then we where in Washington and Oregon in no time at all!
We drove along the Columbia River. It's so gorgeaous and untouched. We saw a few dear and a wildfire. Montana had some wildfires too. We got into Portland around 6:30. We had called ahead and had our keys left at our new house. It was good to be home. We still don't have hot water, but the gas guy is coming out tomorrow. I'm desperate for a hot bath in my giant new bathtub.
I'll update more about the neighborhood later. Dan is awake and I'm starving. We're going to go get more vegan breakfast. The food in Portland is amazing. First of all, the selection of places to eat is completely overwhelming. Then, when you get somewhere, the menu is outrageous too. It's so hard to choose! Whoopi.
Christy

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