Jess and Elena
- Jul 10, 2022
- 4 min read

Day 9: Butte, and too much time in a Walmart parking lot

Salutations and many greetings :>

Today’s song of the day was Shut UP and Dance by Walk The Moon

The lowest gas price we saw the whole day was 4.89 and that is devastating.

Today's middle child of the day is John Mulaney (brush your teeth, BOOM orange juice, THAT"S LIFE - the forever mood of the middle child)

Aggressive sings for the day:

An exit sign advertising Yellowstone every 3 minutes
Buckle up so we can see you again
CLICK IT, DON’T RISK IT
DO YOUR PART. DRIVE RESPONSIBLY.
CLICK IT OR TICKET. BUCKLE UP.

We started our morning earlier than the alarms again today, our bodies simply hate us…

However, the Airbnb that we stayed in was 11/10 very comfy

There was pancake mix! (we would’ve made pancakes but we lacked ¾ main ingredients needed to actually make them… national tragedy)

Side note: Jess and Elena are terrible at finding anything, the bathroom had a light and a light switch to turn it on, and not once while we were in the Airbnb did we turn the bathroom light on (a lie, Elena turned it on when she found it, and then promptly turned it off again. After that we didn’t use it)

Proof of the light switch for the bathroom, from last night's fridge selfie

It was also cloudy last night, so we couldn’t see any stars, and Elena was very distressed by this fact

WE NEED TO CLEAN THE WINDSHIELD (Elena cleans it every time we stop but it “GETS DiSgUSTing EvErY TIME WE STart dRiving AgaiN” ~ Elena in distress)

The windshield is still nasty... I'm crying

Mountains are pretty, like really pretty

But like they also have snow on them and that feels incorrect

We are going to miss the amount of green and the trees very dearly

Going around a curve marked 60 at 85… YEET/ YOINK/YONK

Today was the shortest drive we’ve done so far, and yet…

It still took us 8 hours to get where we were going

In Butte, we stopped to take pictures because the area was really pretty, and then a guy in a cowboy hat proceeded to give us a mini history lesson, which was much appreciated

Unlike the journalist that we encountered, he was not condescending at all, rather he was really cute because he was excited and yet so apologetic to tell us about his town. He was cool.

Good vibes to cowboy hat guy.

All of the streets in Butte are named after states, like why? Is that like a city thing? Does every city in every state compete to have the most roads named after other states?

Someone explain this to me. Please, I’m so confused.

Then we were like, “Oh we gotta go to Walmart to get the oil changed” and also like, buy more mayo and Elena bought turkey for her lunch sandwiches and dish soap because we didn’t buy any of that either

“I bought cereal so that I don't have to eat bread for breakfast… I can't eat that much bread everyday”

So we stocked up on those necessities, and

I bought another tomato cuz the other one froze...

We, of course, did not buy lettuce (because we cannot function like adults and neither of us has the ability to remember everything we need. So between the two of us, we usually hit about 80% of the things that we actually wanted / needed to buy)

WE SAT IN THE WALMART PARKING LOT FOR LIKE AN HOUR AND A HALF

But Elena had a meeting at 4:00 (Montana time) and was stressed because her laptop was in the car and the car was getting its oil changed

“I have 7,000 steps for today, 4,000 of which are from pacing up and down the curb stressed”

Elena made sad/distressed noises for about an hour, because that is how she copes with stress

We ate lunch today (at like 3:00, but at least we ate) and we did it on the ground in the Walmart parking lot, sitting on the curb, looking a little bit sad with our cooler and Walmart grocery bag of bread

Elena dropped chocolate on the floor today (devastating)

The tally of dropping things, is Elena: 2 Jess: 1 and ground: 3 us: 0

So, really, we’re both losing.

Elena made her zoom meeting on time, for those of you who were worried about it.

The Montana mountains are not friendly to zoom meetings, so we pulled off to a rest stop and sat in the parking lot.

“JESS LOCKED ME IN THE CAR AND TOOK THE KEY WITH HER”

“I didn’t want you to get kidnapped!!! I’m not sorry about it”

The car alarm went off when Elena tried to get out of the car, and she stood there as it was screaming trying to get her phone to call Jess, while the people parked next to the car simply laughed at her.

ALSO

An immortal cheese update they have been named and given personality.

And by personality, I mean Jess drew on them with a sharpie.