somewhere in the middle......
(the following journal entry for day 6 was written by Alyssa T. Banner)
somewhere in the middle between our previous san francisco home and our brand new, not yet identified, new york city one bedroom apartment with a view of the skyline, laundry in the basement (it's ok if it's coin operated), second floor brownstone walk-up apartment with a natural and health foods grocery store on the corner, we found ourself in fog thicker than the clouds airplanes fly through when they are beginning their ascent or their descent, same difference. candra did a great job driving during the daytime fog, and i pulled the home stretch in the night fog. i felt like an idiot in front of candra when i was pulled over by a montana trooper for speeding (he only charged me 20 bucks and now i have a montana court date that i don't have to show up for). but then i didn't feel so bad when candra got pulled over by a park ranger in yellowstone national park. candra was so confident that she wasn't speeding, that her confidence was misconstrued by the park ranger as attitude and i had to quickly take over the talking for both of us, telling the park ranger our whole life story to try to get out of a ticket. when the park ranger said she was just going to run our info and then give us a warning, she stepped away to go to her car and i hoped she didn't see that i had just gotten a speeding ticket in montana a few hours before. then i turned to candra and said, "be nice, if you give her attitude, she'll give us a ticket, i know you're right but just kiss up to her." Candra quietly gestured with a slight head nod towards my window and i turned to my right to see that a second park ranger was standing and smiling at my window while we waited for the other ranger to come back. I politely smiled, knowing that she had heard our whole conversation. then the other ranger returned, checked our car for alcohol or drugs and let us continue on our way. 20 bucks to enter the park, an entire day detour, and we didn't even see a geyser, the mammoth hot springs was cool, though. i thought we would be able to sit and soak and relax in a natural hot springs, but oh no, it's like some prehistoric, or maybe not quite that ancient, but definitely old, natural phenomenon with steaming piles of white and pink sulfur that smells like fart. and it was raining.
lucky for us, the main road out of yellowstone happened to be closed, so we had to take some back-country road through the Black Horn Mountains late at night going 20-30 miles an hour. I would have never looked at a map and pointed to these mountains in Wyoming and said, "I want to go there," but trying to make the best of it, we acknowledged that what we saw before nightfall in those parts, was quite spectacular. well, at least for Wyoming it really was. We didn't like Wyoming, and it seemed really really big, even though the map of the US that we have doesn't do it's size justice. We ended up spending the night in Gillette, Wyoming. it was a little bit more interesting than Butte, Montana, where we stayed the night before, although we heard that John Kerry was staying across the street from us in Butte, but we didn't see him. We really wanted to stay in Emblem, Wyoming - population 10, but that was just to be able to say we made it 12 for a night. probably lucky for us, none of these ten people decided to run a hotel as a career.
somewhere in the middle between our previous san francisco home and our brand new, not yet identified, new york city one bedroom apartment with a view of the skyline, laundry in the basement (it's ok if it's coin operated), second floor brownstone walk-up apartment with a natural and health foods grocery store on the corner, we found ourself in fog thicker than the clouds airplanes fly through when they are beginning their ascent or their descent, same difference. candra did a great job driving during the daytime fog, and i pulled the home stretch in the night fog. i felt like an idiot in front of candra when i was pulled over by a montana trooper for speeding (he only charged me 20 bucks and now i have a montana court date that i don't have to show up for). but then i didn't feel so bad when candra got pulled over by a park ranger in yellowstone national park. candra was so confident that she wasn't speeding, that her confidence was misconstrued by the park ranger as attitude and i had to quickly take over the talking for both of us, telling the park ranger our whole life story to try to get out of a ticket. when the park ranger said she was just going to run our info and then give us a warning, she stepped away to go to her car and i hoped she didn't see that i had just gotten a speeding ticket in montana a few hours before. then i turned to candra and said, "be nice, if you give her attitude, she'll give us a ticket, i know you're right but just kiss up to her." Candra quietly gestured with a slight head nod towards my window and i turned to my right to see that a second park ranger was standing and smiling at my window while we waited for the other ranger to come back. I politely smiled, knowing that she had heard our whole conversation. then the other ranger returned, checked our car for alcohol or drugs and let us continue on our way. 20 bucks to enter the park, an entire day detour, and we didn't even see a geyser, the mammoth hot springs was cool, though. i thought we would be able to sit and soak and relax in a natural hot springs, but oh no, it's like some prehistoric, or maybe not quite that ancient, but definitely old, natural phenomenon with steaming piles of white and pink sulfur that smells like fart. and it was raining.
lucky for us, the main road out of yellowstone happened to be closed, so we had to take some back-country road through the Black Horn Mountains late at night going 20-30 miles an hour. I would have never looked at a map and pointed to these mountains in Wyoming and said, "I want to go there," but trying to make the best of it, we acknowledged that what we saw before nightfall in those parts, was quite spectacular. well, at least for Wyoming it really was. We didn't like Wyoming, and it seemed really really big, even though the map of the US that we have doesn't do it's size justice. We ended up spending the night in Gillette, Wyoming. it was a little bit more interesting than Butte, Montana, where we stayed the night before, although we heard that John Kerry was staying across the street from us in Butte, but we didn't see him. We really wanted to stay in Emblem, Wyoming - population 10, but that was just to be able to say we made it 12 for a night. probably lucky for us, none of these ten people decided to run a hotel as a career.