Day 7

July 8

The weather was hot so we had trouble settling down last night.  The kids, in particular, seemed really uncomfortable and were very vocal about it.  Luckily, no one camped to the left of us, but the people on the right (fellow Northwesterners from Washington) definitely got an earful of our children fighting with each other and refusing to sleep.  In the morning, the man returned Olivia's smile with a dirty look.

Whoops.

Tallis started his countdown to the wedding this day:  "Dad, is it eight days until the wedding?"  "Ummmm, what day is it."  "It's Friday the eighth.  It IS eight days to the wedding".  I guess I had kind of lost track.  

Anyway, we headed out to Yellowstone as early as we could which was probably an hour or two after the bears and wolves retired.  The first animals we saw were a herd of elk hanging out on a lawn by administration building.  I'll guess that the elk realized that the predators were a bit thinner around the administration building.  Besides, the predators had gone to bed.   The administration complex was pretty much right inside the gate.



Then we headed East on the Grand Loop Road to where the bear and wolves would have been. OK, we hoped to see them anyway but were prepared for a lack of carnivores.  

It's worth pointing out that two things happened in Yellowstone before we arrived here.  On the second day of our trip, we heard from Olivia's brother that there had been an oil spill on the Yellowstone River (thank you, Exxon), so we weren't sure what impact that would have on our trip.  A couple of days after that, we heard from my brother that there had been a fatal bear attack in Yellowstone and that it was the fault of the maulee, so they were going to let the mauler survive.  We weren't sure what impact this would have on our trip.  

Back to the road.  Shortly after starting our drive, we saw out first bison.  This being very early in our time at Yellowstone and despite this being a two lane road with no shoulder, we stopped on the road to look.  The bison were majestic if a bit ratty as they shed their winter coat.  

There weren't many cars so I didn't mind just sitting right in the road staring.  A car pulled up behind us.  We had been told that the best way to find animals in Yellowstone was to look and see where the cars were pulled over.  However, this was not another gawker.  We got yelled at by ranger on loudspeaker telling us that it was not safe and we were not allowed to just stop on the road.  We drove up a side road that offered a good view of the bison, too.  

It's probably worth pointing out that these were our first bison.  Over the next two days we would see scores of bison and when we would tell the kids that we were driving past bison, it wasn't even acknowledged by the end.  There are lots of bison in Yellowstone.  

One of the other things we noticed many dead trees.  Between mountain pine beetle infestations (due to climate change) and a few wild fires in the past few years, I wouldn't be surprised if half the trees in Yellowstone were dead.  Granted, there are still a lot of trees but there are surprisingly large stands of dead trees.

Another tree related thing we noticed was the number of trees where bears had scratched away significant areas of bark.  The lecture at Glacier (part of the kids getting a junior ranger badge) described how you could tell that you were sharing space with animals by seeing scratched trees and poop/scat.  We knew about the scat from a children's book we have called "Who Pooped in the Park" but the scratched trees were new.  We hadn't seen any of them in Glacier that we noticed but there were large stands of really scratched up trees here.  I guess they're there to remind you to carry your bear spray.

Next up we stopped along the road where there was a "bear management area".  It wasn't the right time of day but maybe, with some luck, we would get to see some bears here.  We didn't but Ailsa called us over to look at scat.  She informed us that she had found both bison and wolf scat.  The wolf scat was loaded with hair.  I'm guessing elk hair.  We did get into a book store later that day, found Who Pooped in the Park, and confirmed her find.  

We stopped at Sulfur Caldron (hot and stinky) and a waterfall.  It's pretty obvious why this place was chosen as the world's first national park.



