Five States in Four Days

Four weeks after returning from China, Lisa and I embarked on yet another one of our road trips.

Lisa and I survived the four day trek to Montana with only a few hairy situations. The smoke from the California fires extended into Nevada and was quite a sight to behold. We had a nice dinner in Reno and continued our first night’s journey to Winnemucca. Winnemucca is a town I hope to never visit again. The trouble actually started on the road to the dismal town. Lisa and I were accosted by a bored/enraged/delusional truck driver. We somehow annoyed this truck driver and he decided to start swerving onto the shoulder and median in order to send a lot of dirt up into the air and block our vision. When we finally passed him, he high beamed us. He must have never seen Thelma and Louise. What a lucky man I didn’t feel like blowing up his truck!

When we got to the lovely hamlet (insert thick sarcasm here), we quickly found our Motel 6. As we used the bathroom and pulled back the sheets, Lisa and I discovered a lot of hair—and none of it ours! We started playing the game “How many hairs can you find?” and, unfortunately, I won. There was hair of various textures all over the room. Lisa and I slept in little balls on our beds trying to touch as little as possible. Lisa, the professional kvetcher she is, complained to the manager. He did not seem surprised and offered us a free stay at our next Motel 6 in Salt Lake City.

We decided to take the manager up on his offer but, alas, the Motel 6 in Salt Lake City wasn’t much better. We were in the very back and there was no direct access to our room so we had to go through this narrow tunnel I duly named “The Rape Tunnel.” Lisa and I were unimpressed so we booked a room at a Courtyard Marriot and were quite happy with our stay there. On the other hand, Salt Lake City itself was a big disappointment. I figured that a city with such a wealthy church would somehow distribute that wealth a bit more. I try to keep in mind that people may think the same thing when they see Sacramento for the first time (except for the church part, of course). However, the people surrounding the LDS Temple area were very friendly. My good mood, nevertheless, was dampened when Lisa and I were flipped off by a passenger in a vehicle that ran a red light. They break the law and we get the bird?! What injustice!

Lisa and I were excited to leave behind the extremely dry and disappointing Salt Lake City. Our third day of travel had Lisa and I traverse across four states: Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. In Idaho, Lisa and I were blessed with the opportunity to watch some roadway cows get busy with each other. It was our first time seeing cow sex. The heifer seemed unimpressed as she just kept chewing her cud. While in Idaho, Lisa and I thought of our Irish friend Andy. We decided that Idaho was the place for him. It’s the home of potatoes and an Ireland Bank. Lisa and I then paid more homage to Andy by stopping at a local Wal-Mart in search of the board game Dirty Minds. However, it must not be a family friendly game because it was not stocked. We mourned our failure to find the thought provoking game and resigned ourselves to more Mad Libs. Our hotel of destination was a Best Western in West Yellowstone, Montana. It was a large, clean, hairless room. Whoo hoo!

While in Yellowstone, I saw a scary side of Lisa. Apparently, poor, sheltered Lisa was so excited to see a coyote in the wild that she channeled Linda Blair from The Exorcist. She started yelling in an otherworldly deep voice for me to take a picture. When I asked where, she simply yelled, “THERE!” But since she never specified where “there” was, I was too late to capture the pitiful coyote with my camera.

Lisa and I also saw the idiotic side of the average person. There was a 10-15 minute backup on the roadway. At first, I assumed some bison wandered on the road; I was annoyingly surprised when we figured out that the people were stopping traffic to watch deer. Deer! I mean, seriously, they don’t even have deer in zoos because they’re too insignificant. Not that I want them killed or anything, I just don’t want to be delayed while people watch Bambi graze. After Yellowmite….Yosestone…I mean Yellowstone, we headed to our final destination: Helena, Montana. We ate at the Windbag Saloon and were surprised to find out almost everything closed down between 5 pm and 6pm on Saturday night. Our mood was further diminished when we discovered that most of the businesses (Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and Target excluded) were closed on Sunday. Welcome to smaller town America! Quite a change from fast paced California and Shanghai.