Oregon!

Last night we arrived in Oregon!

We had a beautiful drive from Missoula through Montana, Idaho, Washington and then, finally arrived at our Oregon destination for a few days, Joseph. Julie's friends, Erica and Tyler, are getting married on Saturday, so we are hanging out here for a while. It's beautiful and quiet and an excellent payoff for many days of driving.

What an adventure it's been. In previous posts we promised to fill you in on some things from the trip and, since we have wi-fi and a computer with a real keyboard, we will attempt to do so now.

First, here's the muster we cracked from Mystery Cave: there is water dripping constantly from the ceiling in one section of the cave and they have no idea what's feeding it. They know it's not the nearby river and can't find any other source for such a constant stream. So, it remains a Mystery. Also, after this cave was discovered they stole the name from a smaller cave nearby, which was originally called Mystery Cave. So, it should be called thief cave. Or unoriginal cave. Or Mystery Cave #2.

The tour of the cave was awesome. Our tour guide, Lynn, was excellent and we would take a tour with her again anytime. Julie enjoyed the tiny bats living in the cave and Chris wondered why they poured gravy all over everything in there. It was time well spent.

We wondered if we would pass any forest fires on the drive so we weren't surprised when we spotted one in the distance on our way from Mt. Rushmore to Yellowstone. As we drove we came pretty close to it. Chris snapped a photo. It was pretty crazy.

The entire city of Missoula was smoky from numerous fires in the area. Missoula is located in a valley with mountains all around and so the smoke collects there and rolls around. We noticed a lot of locals complaining about the smoke. Yesterday we passed another small fire in the mountains in Idaho.

Today we plan to explore Joseph and relax. We will give more updates soon!

Carleen

Just a quick post because Carleen wanted Jim Reinhardt to know that she's doing fine.

Missoula

We love sleeping in and this morning that really hit home when we got up at 9 and thought we we're doing really well, until Chris pointed out that it was really 11am our time (eastern time). Tomorrow we will gain another hour as we cross into Oregon, which just translates into another hour of sleep for us. We love sleep and we love time zones (unless you go in the other direction).

Exploring Yellowstone yesterday and this morning was awesome. We enjoyed the beauty of the mountains, trees and lakes and the seeming mystery of the geysers, hot springs and mudpots (even though there were plaques explaining how it all worked we still think it is fake and/or alien - especially the mudpots).

We saw a bison, elk and deer. Every animal had masses of people acting stupidly around it, trying to get a picture and walking dangerously close to the animal. We wondered if they knew that the picture they were taking had been taken thousands of times before and that better versions of that animal photo is available at all the gift shops.

It was obvious when there was an animal nearby because of the parked and stopped cars in the road. One time we came up to a row of cars and people peering into the woods when suddenly, just as we approached, a woman came walking out of the woods, holding a camera, but no animal was to be seen. As we passed Chris said "Look! It's a white woman." This made Julie laugh.

We left Yellowstone and drove through gorgeous Montana where we stopped in Missoula for the night. We almost didn't get a hotel room because apparently there is a Grizzles football game tomorrow and people drove in from miles around to see it. This seems a little silly to us, but we're not sports people. We are glad to be moving on tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone who has been following our travels and for the comments. Sorry the posts aren't longer. We are using a phone to write these updates and this tiny keyboard has its limitations.

Enjoy these photos from today and yesterday. We'll post more soon!

Yellowstone

Made it to Yellowstone late last night. Watched a gorgeous sunset as we drove through the park on the way to our campsite. After a cold (30 something) night in our tent we got up and did some exploring. The landscape is even more beautiful than we expected and it makes us wonder why people go to places like Disneyland when this natural wonderland exists.
Cell coverage is spotty so we probably won't update again until tomorrow night. Here are some pictures of old faithful and other geysers that hardly do them justice.

Rushmore, Black Hills & Big Horn

Today has been packed. In the morning we stopped at Mt Rushmore. What a ridiculously American thing. Pretty impressive actually. Did you know that there is a room behind Lincoln's head that was blasted into the rock that was intended to be used for secure document storage!? Pretty weird!

From there we set out towards Yellowstone, driving through Black Hills and Big Horn National Forests. This was probably the most picturesque part of our journey thus far. Truly impressive.

We're still driving and should get to Yellowstone about 8pm Mountain Time. More to come...

Mystery solved!

After our last post yesterday we headed out towards Forestville/Mystery Cave State park. We knew we wouldn't be arriving until about 11pm, so we called the park to let them know. They were very nice, and advised us that a bridge to the park was out of service and that we might not want to follow our GPS.

We'll write a longer update later, but needless to say we made it to our campsite by 12:30am. Special thanks to the police officer from Lewiston Minnesota who not only pointed us towards the only open gas station for miles, but provided us with proof that Minnesottans truly do have fantastic accents, in addition to being incredibly nice people.

We also got a tour of the 'Mystery Cave' which we'll post about later.

More to come, currently driving to Rapid City South Dakota while listening to big band music courtesy of 91.1fm.

I Approve of Madison

We were fortunate enough to have lunch with my friend Beth and coffee with my friend John in Chicago (thanks guys for making time to meet up!) and then hit the road again - after a short stop at REI (new tent!!).

After hours of driving and traffic we decided to eat in Madison, Wisconsin. What a genius idea. If you ever find yourself in this fine city, I highly recommend eating at The Old Fashioned. Two burgers for the price of one (and Chris just said "this is the best burger I've ever had" with a starkly serious expression on his face. Will Reinhardt - you know what I mean.) and lots of local beer on tap.

We have another 4 hours of driving tonight so we will get to the campsite around midnight. Then we will set up our new tent. And we will do it with full bellies. I approve of this city. Nicely done, Wisconsin.

PS We got fried cheese curds and they are delicious. Look gross. Taste good.