We took a hike along the South Rim Trail which was pretty spectacular and went to the Lake Lodge for lunch.  The South Rim Trail is along Yellowstone's Grand Canyon.  The gorge there was incredible and there were elk and bison just kind of milling about.  We discovered later that the fellow who was mauled by the bear days earlier was hiking on a trail leading off the South Rim.  We didn't see or hear anything to suggest that while we were planning on where to hike.  I guess it was probably better not to know.  Outside Lake Lodge, there were a bunch of Rolls Royces about a hundred years old.  They, apparently, belonged to members of a car club who had collectively made the trip from Idaho and were headed to Wyoming.  They were pretty amazing and must have been a lot of fun to drive around Yellowstone.



Also at Lake Lodge we saw one of   Yellowstone's yellow buses like the Glacier red busses.  There are fewer  of them here than at Glacier so I was glad to see one.

At the end of the day we drove to the hotel we'd be staying at near Old Faithful.  We saw it blow while we were trying to figure out how to check in.  We got into our room (at the perfectly serviceable Old Faithful Snow Lodge), had dinner at the restaurant in the "lodge", and went to bed.  

Day 6

Waking up in a bed is nice.  Sure, waking up in a forest is nice but so is waking up in a bed.  The Rainbow Motel had beds and I liked it.  

We ate the free breakfast in the motel office and spent time in the pool, as the kids may have rebelled if we didn't.  At checkout, we went over to a laundromat near a grocery store and washed clothing as we gathered provisions and ate lunch.  After the laundry was done, we went to the Museum of the Rockies.  This is the museum where the world's most famous paleontologist -- Jack Horner -- works.  It also is the museum where people take their kids who love the world's most famous paleontologist (and we take our kids, too).  It was fun to hear kids wax eloquent about the exploits of Jack Horner or at least get their geek bully on by stating in various ways that he is the most famous and they know it.  

Tallis and Ailsa went with a docent on a kid tour of The Hall of Horns and Teeth (I swear to God that's what it's called).  Anyway, the tour was all about dinosaur teeth and how you could tell what they ate from looking at the shapes of their teeth.  They passed around T. Rex and Triceratops teeth and talked about eating.  The place was called The Hall of Horns and Teeth at least in part because they have a great collection of Ttriceratops skulls (the world's largest T. Rex skull and others fossils from the mid-Cretaceous).  The Triceratops skulls were arrayed according to the maturity of the individual (from young to old) because Jack Horner was the paleontologist who most successfully argued that two types of skulls that had been considered different species were, in  fact, just juvenile and adult forms of Triceratops.  Horner also has been arguing for feathers and sexual dimorphism in dinosaurs so,in a neighboring hall, there were reconstructed dinosaurs from the early Cretaceous period with feathers that looked like some George Lucas would put in space.  Such is the stuff of fame in paleontology.  Oh, and we saw several massive fossilized egg clutches.   It really was cool.  Tallis saw the skeleton and reconstruction of a dinosaur that looked like the Loch Ness Monster, so that was cool.  Ailsa was good at finding the various frogs in the frog displays.  We didn't have time to get to the farming section (homesteading history) but, all in all, it was a nice spot (although my back hurt).  

We were at the museum long enough that we now had only enough time to drive to our campsite and eat dinner.  I think this was the first day that I realized I didn't really care what we did.  As long as we got to where we needed to be at night and everyone was happy, that would make for a great trip.  We decided on an early dinner in Bozeman followed by a trip to our next campground at the north gate of Yellowstone.  

Dinner and Beer paragraph.  We had dinner at Montana Ale Works.  Olivia suggested stopping here and I couldn't have been happier.  This was really a nice place. The menu was interesting, the food well-prepared, and the beer was lovely.  We started with buffalo potstickers and a smoked trout spread.  Both were good.  We all really liked the pot stickers.  Olivia and I both enjoyed the trout on bread.  Tallis got a bison burger (part of a large tour of alternative burger meats) and Olivia and I split a salad of local vegetables and chevre.  Why can't all restaurants be like this one?  Besides, I love restaurants with deep beer lists.  They had 40 taps and I carefully planned an assault.  However, my first choice (a Hopjuice Imperial IPA) was a hop bomb that would have destroyed my palate but I mean that in a good way.  It would have been nice but they just ran out.  I suppose that's all for the better.  I got the Blackfoot River IPA which was definitely worth drinking, although less hoppy than an imperial would have been.  I also got a Bent Nail IPA.  However, the standout was really my desert beer.  The Vlezenbeek Framboise Lambic was a wonderfully sweet beer with strong raspberry flavor.  It was exactly what I'd hoped for.  Many recent fruit beers (and there are lots of them) are nice but don't capture this same fruitiness.  I fell in love with this style of beer in the 70s going to the Wursthaus in Harvard Square where my friends and I would end our sessions with the Berliner Weisse, a white beer with raspberry syrup.  Mmmmmm.

