Today’s song of day was Modern Love by David Bowie
The lowest gas that we saw today was 3.99, in IDAHO (however the most expensive price we saw was 5.34, also in Idaho… the tragedy continues)
Aggressive signs for today
Texting can wait. Drive safely.
I start our post today in the middle of the night, when Jess got up to pee and the room was FREEZING (because we left all the windows open) and Elena made a cat noise (in inquiry of what was going on) every time Jess opened the bathroom door and fought with the windows
Jess can’t sleep when there are birds, and really Elena had no preference so the windows were shut (after Jess struggled to close the one for about 5 minutes, there was a stick in it)
Jess also had fever dreams about missing pictures in Washington state, and she panicked and needed to check both the book and the spreadsheet we made to make sure that we weren’t missing anything over thataway (we aren’t)
When we actually got up to start the day, we ate breakfast (and made tea this morning (that was nice)) - it was cold this morning man
We got rolling, as one does, but barely made it 30 minutes before we decided to pull off on the side of the road and take a whole bunch of pictures of the landscapes - We looked for a way to get down to the water for about 5 minutes, then we found one (there was like a little slope, and at the bottom was a dead fish and lots of rocks)
We had a lot of fun just hanging out by the water (the water had good vibes and geese)
But man was it so sunny, neither of us could see very well
Way too hard to see, or open eyes at all. The sun was right there and there were no clouds...
Jess stole a Montana rock
An intermission to add a quote from yesterday that I criminally forgot to put in yesterday's post:
“Can’t resist a good bop, even if it eliminates my rights” ~ Jess about “Come a Little Bit Closer”
“Would you listen to the Supreme Court if it was a bop then?” ~ Elena in response
“Moral dilemma, depends on the level of boppiness” ~ Jess in response to Elena
Also like a minor complaint: How come people just like, don’t know how to drive? The speed limit on the roads out here is rarely under 70, unless it's a work zone, but people are coasting in the left lane going like 6 mph and it's sad how many times we have to break our cruise control…
ALSO GUYS We got gas at a Sinclair gas station, and there was a dinosaur with a saddle (Peak life experience right there)
aahhhhhhhhhhh
EVERYONE PAST ILLINOIS DRIVE A WHITE CAR, AND THEY DON”T DO A GOOD JOB >~<
“The speed limit is 80” ~ Elena while looking vaguely menacing and cackling evilly
The way that we can tell if we take a curve too harshly, is if Bobby Frank and Ted slide across the dashboard, if they move a little it's alright, but like when they slide the whole way it's too much (or if we brake too hard they come flying at us…)
Also when we were leaving Montana, we were driving through some national forest. There were so many pine trees, so many, but then we, like, left that one, and saw a white pine tree???? And then entered another national forest promptly.
Which we exited almost as soon as we entered it.
BTW
David Bowie is relatable in so so many ways (but I won’t tell you in what ways, or what they are. I’m not sorry.)
The mountains look really photoshopped in Idaho, they were fine in supposed Montana, but they just look really fake here in Idaho.
There also seem to be a lot of fences in Idaho and Utah that just, like, go for a couple 100 meters, and then promptly end, all over the place, with a whole bunch next to each other but not connected.
Can anyone from like, west of Illinois explain that to me please?
We went to the Idaho Potato museum today (it was like the second touristy thing that we’ve done on this trip):
We had to socialize at the potato museum with the girls at the front desk but they were really cool so it wasn’t a huge deal
It was incredible, they had everything potato filled and that was it
We raced Mr. Potato head cars, and played a potato game
Potato peelers, mashers
Mr. Potato heads of every kind
Creepy animatronic potatoes >~<
“Taters for outta staters” - they gave us each a bag of powdered mashed potato mix
WE ate lunch (at 4:00 but ate, for those of you noticing a pattern, yes we do push back when we eat lunch by an hour every day)
We stopped at the “interstate oasis” rest stop (surprise it was a flying J) and there we interacted with two more people (two truckers)
The one was very excited to tell us about a vintage truck (but we did not follow him because Human Trafficking. He was actually very nice and was really just trying to show the us the truck, which was very cool, but better safe than abducted)
Every “Adopt a Highway” we’ve seen on this trip has belonged either to the “Target employees” or the “FedEx employees” and that really bothers Elena (for absolutely no reason).
We won’t leave our place of sleeping for food, but we WILL go out of our way to purchase ice cream and snacks (We’re middle children. We have issues).
We have reached Utah, and we could be seeing like the mighty five and all of the protected wildlife areas here, but instead we went to Salt Lake City and hung out with some Mormons instead (they were really nice to us!! But like, also, mormons…)
Elena could’ve engaged the one Mormon girl in a conversation because she spoke Japanese.
“She asked me in Japanese if I spoke Japanese, and then responded in Japanese that she also spoke Japanese, right after I had read her name tag which was in Japanese - I ran away from her because I am a middle child and I am so awkward… Jess is slowly growing tired of my Japanese muttering…” (Note from Jess: “I am not.”)
Overall, the mormon convention center we took pictures out was super sick, and literally the largest building type conference room thing we had ever seen
Jess talked to the girls that Invited us in, and they said that the conference center was used twice a year for “religious type ted talks” and that the area sat 21,000 people, and they rotated like 5 times that number of people throughout the convention center during those two conferences. (Crazy)
We got to the hotel, and there's a fridge, a freezer, a microwave, and a stovetop
Basically we could live here if we wanted to, but we’re not gonna.
The immortal cheese is doing pretty good, the lettuce however, hath expired and fallen into ruin.
A tragedy that we shall mourn for the rest of the trip (or at least until we get more lettuce…).
We actually did buy real food today, so almost two nights in a row (just with an intermission of not real food in between… we’re middle children we have issues, leave us out of this)
We hope to be asleep soon, because we actually socialized today with a lot of people.
And that is so exhausting after not having interacted with anyone but each other for like a week.
Also the middle child(ren) of the day are the Weasley Twins, Fred and George
“Our mother doesn’t pay enough attention to us, so we’re going to be codependent and cause problems.”
AHHHHHH
Okay
Scream at every octave possible
Be under pressure to socialize
Wail about relatable content
Now you know how we feel….
David Bowie and Freddie Mercury