- Washington, Idaho and Montana all have pretty decent highways. Wyoming has extremely smooth and even but crack riddled highways. South Dakota apparently has never heard of a laser level ( Their highways cross open FLAT land but somehow are so uneven that they somehow used up most of the travel in my suspension while cruising by grassland of the road that looks like it would offer a more comfortable ride. Minnesota has never heard of a shoulder, and when there is one it is so full of 4ft tall weeds and trash (mostly blown tires) that it is unusable. And Wisconsin / Illinois drivers are in to big of a hurry to observe a speed limit, or even that imaginary speed limit that is 20mph higher then whatever is posted.
- While Constantly rising and falling in the mountains of Montana and Wyoming I learned that I could very accurately use the thermometer in my car as an altimeter, and was quickly and accurately estimating my elevation.
- Several movie quotes came to mind when I came across this..
"You...Shall Not...PASS!!!" and of course "Your going the wrong way!!!"
- I went on a tour of windy cave, it was really cool. They have mapped 130+ miles of it as and think that that's only about 5% of it. I tried to take some pictures but my little camera doesn't like low light photos...
- This is "Box-work" This cave has 95% of the Box-work in the world. It is really cool and it was everyehere. This was the best photo I could get. It is about as thin and fragile as a potato chip.
- It's hard to get a nighttime pic of Mt Rushmore with this camera, This is the clearest one I got. There were two huge Thunderstorms right behind the mountain, It was really cool to see.
- Speaking of Thunderstorms, I slept in my car the first 3 nights (Surprisingly comfortable) and every single night there was a huge thunderstorm right over me. Woke me up once or twice each night.
- So when I got the Old Faithful Geyser It had just gone off, then I found it it would be 2 hrs until it went off again, so I killed some time in the visitors center and watching a 20min slideshow about wolves. It was scheduled to erupt at 8:05 ( +/- 10min ) well it erupted 30sec before 8:05.... so much for "Faithful". But it was really cool, it shot about 60ft high for about 30sec. The sun set a little before that so my camera did it's best with the low light.
- When I hit the humidity of the wetlands I realized why so many cultures believed heaven was on top of a mountain, it would be cool, low humidity and the air wouldn't be like soup.
-The cheapest Gas I found was $3.25 and it was in this small town with the refinery...
- This was pretty normal normal in the really high elevations, car unable to go faster then 61 in 4th gear. But I was getting killer MPG's...
- This may seem like simple directions to you, drive on this road for 391 miles, then turn right. But what I see is, "Spend $50 to fill your tank, Empty your tank, then turn right."
- This is what happens when you have cereal at 9000ft in Yellowstone then don't open the milk until somewhere in Wyoming, elevation... I don't know, a lot lower then 9000ft.
- In the land of Corn you can buy higher octane gas for cheaper then regular, I think it has something to do with the Ethanol abundance around here.
- Free travel.... SO TEMPTING....
So that's a summary of my first few days traveling....