Anyway, from there we drove down to Gardiner in time to watch the sunset.  We got all set up in an RV camp and were ready for the next day's trip into Yellowstone.  While an RV camp may not be the most romantic of locations, it was at least crowded enough that it didn't seem like a good spot for bears and there had just been a fatal bear attack somewhere in Yellowstone and why tempt fate?  We had a nice view, bathrooms, and showers.  

Day 5

Okay, so this morning we finally had pancakes.  I have to say that while they tasted just fine, the butter burned very quickly and the pancakes had a bit of black to them.  I don't know if this is a function of the whipped butter having more milk solids than I'm used to or the heat of propane being higher than natural gas but it is kind of annoying.  I will have to figure that out.  

We broke down the camp today and we're headed to a hotel in Bozeman.  Olivia was concerned that we couldn't find a sock of Ailsa's but we had most everything packed and ready to go fairly early.  Olivia went down to the bathrooms (very nice bathrooms by the way) where you can get water and wash up the dishes and wasn't back for a while.  She was gone for a long while.  She decided to walk by herself down to the lake to see if she could find the sock around where we'd walked the previous evening.  She didn't bring the bear spray and came back a little shaken.  

Next we drove to Bozeman for a hotel night with showers and a pool.  

On the way, we stopped at the Powell County museum complex including a 19th century prison (used until the 1970s), a toy museum, and a saloon museum.  This was on the recommendation of the Roadside America extra in the Garmin.  

The prison had a great collection of old cars but you weren't allowed to take pictures.  The saloon museum didn't have a working saloon (apparently there's one out here that does) but they did have a great pre-prohibition bottle collection.  I was excited to see the bottles from Connecticut, Virginia, even Oregon.  [Did you know that Bourbon County Kentucky was part of Virginia?]

The toy museum had great toys (the trains could use some work, though), an antique French doll like an old one that Olivia has, and really creep clowns.  Quite satisfying.

We stopped at Matt's Place in Butte for dinner on the recommendation of the Roadfood extra in the Garmin.  Matt's Place is an old school drive-in owned by 96 year old Mae who was sat besides us and talked about her early years at Matt's as a roller skate waitress.  I had the Wimpy (a double cheeseburger) and Olivia got the nutburger.  While she thought it might have been a vegi-burger, she discovered that it was a regular burger with a sauce made of roughly chopped peanuts in mayonnaise.  The kids had a burger and a grilled cheese with fries and a traditional chocolate shake (yum).  

We left for Bozeman and arrived at the pool with not quite enough time for the pool.  Not that there wasn't any time for the pool.  The kids and Olivia went in but there would need to be serious pool time the next day.  We watched TV, I had some of my Zerba wine, and we went to bed.  

Prep School

So, I said earlier that we didn't quite plan as much as we might have.  It's not that we didn't plan.  Although what we did was primarily to ask what kind of vehicle might work and where we would go, we have a little more in terms of preparation.

We knew that we had to go to Oshkosh WI for the 16th of July (for my brother Bob's wedding to the Lovely Linda) and we knew that we couldn't leave until July 2.  We also knew that we needed to be back in Portland, OR, at the end of July for Tallis' allergy shot.  Okay, that's not planning, that's constraints.  I'll acknowledge that but, when you have little preparation, you want to include the constraints.

