3000 Miles Later (aka Here At Last)

Monday morning we had breakfast at a good diner, although we were both beginning to dread heavy, greasy restaurant food, even when it was good, like this was. The only unfortunate aspect was the gas station next door was having a street sweeper pick up its sand … and it was doing a LOUSY job. It went around, and around, and around, and around… It didn’t seem to pick up any dirt, so much as just lift it in the air in the valiant hope that it would blow back into the adjacent field. This started before we got there, continued for the hour we ate breakfast, and was still going on when we left! It sandblasted our poor truck, which, when combined with the prior layer of bugs, made it a pretty sad sight. Sigh.

Montana at last!
We decided to skip Little Bighorn because it was ten MORE dollars to see an empty field (“yup, it sure is a field”) and we didn’t really have the time, anyway … it was Monday morning and about time to be getting to Bozeman.

We stopped briefly in Billings to discover that the quaint historic downtown had been decimated by the strip malls on the outskirts. At least, that’s what Alan says—he’s been to these places before and finding all of them very different from the last time he was here … twenty years ago. Then we stopped at the strip malls on the outskirts to get an iced coffee (Mint Mocha Frappe) before I died of heat exhaustion. Then before we knew it, there were mountains ahead!

We made it into town (Bozeman) by 4:30, did a brief driving tour of campus, then found our way out to the KOA. It’s barely camping, with electric lights, bathrooms, showers, pool, hot tub, and “water park” area, not to mention internet, but it’s convenient for this week. The mosquitos are pretty awful (Alan says “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet”) and it has been quite warm … but overall the weather has been great (and no, mom, it’s NOT too cold sleeping here J )

One of the amazing things is how much it’s snowing here:
(the picture won't upload so we'll add it later)
OK, it’s actually cottonwood. But it LOOKS like it’s snowing the way it blows around.

Alan had class on Tuesday night, and it was the longest we’d been apart in more than a week! We’re finding this is DEFINITELY a WORKING vacation, as he works on classwork and I work on job-hunting, etc., but being together this much is a nice change from home.