Blogging While Traveling - It's Harder Than It Looks!

Really? It's nine days later?! Yikes!

So, we'd planned to stay in West Yellowstone for two nights and explore Yellowstone National Park. However, there was an unexpected snowstorm, and we decided it was in our best interests to avoid the area and set our sights on Thermopolis - home of the world's largest mineral hot springs! It was a great consolation prize! We first treated ourselves to the free hot springs, courtesy of Hot Springs State Park, and as we decided to stay in the park, our hotel had its own hot spring as well. Twice in the hot springs! If only every stop had a hot spring to relax and restore us!

Look! There's a sign!

Thermopolis was a charming little town, with a surprisingly good Thai restaurant. It continued to feed our appreciation of Wyoming.

There were buffalo, too!

From Thermopolis we headed to Bozeman, MT. We had a hotel reservation in Missoula, and I wanted to see my old friend Carolyn, but we were still concerned about possible snow. Thankfully, it mostly bypassed both Bozeman and Missoula!

Sure, we saw some along the way -

And then there was this, in Bozeman

But by the next morning, the roads were clear, and the snow that remained was on trees and lawns.

Great sign in Bozeman

Another great bit of Bozeman

Seeing old friends is another great thing about a road trip!

In Bozeman I picked up another skein for my Find Your Fade shawl, which I'm calling the Traveling Fade since I'm trying to make it with yarns picked up on our travels. It was from Mountain Colors, a yarn company out of Corvalis, Montana. I picked up a skein of Raven Ridge yarn in Missoula. This was a yarn I was totally unfamiliar with. The shawl is coming along nicely. I think, however, that it will be on pause while we're in Fort Bragg since we're not actually traveling. Also, this will give me an opportunity to work on the other projects I have with me.

Here's the shawl in progress. I've already added the lighter colour (from Raven Ridge) and am currently wondering whether I'll stop at a yarn store in Eureka. I just had a full weekend at Knit City where I shopped for other projects; I don't know how far I can push my traveling companions' indulgence of my yarn habit...

There's a lot to see along the way, and sometimes one simply takes a picture out the car window.

I know we're only up to days 5 & 6, but that feels like a lot for one post. We'll be settled in Fort Bragg soon, and I promise to catch up then!

Wyoming! Who Knew?!

We're making tracks! From Sioux Falls we drove to Rapid City, SD. Unfortunately our hotel was horrid, designed with a pre-Glasnost Soviet frame of mind, but one should expect there to be a few dogs in the bunch. Since then we've done much better, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Despite the accommodations and the weather (drizzly/rainy), we made it to two stops in Rapid City worth seeing - The Dinosaur Park and the Chapel in the Hills.

The Dinosaur Park overlooks the city and was a Works Progress Administration project, which made me love it more. It's pretty amusing as the dinosaurs are not meant to be "realistic."

Then we made our way to the Chapel in the Hills, which is an exact replica of the Borgund stave church in Norway (hit the link and find out what that means). I wasn't sure I'd be impressed, but the all-wood structure is really beautiful, and it was easy to see why there were going to be three weddings taking place there that day.

Our goal for the day was to see Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial. We lucked out that the rain lifted, and the clouds cleared so we could actually see Mount Rushmore. Unfortunately, the Crazy Horse Memorial was blanketed in fog, so we didn't get to see that.

We like to call this "Liss with Little Edie"

We spend the night in Buffalo, WY, which we all loved! Our hotel was great (we ended up talking with the owner the next morning at breakfast; the owner, by the way, described himself as "left of Bernie," which made our hearts swell even more), and we had dinner at the Occidental Saloon where legends such as Calamity Jane and Butch Cassidy once had a drink. We were lucky to see Taylor Corum perform, and his countrified version of Purple Rain was great. Wyoming made us love it!