Our planning pretty much consisted of looking at a map, trying to figure out how to do both Glacier and Yellowstone, throw in a couple of kid requests -- Devils Tower (yes, they saw the movie) and Mankato, MN (Home of book characters whom Ailsa likes in a series of books I like to think of as "Little Suburb on the Prairie") and then trying to figure out how to drive about 5 hours a day, always stopping at something interesting, and observing all of our constraints.  (I'll get to the return trip constraints in a later posting.)

However, we did do a bit of retail in lieu of planning.  I bought a talking GPS (which I'd always wanted), a couple of waypoint packages for the GPS (Jane and Michael Stern's RoadFood (www.roadfood.com) and Roadside America (www.roadsideamerica.com)).  The GPS is great for directing you to where you want to go but, with the packages, it's even better.  When you think you have a few minutes to play with and you are driving for five hours, it can be nice to discover that you're near the Giant Bull on Wheels or to discover that you just missed the fairgrounds for the Testicle Festival.  Knowing that there's an interesting road food place on your way is a good thing, too.  I have to admit, I never found any way to show these spots on a map so that we could really plan but knowing that something is 41 miles SW of you can be sort of helpful.   Besides, we're not real big on planning.

I may mention some of the things we find from these packages in later postings.  If I do, I'll try to remember to say where we heard about them.

On the retail side, we also got a power inverter to try to run 110 V equipment off of the car battery (it won't charge this computer but works on handhelds and phones).  I managed to dig out a little FM broadcast module for playing the iPod through the car radio.  We got more camping gear, not much really, just a hatchet, a table, and a canopy (which we got instead of an awning) which brings us to our largest purchase for the trip -- a 2002 VW Eurovan Westphalia Weekender (which came without an awning).

A Westphalia is a tricky bit of tech.  It's a van with a pop-top so that some people can sleep up on a full size bed up top and some can sleep below on a foldout bed that's nearly queen size.  Tallis and Ailsa, at 7 and 9, are the perfect age for sharing the top bunk.  The lower bed is about 6 inches shorter than a US queen and is apparently the size of an Aussie queen (Anyone know how Peter Allen measured up?).  Oh, Olivia and I also got a bed pad for the lower bunk as the fold down seat (that makes up about 2/3s of the bunk) is kind of lumpy.  We should have gotten a thicker one.  Westphalias also come with a fridge that runs off a second battery that disconnects from the main system when the van is turned off (so it won't drain the battery for starting).

A Westphalia is a tricky bit of tech but a Eurovan can be a fussy bit of tech.  Apparently, the engineering is good but the execution left something to be desired.  For example, on one of the big Westphalia web sites (www.gowesty.com), they say that if you buy a used Eurovan, you should get one that's got over 100K miles because the transmissions have a high probability of failure between 50 and 100K.  Once they've passed that threshold, you can guess that the execution was fine and the tranny will last for some time.  Several mechanics suggested buying something else but we really wanted a Eurovan.

We wanted it badly enough that I took the Amtrak Empire Builder from Portland to Whitefish, Montana (with Dan Teibel) to buy one with 116K miles.  Odd that two months later we planned to drive it back to Montana and even drove past the garage that we had do the pre-purchase inspection.

Our preparation then, included plenty of constraints and shopping.  If you can consider constraints and shopping to be good planning, we were pretty good planners.

Oh yeah, we also bought a bunch of boxes like huge Tupperwear containers to fit in the back and then filled them with things until they were full.  That could also be considered planning.

Day 4

Getting up on the fifth couldn't be easier.  It was quiet (except for the birds), the weather was cool and dry, and we had to get to Apgar for a morning Jammer Tour.  It had been cold the night before and I somehow managed to get tangled up in my sleeping bag.  My back was mad at me for that.  

We planned on making pancakes with the eggs and Bisquick we bought in St Regis but had scrambled eggs instead.  We fried bread in a little butter on the fry pan but it was too much unlike toast to satisfy the pickiest eater.  It was kind of like french toast although I wonder if even French eaters would like it.  Is french toast popular in France?  I liked my coffee anyway.  

