Month: September 2017

Hotel oddities

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We had two hotels in a row with soft water, which I HATE.  For two days, I felt like I was covered in soap that would never rinse off.  John’s parents’ house has soft water, but it’s never this bad.  Makes my skin crawl.

Oddly, both of those hotels had weird gym situations, too.  The one in Montana advertised a gym, but when we asked at the front desk, the guy said they have an agreement with a gym downtown.  When we’re ready to go, he can give us a key and direct us there.  It’s like 5 miles away.  We didn’t go.  The next night, in Minnesota, there was a gym in the building, but our room keys wouldn’t give us access.  We had to go get special keys made for access to the gym.  Why would you set up a gym for your guests and then not give them automatic access to it?  At least they had one, and once we could get in, it was nicer than the one in Bend – this one had a window.  And water.  And an A/C unit and a fan.  The one in Bend was like a cave.  A hot, sweaty cave with no windows, no water, and no fan.  Turns out I have expectations for a hotel gym.

I carried a watermelon

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We found a magic hotel in Minnesota.  We watched the very end of Dirty Dancing AND THEN IT STARTED OVER AGAIN.  Heaven.  I may never leave.  Also, it’s late, I’m tired, and I may be a little giddy.  Sitting on my butt in the car all day is exhausting work.

Nobody puts Baby in the corner.

Whoops, that was last night.  We left.  Spending tonight in Racine, Wisconsin.  Ooh!  Maybe A League Of Their Own will be on!

Movin’ right along

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For those of you following along at home, Thursday night we drove from Eugene to Bend, OR.  Not terribly far, but we got a late start.  Friday, we drove from Bend to Pocatello, ID, a town I’d never heard of before picking it off the atlas page as a likely place to spend the night.  Saturday, which I think was yesterday (and figuring out what day it is is part of why I’m writing this down right now), we left Pocatello and headed north to Montana, clipping the very western edge of Yellowstone National Park along the way, which was REALLY neat.  I’m not a camper, so I never put seeing that kind of national park very high on my list of things I was likely to see.  Ever.  Happening upon it while trying to do something else was a nice surprise.

I suppose we could have put something more inspiring behind us, but it seems I didn’t take any pictures of the more spectacular views we drove by.  Short-sighted on my part.

Anyway, we found the mountainous pretty part of Montana first (which is how it always looks in our heads), but then we kept driving east and it got flatter and more desert-y.  It does indeed have a big sky, but the sky would have been bigger without the smoke haze.  Blue sky straight up, haze on every horizon.  Oh, well.  We’ll keep plugging east until we can get past all the fires.

A little friend

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Updated with Instagram link.

When we moved to Oregon, Will and Christina gave us a keychain with a little 10th Doctor. Now that we’re leaving, Li’l DT is sharing our adventures.  In a fun twist, he has become OUR companion.

Most of the fun is happening in real time on my Instagram feed (which anyone can see online, without an account, by looking up zannah42 on Instagram.com), but I’ll probably compile the pictures here once we get there.

Here, I’ll make it easy for you.  Go here.  You’ll see the captions (because I always include captions) if you click on an individual picture.

Road Trip Day 1 – The Flames

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When we left Eugene, the road ahead looked like this.

Not too much later (remember, we only drove for about two and half hours the first night), we could see smoke over the mountains in the distance.

Okay, so that one is not very much in the distance.  We’d heard there might be road closures due to forest fires, but we didn’t expect to see this, right from the road.

 

The traffic merged to one lane and there were fire trucks and firefighters and it was all very exciting and SO TOTALLY WEIRD.  All of my other pictures are big blurry messes, but there were individual trees burning like torches.  It’s one thing to know it happens and another to drive alongside.

Today (Day 2, or full Day 1) was uneventful.  Plenty of smoke haze on the horizon across the rest of Oregon and into Idaho, but no visible fires.  We may be taking a slightly more southerly route across Montana to stay on the interstate and get away from the smoke faster.  We’d like to drive away from the scratchy throats, please.