Day Nine, Road Trip Randomness

I don't know if it came across at all in yesterday's blog, but I was a little grumpy about last night's hotel. I was sort of hoping to stay in a little nicer places while my dad was here splitting the costs with me, figuring we could afford better than the lower end motels I'd been staying at so far. He chose the Irma because it sounded unique and different and he thought it would be a fun night as part of my road trip experience. It was not the nice hotel I was hoping for as it is a historic building, but it worked out fine in the end. This morning, I was much more open to the idea of the Irma, which I learned was the original hotel in town, and seemed to be owned by or have some association with Buffalo Bill, who actually helped found the town of Cody, Wyoming (Cody was his last name) from what I can tell. The place even had an old fashioned toilet of sorts, obviously not from Buffalo Bill's era, but still somewhat of an antique. It was basically a hotel and a museum rolled into one, especially the restaurant, which appeared to have as much of the original architecture and fixtures as was possible as well as some memorabilia lining the walls. There was even an old telephone switchboard on display in the hotel hallway.

All in all, the Irma experience was worth it, but at the same time I'm very glad to be in the more comfortable room at the Comfort Inn in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Speaking of South Dakota, I went to two new states today, Montana and South Dakota. Part of the fun of road tripping across the country is stopping in the little turnouts by the welcome signs for each new state you enter. There have been several times when I have not been the only tourist taking cheesy photographs in front of those welcome signs as proof that I was indeed in that state, even if only for a few minutes/miles, as was the case with Montana today. But in my book, that still counts!While I'm on the subject, some other new states this trip so far have included Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. I had previously been to both Arizona and Nevada. Clearly, I'm doing pretty good in checking new states off the list and I'm not even halfway across the country yet, which means there are plenty more new ones to come!

Today was primarily another driving day. Originally, we were going to try to do Mount Rushmore late afternoon/early evening, but we got somewhat of a late start and the drive through the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming took much longer than we had anticipated thanks to crazy winding roads as illustrated by this road sign!

Prior to the mountains, we ran across an interesting sight: a military airplane graveyard. My dad and I both enjoy studying and looking at different aircraft and therefore decided to take a quick pit stop to look at the planes. Some of the planes were more recent rejects such as the green C-130s below, but some were also much older, including an older Navy war plane and a Royal Canadian Air Force prop plane. It was an amusing and unexpected sight on a beautiful, but somewhat repetetive scenic drive.

In keeping the blog flowing from topic to topic tonight, I wanted to mention something I left out of yesterday's blog which relates to today's plane sighting. As we were driving through Grand Teton National Park, yesterday, we passed by the Jacksonhole airport (seemed random to have a commercial airport in a national park, but whatever) and my dad caught sight of a unique plane sitting on the tarmack. Upon closer inspection, we realized it was a government plane as it had the same coloring as Air Force One, but was a smaller sized plane. My dad guessed that it might be Cheney's plane, which would have a call sign of Air Force Two, since he has a home in Wyoming. I looked online last night and sure enough I found an article stating that he flew home to spend the holiday weekend in Wyoming. Just another random sighting to add to the mix!

Speaking of random sightings, if you were reading yesterday's blog carefully, there was a certain animal that we were unable to find in Grand Teton or Yellowstone. Can you remember what it was? If not, just scroll a bit below and you'll see for yourself!

Yep, you guessed it, that is indeed a real live moose roaming this lush green pasture in the Bighorn Moutains of Wyoming! It was definitely the highlight of the day and is a close second in animal sightings, just behind the awesome sight of the bison walking across the highway in front of my car! Bullwinkle was just having some lunch and had no idea I was jumping up and down on the side of the road snapping pictures and high-fiving my dad that we found both a moose and a bear, which I figured would be the two hardest animals to find!

Finally, I just wanted to brag very quickly that we paid under $4 for gas today! In Gillette, Wyoming gas was between $3.83-$3.87!!! I've mostly been paying between $4.09-$4.29 for most of the trip so far, which is still much better than the $4.50+ I'd previously been paying in Southern California. But $3.84 was a definite record low for my road trip, which pleases me as it should definitely help keep me under budget, well, at least enough to cancel out the unexpected cost of my speeding ticket!

Well, I'm off to bed early tonight for a change, possibly before midnight which has unfortunatley been unheard of this trip. I love doing the blog and I know how grateful I'm going to be to have this momento after it's over, but it has been keeping me up late as I always have so much to say and usually don't get started until around 10pm and don't finish until at least midnight because uploading the pictures takes a long time, both to upload and then choose the best ones for the blog. Again, I'm not complaining, but I am thankful that tonight might be the exception to this craziness! I even got to do laundry tonight! Yay for clean clothes for tomorrow's big, exciting day at Mount Rushmore!!! I hope I find National Treasure 3 there! Wish me luck and maybe I'll share some of it with you!