So I was finally able to get the pictures from our trip up on Picasa. There’s an entire album there called “The Oregon Trail” with mostly pictures from Montana. Here are a few favorites:
We drove into a number of beautiful sunsets on our way out west.
Ray was the best Yellowstone guide in all Montana.
Ray and Laura in Yellowstone.
So much contrast in one place.
It's called Yellowstone for a reason.
We saw four elk just as big as this one, all in the same place.
There were litterally heards and heards of bison throughout Yellowstone.
Driving back to Ray's.
Ray and Judy's place was really fantastic.
Driving through the mountains makes ten hours go by really fast. I highly recommend it.
What I'm doing right now, in our new home in Portland.
Well we’re finishing up day 1 of our journey westward right now, and I’ve gotta say, moving is f***ing exhausting. We’ve been up since 8am and we’re only 2 hours from Minneapolis, but today was more full than the past week. The biggest event, of course, being the packing. My entire body is sore as hell. My feet, my knees, my thighs, my elbows, my hands… damn.
Most of the day was spent in packing up the remainder of our things and moving them downstairs and into our “Cube” in the alley. Our “cube” is basically this 6′ x 7′ x 8′ crate that we’re having shipped (I believe by truck) out to Portland with all of our stuff. And I do mean ALL of our stuff… or at least most all of it. We definitely filled the thing pretty damn near full today, excluding some cloths and things like that we packed in the car (which definitely still would have fit in the “cube”. Throughout the day we had a fair amount of help from Kate and Mike, my Mom and Molly, who were all a great deal of help. My mom brought chili over for lunch which was especially fantastic. All in all we worked for a good 8 hours just finishing packing things into boxes and hauling them down to the cube. Around 5:30 I called U-Pack (our movers) to pick up the cube, thinking it wouldn’t get picked up until the next day, and within about 30 minutes it was gone. It was a little unsettling seeing it gone, but relieving to know it was on it’s way.
Finally, we started cleaning up the apartment, which is one of the worst activities to do after you’ve been busting your ass hauling stuff around all day. We eventually got to the point where we just said “fcuk it”, packed the remainder of our things into the car and hit the road. I think we ended up leaving around 8 or 9pm, which was fine. The plan for leaving tonight was just to shave off a few hours of travel for the trip tomorrow. The goal for tomorrow is Bozeman, MT where my Uncle Ray and Cousin Biz live. Bozeman is about 13 hours from Minneapolis, and we’re figuring the difference between 10 and 13 hours is work the night drive. Besides, all of our stuff is packed up so we would have wound up sleeping on the floor of our apartment anyway.
So here we are, in room 133 of the Super 8 Motel in Alexandria, MN, so exhausted it hurts to think that I need stand up again to take my much needed shower. Very excited for bed, and very excited for the remainder of this trip. Can you guess how many times I’ve written “remainder” in this blog entry without looking back? Anyway. I need to shower and I need to sleep. More adventures tomorrow.