May 19-21, 2003
May 19-21, 2003Monday, we headed back to Seattle. We wanted to spend a few days with
Brian's cousin, Elizabeth, her husband Rob and daughter Rosemary. There
was just enough space for us to park in front of their house on the street,
so it was very convenient. This was a very fun visit. Rosemary enjoyed
walking the dogs. We took the dogs to a large off-leash park where they
got to run around and Kasie got to swim in Lake Washington. We went back
to Pike Place Market with them, collecting some more good veggies, some fresh
Alaskan wild-caught salmon, and some other culinary delights, and made the
obligatory pilgrimage to the Original Starbucks across the street. Note that
the Original Starbucks logo was a little different -- apparently they decided
that breasts (with nipples) wouldn't be the best corporate image, so the
current logo is rather androgynous. She's lost her mermaid tail, too!
On Wednesday night we went to a brewpub with Rob and Elizabeth. Afterwards,
we had a brief driving tour of some of the odd sites (including a rocket
ship that lights up, a stature of Lenin recovered from the collapsing USSR,
and a giant troll under the freeway bridge) in this part of Seattle.
On Thursday, we turned back towards the east. Our first goal was to
make sure to visit Idaho. Jacque had been in the state once before, but
Brian declared that she hadn't done anything "significant" when she was there
before and so could not count it towards her official state tally. So we
had to be sure to do something significant, in order to be able to say that
she had been to that state. Thursday night, we stayed at Blackwell Island
RV park on Blackwell Island, on the northern end of Couer d'Alene Lake in
Couer d'Alene, Idaho. The RV Park was quite nice, except for the noisy lumber
mill across the waterway from the campground. We ate dinner on a floating
restaurant, The Cedars. Brian declared that Jacque can now officially say
she has been to Idaho.
We continued east on Friday into Montana. In western Montana, somewhere in the Bitterroot Mountains, we happened upon a sign that read:
|
Testicle Festival
Have a Ball!
|
The sign included some dates in June for this local culinary festival. (When prepared for consumption, these
delicacies are usually referred to as "Rocky Mountain Oysters". Brian's
father's very old copy of The Joy of Cooking
actually has a recipe for them, and calls them "Lamb Fries". The first step
in the recipe, once the items have been obtained, is to "peel" them. Urk.) Unfortunately,
we were past the exit by the time we saw the sign and we didn't find an exit
to turn around at for quite awhile, so we didn't get to photographically document
this sighting. Even without the evidence, however, we decided that western Montana gets
the prize for the most interesting festival that you might not really want
to go to.
We did get a photo of the Continental Divide sign, though.
The first stop in the long crossing of the long state of Montana was Pipestone Campground
on I-90, just east of Butte, MT.
This was a cute little campground just east of the 
continental divide in
beautiful high plains, with snow-capped mountains nearby. May 24 was a beautiful
day and we took a long run/walk before setting out on the road again.
The next stop was Billings, Montana. We decided to camp at the campground
that claimed to be the very first KOA, and in fact, it was. This was a beautiful
campground on the banks of the Yellowstone River in a grove of massive cottonwoods.
We liked it so much, that we decided to stay an extra night and spent Sunday
there, as well.
Kasie got to wade in the Yellowstone River. While we were
walking, we heard what was probably a beaver splash into the water -- although
we saw evidence of beaver, we never actually saw the beaver itself. Brian
almost stepped on a snake, which reared back to strike, but Brian got out
of the way in time. He wanted to go back and inspect further, but Jacque
politely reminded him of how utterly stupid that would be.
The next stop (after passing the Home on the Range) was
in North Dakota. This was the last state that Jacque needed to complete
the goal of visiting all 50 states. We stayed at the Cottonwood campground,
along the Little Missouri River, in the
Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
This park is the home of many buffalo. When we arrived at our campsite,
Jacque noticed some rough, dark brown fur on the ground and thought it might
be buffalo. Brian laughed. However, when we were walking along the river,
we saw a buffalo laying down to sleep for the night.
The next day, Jacque was drinking coffee outside the camper. She heard
footsteps on the other side of the camper and thought Brian was coming back
from walking Kasie, but Brian didn't show up. Then Barney started to get
interested in what was on the other side of the camper, so
Jacque went to
investigate and she found herself face-to-face with a rather
large buffalo across the hitch on the other side of the trailer. She quickly
got Barney inside the trailer and then she laid on the bed to watch the buffalo
munch grass. 
A short time later, Brian came
by with Kasie and the Buffalo, not interested
in hanging around, wandered away, but not before we got a picture of him
leaving. During this same dog walk, Brian had seen a different buffalo ecstatically
scratching his belly against a post in the campground.
We spent two nights in this park, which allowed us to unhitch and drive
around the park's loop road. The park has beautiful badlands and hills
(which had a lot of green this time of year) and lots of buffalo. There
were also a number of very large prairie dog towns, something that neither
of us had seen before.
That night, we ate at
a restaurant in Medora, the town just outside the park. After dinner we had a few
beers in the bar with two real cowboys, who had just been branding calves
that day. Very fun! On the way out of town, we stopped at the Visitor Center
and here we got our second dose of "woodpecker attitude". Another RV'er asked
Brian if the drive around the park was worth it. Brian replied that, indeed,
the drive was worth it and detailed a few of the things we had seen. The
reply was, "I've seen plenty of buffalo in my lifetime." (We call it "woodpecker
attitude" because earlier, in Napa on May 1st, we had seen the hard-to-find
pileated woodpecker. As we were leaving the preserve where we'd seen it,
some people stopped and asked us if it would be worth walking in. We told
them about the things we'd seen, and their response was "Oh, well we have woodpeckers
back home". Well, gosh.)
