On the road again

Matt and I are in Yellowstone, staying with his parents after having met back up in Minneapolis. Although we’ve thoroughly enjoyed the summer thus far, we’re glad to be away from cities for awhile so that we can spend some time outdoors. Yellowstone is a first for me and absolutely breathtaking. Matt has been here several times though so when I make fart jokes due to the sulfur smells in the park, it just really isn’t that funny….

Matt was able to make it through the Upper Peninsula, down to Minneapolis, up north to his family reunion and back down to get me all on the vegetable oil that we got in Ann Arbor, Michigan. What a relief it is to not have to think about fuel hunting. He said that the time with his family in Minnesota was as bad as the Badlands are bad….because he likes the Badlands.

I took a Greyhound bus to go from Michigan to Minnesota, a form of public transportation I’ve never experienced before. Let’s just say that trains and planes will forever be more boring after this. It was great people watching and I actually enjoyed it, from the driver revealing that he was on probation for bad driving (after he broke his side mirror off of our bus through a tollbooth) all the way to having to fend off a hulk of a man that kept falling asleep on me. He was what I call an “oozer.” The person who sits next to you that ends up taking up half of your seat, forcing you to form a barricade with your carry on luggage. I wasn’t above using elbow jabs either, especially when he started resting his head on my shoulder/lap.

Minneapolis was beautiful and Matt and I love the diversity of that city, not to mention how much it promotes biking as a form of transportation. Amazing. After that, we ended up in South Dakota, a state that is known for three things: The Corn Palace, Wall Drug and Mt. Rushmore. Road trips are all about the weird factor so we went to the first two but somehow skipped the national monument. The Corn Palace was made of, well, corn. We also filtered oil there in the rain while I held a tarp over us. Wall Drug was a tourist zoo, although they did have 5 cent coffee and we had our picture taken in front of a fake Mt. Rushmore.

Western South Dakota = unexpectedly beautiful. We drove through the Badlands and the Black Hills although we couldn’t find a camping place at the latter so we pitched our tent in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Woke up to an old man stepping out of his RV and telling us that we give Arizona a bad time. We’re still not sure if he was joking or not.

We have been very lucky since Michigan with finding oil and haven’t had to search too hard. At a Mexican restaurant in Gillete, the owner told us, “You guys put the green in me. I will get a vegetable car, too.”

Next stop: Portland.