Dashboard Armadillo

On September 4th, we went to Paul and Molly's wedding in the Adirondacks. It was beautiful, lovely in every way, the weather was fantastic, the ceremony touching and short. And there was karaoke, which is never wrong. hmm. I will post photographic evidence as it arises...

Then we went to Alex's house in Clinton to pick up another subaru, completing our own legacy (haha) as a lesbian couple. We are living in the Mission, SF and have 2 subarus. (and put subaru jokes in our blogs). BLOG THAT!!

The pictures that go along with this narrative can be found here:
The car was a trooper. We went to Niagara Falls, through Ontario, with a stop at the Labatt's brewery in the middle of the night, on to Chicago, where we went to my old department at the zoo, the conservatory, talked to my old boss, hung out with Mike P at a Korean Barbecue (!!), crashed out on his futon (thank you) and carried on to Wisconsin. There, we "paused" at the House on the Rock, which sucked 4 hours out of our lives, and left us reeling. I knew it was weird, but I didn't know quite how much weird there was. On we went through Minnesota, pausing to look at cornfields and lenticular clouds, which really makes no sense, because they are caused by mountains, supposedly. Flat cornfields shouldn't be doing that... but still they looked cool. Then we somehow ended up in South Dakota and cruised on to the Badlands which is really astounding; we then camped in a small site in Sundance. Yes, we avoided Wall Drug.
We then drove on through Wyoming, burning up roll after roll of film, and on into Yellowstone. We spent an afternoon, then most of the next morning and on through lunch poking around all the hydrothermal bits. We camped in Madison campground, and woke up to see a couple of elk munching near the tent. We went to Old Faithful and it started snowing, so we kept on driving and getting out to see thermal activity steaming away in the snow. A bull elk casually cruised across one of the mudpool areas; we fumbled with lenses, the elk paused and showed us his rack... Alex focused the lens, and the elk started wandering closer... Alex got some great shots as the elk seemed to become more curious about something the other side of the boardwalk on which we were standing... yes, this majestic bull elk, full rack, in the snowy beautiful morning air just stepped right up onto the wooden boardwalk with us and off the other side to get some better grass. Later that day, we saw a couple of moose grazing, and then a couple of redtail hawks do a courtship display and then mate in air. I'm trying to persuade Alex that wildlife watching isn't usually that easy. It's a hard sell.

Then we drove on to Bozeman to see Molly and Paul's new house; after a quick dinner, we pushed on to Missoula. Early the next day, we got on the road again.... probably a couple of miles from the Idaho border, the car gave up.

I think the hardest part was sitting in the car, on the tow truck, being hauled back to Missoula. Oh, Missoula. I'm sure it's a beautiful place, but after 2 days of Super 8 and IHOP, a 7am Greyhound with all the probies was the only way out of town. 26 hours on a bus. Fortunately, the bit going through Idaho, Washington and into Oregon followed the Columbia river closely, so it was fantastic scenery.

At some point, Alex will have to go back to Missoula to get that miserable sack o' car.