After breakfast, we rode our bikes back to Apgar Village for a trip on one of Glacier's "red busses" -- the jammer tour.  Our bus left at 9:30, we thought.  We found a bike path that took us through the woods for most of the trip.  The ride wasn't bad at all, a very little of it was on a busy road, but Ailsa found the long uphills a bit tough especially since we had to be to Apgar on time.  The kids were definitely not used to riding off road, even on a fairly well groomed trail.  Again, we have to get them out more.  

We got to Apgar at 9:15, just as a red bus was pulling out.  I tried to chase it but it kept going.  We hoped that it wasn't our bus.  We waited until 9:30 and another bus pulled in and it was ours.  

It really was fabulous.  First of all, the red busses are great.  They aren't normal busses.  They are from the 30s, Each row of seats has its own door (on the passenger side) and a running board to get up into your seat. They have a canvas "sun roof" that stretches the length of the bus, and seem to be all window.   The seats are bench seats and we were able to sit four across.  We were right up front.  

Our driver was named Jasmine.  She was a young woman from Wisconsin in her second year as a bus driver in Glacier.  She explained that the drivers were called "jammers" because until the busses were rebuilt by Ford a little less than ten years ago the manual transmissions had to be jammed into gear.  She also explained that we wouldn't be doing the normal tour.  The pass along Going-to-the-Sun Road was still snowed in.  Apparently there would be no big horn sheep or mountain goats for us.  Still, it was still going to be beautiful.  

Our first stop was the Lake MacDonald Lodge to pick up some more passengers.  We had about 15 minutes to look around and it was traditional lodge style (as if I know what that means) with lots of wood and taxidermy, a large open atrium with round wood (i.e., trees) as the columns and rails.  It had a 20s Native inspired feel to it.  

We picked up four more people at the lodge (bringing the total to 9) and discovered that we would have a fairly small tour -- much better than the packed bus that Jasmine said she'd sometimes get.  We drove along Going to the Sun right up to the barricades to stop you from going further.  We got off there and went a little bit onto a trail called Trail of the Cedars.  We saw a great little waterfall and decided to come back later in the day to walk the whole trail (we'd heard it was not to be missed).  From there, we stopped at a few more water spots and then went out to see if we could find any lowland wildlife like bear or moose.  Suffice it to say that while the natural setting and the tour (with explanations about the natural setting) were great, we didn't see any bear or moose.  The time of day wasn't right for that anyway.  

Afterwards, we rode back to our campsite, left the bikes and took the car back to Lake MacDonald Lodge for lunch.  Same menu as the Apgar Village site (same beer, too).  I split venison and bison sausage and salad with Olivia; the beer was still good.  We went to the store there and picked up a can of bear spray.  It was fifty dollars.  I think the idea is that you don't want to use it so badly that you avoid bears in a better way.

Afterwards we went to Trail of the Cedars.  This was a fine, if short, hike.  It was a lot like what you might see in Oregon but we noticed way fewer mushrooms.  I imagine that it's a function of the time of year to some extent but I would have thought there'd be more.  Olivia really wanted to hike up to a mountain lake but my back was bothering me and I kind of didn't want to do that.  

We went back to Apgar, got wood for a fire andthe makings for smores.  We went back to the campsite, built a fire, had a healthy dinner of smores (and I had some red wine from Zerba).  Afterwards, we threw lots of different types of pinecones and boughs into the fire to see what they did and then went to bed.  

Day 3

Day 3

July 4th, we woke up in St Regis slowly.  The campground was beautiful in the morning.  Last night's Independence Eve revelling in neighboring campsites seemed to have led to much sleeping in.  The birds and occasional car were about all that could be heard.  

