Truce...

So I thought and thought about it and I’ve decided that it is possible to have a love/hate relationship with the mountains. I will oooooh and ahhhh at them for the majority of the day and I will respect them since they’ve been here a lot longer than I have but when that sky goes black, I will try to completely ignore them and hopefully in return for not hating them, they will not try to kill me anymore. They really were beautiful this morning so I think I made the right decision.

Now I feel like I rushed a bit last night, so let me explain the process of this whole blog thingy. While Bri drives I type up a word document and then download all of our pictures for the day. Once we check in wherever we are I just copy, paste and upload the pictures onto our site. Last night we got to Cowboy Village around 10 and headed out for dinner and then the bar right after that. This means by the time I got home it was super late and I feel as though I rushed through Jackson Hole. Granted, we were actually only there for about 8 hours and half that time was spent sleeping but it really was such a cool town! By the time I got home, I copy pasted, uploaded and started to add but was just completely out of it so I apologize for the lack of detail. For those of you thinking ugh again with all the words – sorry!
So here goes…we went to Snake River Brewery and we walked, in, were seated right away, placed our order and got our food. It was the fastest service we’ve ever had and our waiter was really nice too (refreshing after the night before!) I got a pulled pork sandwich with some insane chipotle sauce. Now I don’t really know what chipotle sauce is but whatever it is, I’m a big fan! The pulled pork was awesome and the mystical magical sauce gave it a nice little kick! If you like spicy food, ignore that last part. I’m a big wus when it comes to spicy so anything with more kick than like a plain potato is spicy to me (but you may still enjoy, who knows, only one way to find out)! Then it was on to the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. We were ridiculously exhausted so could have just skipped this but decided we had to go for at least one drink in a saddle, how often do you get to do that? We did and it was definitely worth it! Do you have any idea how fun it is to sit in a saddle with your feet swinging in the stirrups while drinking rum? Again, only one way to see if you’ll like it! Now when we planned this trip we knew pretty much every place we stayed would be too short but just wanted to get a taste of everywhere so we can see if we’d want to come back. So once again, we were not there long enough but it was totally worth it, even just to see the town, which is set up so cute. The center of town where all the bars, restaurants & shops are is very much like what you would picture a western town to be (minus the old school cowboys & shootouts) with all the different store fronts and everything right there. It’s super clean too and they have these arches made out of antlers scattered around. We stayed in a resort where they have individual little log cabins. I must admit this place is the one I was most worried about with bed bugs but they came up clear! It was such a cute place, small but who really needs a lot of room for 8 hours? It would have been cool to stay longer, each cabin has a “kitchenette”, and an outdoor grill & picnic table so I would definitely recommend it but keep in mind it’s a log cabin, not the Four Seasons. This is the closest I will ever come to camping and I thoroughly enjoyed it-all 8 hours!

So we woke up early, ate breakfast in our cabin and hit the road to go to Yellowstone (which mapquest told us was like an hour and a half). We turned on the navigation and it said we had to drive 260 miles… so we almost didn’t go but then realized maybe the stupid robot was thinking we were still somewhere else… phew, she was just confused! The drive was absolutely breathtaking! We were driving while the sun was coming up and we went through Grand Teton National Park and it was just beautiful!

Then we got to Yellowstone and thankfully Brian was driving because man those mountains are high!! Since we were limited on time and the park is just huge, we only checked out the southwest corner but it was still great! Of course we went to Old Faithful but we saw so many other fantastic things that we weren’t planning on. When you enter the park, you’re basically on one windy road and there’s little shoulders for you to pull off and park to go see the different waterfalls, rivers, geysers and tons of other things! Did I mention it was snowing? Yea we left the cabin and I had a tank top on. After getting out in the Tetons to take pictures I put a sweatshirt on. By the time we were at our second stop in Yellowstone I had double sweatshirts and was still FREEZING!! When we went to Old Faithful, they have a visitors center that just opened so we were in there and the little park ranger man in his short sleeve shirt starts telling everyone to go get outside so we don’t miss it! It could go any minute! Thanks guy, you enjoy your nice warm center and send us into the blistering cold! Seriously, I had my 2 sweatshirts, thankfully I didn’t wash my hair today (I know I’m filthy) so I wore a hat but my face was ridiculously cold! Like I kept having to ask Brian if I had snot on my face because I couldn’t feel it! Oh and when we went back inside after like an hour, I noticed that my gums and my eyeballs were cold! So, a word to the wise, pack a winter jacket no matter when you’re going!

