Big Sky Country

Today's view:

This morning, we packed up and headed to Mammoth Hot springs and the north entrance of Yellowstone. After a few weeks of camping, we have our packing-up regimen down to about 5 minutes, which makes us feel kind of like well-oiled camping machines.

Mammoth Hot Springs, near the north entrance of Yellowstone:

Another shot of Mammoth Hot Springs:

The Roosevelt Arch, just outside the north entrance of Yellowstone in Gardiner, MT:

We are in Missoula, Montana tonight, and we're soaking in the view of pretty mountains from our hotel room window. The girl at the front desk offered us a room upgrade for $10, so we jumped all over it. We are sitting on a COUCH right now, watching TV. Robbie has been experiencing a weird pinchy back pain over the past few days, so he has a crazy jet-tub to look forward to this evening. I can't imagine why he has been having back pain, with the comfiness of the Civic and the whole "sleeping on dirt" thing. Anyway, the couch is awesome, and on our top ten list of things we miss in our relocube.

We decided to head out for dinner, and had a brief moment of wondering about the appropriateness of our National Park attire of t-shirts and grungy shorts...then we remembered that we were in Montana. We found a little place called Ruby's Cafe in town for dinner. It looked like a very old-school diner from the outside, and we almost passed on the place due to Jenny's irrational fear of food poisoning..that is, until we saw several elderly local people emerging from the door. It is always a good rule of thumb to go to any restaurant favored by the local elderly, so we headed in. Our waitress was a very sweet, grandmotherly woman, around 112 years old, who had probably been working there since she was 8. Any questions regarding the menu received the reply: "Ooh yes, that's real good!". And "real good" it was. We both got enough food to feed a small army, and it was amazing. We noticed a cookie jar on our way up to pay, and we decided to partake in the most fantastic molasses and peanut butter cookies imaginable.

While we were paying, we experienced a weird phenomenon that we thought was extinct..we shall call it "Small Talk With Strangers." We recall some vague memories about small talk with strangers from when we lived in the midwest, but any interactions with strangers in Tampa typically involved someone flipping you off on the interstate or trying to recruit you for a weird cult. Our restaurant experience today involved a woman who looked at Robbie, laughed, and said, "I saw you eyeing those cookies!" Taken aback, Robbie just stood there in shock for a moment before he was able to fire back a witty reply. Upon arrival back at our hotel, another person engaged in small talk with Jenny in the parking lot.

The combination of "Small Talk With Strangers", Ruby's cafe, the presence of a University (so there is something to do), and the mountain view has encouraged us to end the road trip and take up residence in Missoula. Of course, we're kidding, but we have a really great impression of the town so far. Montana is really funny. Our campsite in West Yellowstone had a local paper from Bozeman that we have been reading with breakfast. The police blotter has been hysterical. Two snippets from the other day included: "Teenagers suspected of drinking. Police arrived, and they were not drinking." and "Woman called about raccoon in her house. Police arrived and discovered the raccoon was gone, but the woman wanted advice on how to prevent it from coming back." This morning, the "corrections" section on the second page said something along the lines of, "A story reporting that Bob Smith was blindfolded and tied up to a fence should have said that he was blindfolded and tied up NEXT TO a fence."

We're not sure of our plans yet for tomorrow. We are still a good 2-3 hours away from Glacier Nat'l Park, so we may just get up at a leisurely time, drive up north to our next campsite, and head to Glacier on Sunday.

Today's route:

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