The kids explored the "buildings" in a reconstructed mining village that had been installed near the street to uphold the Nugget in the campground name.  One of the buildings was original (The Assayer's Office) and had the historic register plaque to prove it.  The others seemed to have been built of weathered wood and looked no less old.  There was a jail, a school, a hotel, and a brothel.  We got a nice picture of the kids looking out the window of the brothel.

Brothel paragraph:  The brothel in the reconstructed village reminded me that the day before we had seen a brothel museum in Pendleton (it was closed, perhaps because it was Sunday) and had also driven past Wallace Idaho with its Oasis Brothel Museum, which Olivia and I had visited on a previous trip.  It seems to me that either brothels were far more popular in the Northwest than the rest of the country, that the movement to recognize sex workers has really made some great strides, or that, on our trip, we had a surprising set of coincidental run-ins with solitary purveyors of brothel pride.  

Coffee Geek paragraph:  I decided I wanted to drink good coffee on the trip and collected some essentials for the trip.  I brought some relatively fresh full city roast Guatemalan beans.  I made coffee using a Hario handgrinder purchased for the trip and I brought a Hario cup top coffee dripper that I brought because it's bigger than the Cafex one I would usually use and, even if it may be more breakable, I thought it might be easier.  (I'm not sure it was.)  I just boiled water in a sauce pan and poured from that.  I wondered about water temperature.  I've heard that 200 degrees is ideal for coffee, I wonder what the elevation at this place is and what the boiling temperature of water at this elevation is.  It could be that some elevations are ideal for coffee.  I wondered if I was at it.  In any case the coffee tasted good.

Back to the morning...  

After exploring the buildings, finding half a deer's jawbone, and a quick breakfast of cold cereal, the kids were desperate to go in the pool.  Between the pool, the showers, and a bike ride through the grounds, we were pretty much leaving right at (or after) the edge of acceptability.  We asked for a late check out anyway.  The folks were nice about it.  

We headed north from St Regis to Glacier after we stopped at a small grocer in town to buy a few things.  At the St Regis crossroads, there seemed to be some kind of fair or something, maybe a horse auction.

We used the Garmin to get up there and it was pretty good.  The Garmin directions weren't far from the Google Maps directions and most differences were just when the names of the streets were different (Main St vs. Rte. 66, kind of thing).  It was interesting to note that they were different at all though.  Different names and algorithms, I guess.  It does bring a bit of nervousness, though.  

The road up to Flathead Lake (in the middle of the trip to Glacier) leads you through some beautiful mountains.   Driving alongside Flathead Lake had both beauty and lots of people.  We were definitely in vacation territory.  From the north end of the Lake, we still had a ways to go to get to Glacier but the mountains seemed to be right there and the trip didn't take much time but seemed forever because it seemed like it would be plenty nice to camp right where we were.  

We finally got to Glacier and had dinner at a restaurant in Apgar Village.  It was pretty much high end diner food and was good.  It was apparent that huckleberries are the big local food.  We saw lots of signs about huckleberries through the drive and the menu had several items including huckleberry.  I had a salad with huckleberry dressing and a decent pale ale (Going to the Sun Pale Ale).  Olivia and Ailsa had trout with huckleberry sauce.  Tallis had an emu burger, which tasted surprisingly like a hamburger.  When Ailsa surrendered her trout after just a little bit, I ate that and ordered and a huckleberry riesling wine.  Tasty.

From there, we found our campground not far from MacDonald Lake with lots of individual camp sites but ours was up on a rise and seemed to be almost by itself.  After we unlocked the bikes, the kids asked to ride around the camp site.  Olivia and I set up the canopy, got everything set up, and we all walked to a ranger led talk about Glacier that was held in an amphitheater next to the campground.  This was going to be the first step in the kids getting Junior Ranger badges.  The mosquitos were hellacious.  Afterwards, we walked back to the site and crashed.  

Day 2

So far, so good.

More or less.

We're in Montana in a gorgeous campground, so that's good.