So we were in the park for a few hours then headed out to tackle our longest drive yet (about 600 something miles in about 12 hours). We went through Montana for a little bit, then Idaho for a looooooong time. Brian has decided he hates Idaho and would prefer to grow his own potatoes rather than support them. A little background on his completely rational thought process – traffic. I took a little nap in the car and woke up and found out that he had been sitting in traffic for ½ hour so we took a detour on the navigation and tried to get back on track. Well if anyone’s looking to go to Southeastern Idaho and doesn’t want to deal with traffic, steer clear of Labor day weekend, this is when they have their Fair – ohhhhh that’s why! So we figured since it wasn’t really too far out of the way, we would stop at the Potato Museum in Blackfoot (the Potato capital). Take a look at this giant potato and my equally giant smile since I was so excited to be here!

Yea they were closed for Labor day so I joined Brian… we hate Idaho. Although I must say, they have so far had the best radio stations, we really didn’t have to listen to any CDs driving through AND we didn’t drive on any mountains. Okay I don’t totally hate it, but Idaho did hurt my heart a little. I’ll get over it!

So moving right along, we crossed the border to Nevada and wow. Oh and that was not a good wow. When you enter Nevada from Idaho, the first town is Jackpot. I’m convinced that this is not a real town but a front for some horribly corrupt strange terrible something. If you’re picturing Vegas, don’t because it’s nothing like that. It’s literally one road and on both sides there’s shady shady casinos and a few gas stations. We stopped for gas and I went in to use the nasty shady restroom and let me tell you if the town didn’t freak me out enough, the people there certainly did the job! So far everywhere we’ve gone, the majority of the people have been really really nice. Every person I looked at had this strange look on their face. No one smiled or really acknowledged anyone but they weren’t nasty either just some strange folk! Here are my thoughts… you know in Men in Black how the aliens were walking around as people? Yea, I’m 100% seriously convinced that this is where they live. They all had this blank look on their face and just creepy creepy! Oh and hello, all there is in the entire town is casinos and gas stations. Last time I checked, humans need groceries, maybe a post office, perhaps a mall? So if you’re looking for a Roswell experience, here’s your place. So I high-tailed it to the car and told Brian that THIS was the place that we would be kidnapped and killed, so shady. So then you drive down the one lane road about a mile and then you’re surrounded by nothing… desert, hills, eventually some baby mountains (but nothing like last night). This place also just had an eery feel to it, I couldn’t wait to get to the interstate in 70 miles!! So we made it and still every stop we made in NV just seemed shadier and shadier. Oh and my favorite sign (that we saw numerous times) was PRISON AREA, HITCH HIKING PROHIBITED. As if I needed another reason to be completely freaked out! Oh and these signs generally showed up where we were exiting for gas, of course! Needless to say, so far this is my least favorite state! Unfortunately we were in it for a long long long time and didn’t get to Lake Tahoe until about 1:15 in the morning, which if you’re doing the math, bingo is 4:15 in the morning NY time. Oh and I don’t think I’ve mentioned how messed up we are with time and eating. We keep the car clock on NY time so we don’t call home too late but we’re not really staying anywhere long enough to get adjusted to the time change so it’s so confusing! Then since we’re on the road so long, we kind of just eat when we’re hungry. So I just had a PB&J at 8:30 which is 11:30 on our clock?!? Then snacked on some pistachios at 10:30, 1:30 on the clock – weird! Oh and everywhere we go we’re like what day is it? What’s the date? We’re completely out of touch with everything, it’s so strange! I’m slightly exhausted so can’t go in to details of tonight but will report back tomorrow! Luckily tomorrow we have a bus tour around Lake Tahoe and then only a 3 hour drive to Brian’s Uncle John & Aunt Paula’s house – we cannot wait for 3 hours!! Finally a vacation!