Montana-Washington (aka Speed Racer and the Toys)

It's been a while since I actually posted here and after that last post I'm sure there's someone out there wondering what happened next. Did Shawn and Ana arrive safely on the West Coast? Were they instead abducted by aliens? Did they join a militia in Northern Idaho and prepare for the invasion of Canada via the Idaho panhandle? Did Ana's wild mountain driving make them careen off the road and into a ravine? Are they heading up COBRA, an evil terrorist organization determined to rule the world? No. Rest assured that the trip so far has been proceeding pretty much as planned with the exception that we've been forced to reevaluate the oceangoing leg of this summer's adventures. More on that in some future post.

Now for the last leg of the 2009 Road Trip for a little while.

Here's the route so far:


At the end of my last update, we were staying in a motel in Billings, Montana. Since then we've transitted all the way to my in-laws house in Kent, Washington. We had all sorts of plans for more places to stop on the way, but after a month of living out of the car and our suitcases camping in Yellowstone or the Badlands had lost a tiny bit of its lustre.

So the rest of our trip was supposed to take two or three days and ended up taking one. Oops (tiny oops).

The day began with both of us waking up way too early and piling back into the car with the little dogs looking all sorts of alert:

That morning I nearly caught myself a free bunny (which would have made it not free anymore):


I'd've had it, but Ana said I couldn't keep it (add that to the list). Still, I suppose it's better than having some Montana Game Warden tell me I couldn't keep it.

I'm not sure exactly where it was, but somewhere along the way we found the most customer friendly porta-potty West of the Mississippi.

We nearly ran out of gas just shy of the Montana/Idaho state line and had to stop. I don't know the name of the town we were in, but it was apparently the site of some sort of 4-wheel ATV rally. As soon as we got off the interstate, everywhere we looked we were surrounded by dozens of random folks riding around helmetless on their ATVs. Each one had either a dog, a gun rack, a small child, or a large cooler mounted on the back and the whole scene was so completely odd and Ana and I were so busy gawking that neither one of us thought to take a picture until we were fueled up and back on the road.

What we did manage to take pictures of though was lots of scenery:


For no real reason, we also snapped pictures of every manner of shiny, vintage car, bike, or truck we saw along the way:





We even passed a trailer loaded with these little old Italian scooters:


Speaking of frivolous photography, every time we had a legitimate reason to stop I've made a point of getting myself some sort of useless toy to add to the dashboard collection. The whole thing started innocently enough:


Then it got worse:


And by the time we were pulling into the garage at my in-laws' house, the dashboard toy collection had sort of spiralled into ridiculousness:


It was a long day of driving and by the time we were in Washington State, little Ru had fallen fast asleep:


It was all adorable until Ana decided to wake her up:

(she's so mean to those poor little dogs)

Still, we'd arrived at last on the West Coast. We ended up staying for about a week and Ana continued doing all of her nerd stuff:


Meanwhile I made helmet molds, unpacked a bit, did some camping, sold some stuff, lit a lot of things on fire, and ate a buffalo wing that was so hot it nearly burned out my O-ring:


Those are all subjects for future posts though, so stay tuned.