We woke up in Pendleton a bit earlier than might otherwise have been desirable.  There was a tree full of birds right by the van that apparently didn't realize what time it was but it really was kind of nice.  After we got up, the campground manager came over and apologized for the fireworks the night before.  I told him that the fireworks were actually pretty popular with our campsite so, no apologies needed.  After a bit another fellow came up and apologized for the brief display. He was the guy who set them off (them being the fireworks and the less friendly campers).  He was a Nam vet, veterans' advocate, and medical marijuana advocate, as well.  Said he'd traveled the country for two years in that last role.  We went into town shortly after that, found precious little open (it was mid morning Sunday so no huge surprise there), found a drive through espresso (it is Oregon, after all) and headed to Milton-Freewater to Zerba Winery.

Zerba is a really nice winery with terrific Syrahs.  They've won lots of awards and last year were selected winery of the year by Wine Press Northwest.  It was still pretty early and I really can't spit when I taste (it just seems so nasty), so I only tasted the Nebiollo, a Syrah, an everyday red bordeaux blend, and a port labeled as a late harvest Syrah.  All of them were really nice (if pressed, I'd say the Nebbiolo could use a bit more interest) but I was really intrigued with the port being labeled late harvest.   I asked about that.

I was told that the Zerba "late harvest Syrah" was prepared in the traditional port manner with some of the same wine (from the previous year, I imagine) being distilled then reintroduced to the fermenting wine to kill off the yeast and leave a bit of sweetness to the resulting drink.  Still, it wasn't labeled "port".  I was told that the ATF has recent told US wineries that they can't use the name "Port" because it is reserved for wines made in that style in the Douro in Portugal.  That seems reasonable enough.  Smithfield hams should come from Smithfield in Virginia, say.  Port-style winemakers who already had something on the market were grandfathered in and can continue to say "Port".  Zerba was two weeks from approval when the new rule was passed.  They had their labels done and everything.  They didn't know what to do so they just went with "late harvest".  At least that would tell buyers it was sweet.  It's really too bad.

Sumac Ridge up in BC calls their port-style wine "Pipe,"there are a bunch of other Canadian wineries with their own names, and there's the whole Aussie thing with "stickies".  I think someone needs to come up with something like they did for Bordeaux blends made in the States -- called Meritage -- but they have to come up with a better name than that.

We left Zerba without that problem solved and went to a collection of muffler based art on the way to Walla Walla for lunch.  There were probably 30 statues of people made from mufflers.  They were painted, sometimes quite well, and we were the only people there to see them.

We stopped in Walla Walla for lunch at a restaurant called Olive, not to be mistaken for Todd English's restaurants called Olives.  Really, not to be mistaken at all.  Actually the food was pretty nice.  You ordered at the counter and grabbed a table.  They brought your food to you.  I got an "Olive BLT" (no olives were injured in the making of that sandwich) and a cup of lentil vegetable stew (which seemed to use lentils as a garnish).  Both were quite tasty and went nicely with the glass of Ecole # 41's value offering -- Recess Red -- which was the nicest local red you could get by the glass.  Olivia got worried about being late and having to drive so my dreams of stopping at another winery before heading out were dashed and, without a wine tasting excuse for not driving, I drove from there to Montana.

Before leaving, I tried to get to the farmers market but it ended just as we got there but we did get some pictures at a Walla Walla sign.  My dad was known as "Boom" to his friends and, as a young man, even said he wanted his children to call him Boom.  It was a knick name from a friend of his (my mom's cousin before my dad even knew her) who used to call him "Boom Boom Beckwith from Walla Walla Washington".  So you can see, I needed to go and I needed those pictures.

The drive to Montana was uneventful except for a stop at Colfax Washington's Codger Pole -- the world's largest chainsawed sculpture.  We got to the campground too late for dinner but set up everything well before dark.  We did have a minor incident with mosquito repellent sprayed in the eye but all seems well.  There's a pool that should be open in the morning and bike trails so I think we're good.

Aside from about 30 minutes of fighting from the poptop team, we seem to be getting to sleep a bit better tonight.  Everyone but me, that is.