We saw this in a parade in Winlock, WA. Have they not seen Wayne's World?!

almost home

These are the last few photos from our Illinois-to-Washington trip. Sorry it's taken me so long to post them.


Ellensburg:


Our bed and breakfast in the Olympia area. The moving truck wasn't going to arrive for another day, so we needed a bed to sleep in. Bummer that it was such a bad location. :)

Jackson is so patient with Liam (though you can tell he's not thrilled that Liam is sitting on him).

Welcome to Washington

I was waiting for this sign, but it almost slipped by before I could snap a photo.

Our hotel "room" (more like townhouse) in Spokane was amazing, and it was incredibly cheap.

I think the absolute hole we stayed in the previous night might have been more expensive than this place. What a nice pick-me-up after that disastrous night in Butte. Then again, we didn't know the disaster that awaited us later in the evening. . . .

We went out for a delicious dinner with my childhood friend (and bridesmaid) Kathleen. I think we hadn't seen her since 2000 or 2001! It was wonderful to spend time with her. I'm bummed that we didn't get any photos, but hopefully we'll see her more often now that we live a lot closer.

We left Jackson in the hotel room while we went out, because he hates being left in the car, and we'd had to do that every time we ate at a restaurant for the whole trip. (Most hotels don't allow you to leave your dog in the room unattended, but this one did. Little did they--and we--know . . .)

Apparently, Jackson was frantic when we left. He hates it when we leave him anywhere (except home--and he doesn't even really like it when we do that). He goes nuts and does whatever he can to follow us. I suppose we should've known this would happen. If only we had put up the blinds! I can't imagine all the howling that the other hotel guests had to deal with. Bottom line: $400 worth of damage. No, I'm not kidding. I wish I were. (Yes, I know it's ridiculous--two sets of blinds for $400?!)

a few more Yellowstone videos

Fountain Paint Pot

This is a bison calf on the walkway at Fountain Paint Pot. I did not zoom in; (s)he really was that close to us. Before you write a comment chastising us for putting Liam (and the bison) in danger, let me say that we had absolutely no choice. The bison were surrounding us, and they kept getting closer. There was nowhere to go. (That didn't stop a woman who saw this happen from giving us a good talking-to. I guess she thought we should've used our jet packs to blast up and away.)

This is Old Faithful right at the end of an eruption:

I couldn't help taking this video of the Firehole River. The scenery and the sounds were too beautiful.

yet more Yellowstone stuff

This coyote was munching on some sort of carcass:

Video of the coyote. You can hear Jackson whining in the background. I'm narrating the video, but you probably can't hear me, because I had about 1% of my voice left by this point.

I'm pretty sure this is the island in the Firehole River on which my family had lunch back in 1987 or so:

geothermal feature by Fountain Paint Pot:

While we were at Fountain Paint Pot, this herd of bison came strolling up. There was nowhere we could go; they were surrounding us (I'll also post a crazy video).

Saying goodbye to Yellowstone (north entrance):

These are a couple of awesome photos our friend Scott took in Billings.

Jackson enjoyed having his own bed at our hotel in West Yellowstone.

more Yellowstone photos

There were quite a few animal remains in this area. We think perhaps this is an area where predators (wolves?) hunt and/or eat.

A couple geothermal features we saw along the road