south dakota 1

our trip this year ended up being a little bit over 3,000 miles for me and a little bit under for M -- my drive down to and back from her place being the difference.

we got up early and left renton wa around 7am thursday, stopped at ellensburg wa for a latte (for M, not me) at a neat little shop which makes great lattes and gives you one of those little caffeine drops for free (which means nothing to me since i have no knowledge of that coffee game -- i prefer tea), then had lunch at mickey d's in ritzville wa, drove across idaho (that part of the drive, across idaho, took about an hour -- hahaha, it's so leetle...) and stopped for supper and beds at deer lodge, montana.

the restaurant where we ate supper has great food (we both had liver and onions) and is owned by the people who have the motel -- they're right next door to each other. it rained off and on throughout the day and there aren't any pictures.

the next morning (friday) it became windy, began raining in earnest, and continued being inclement all day long. we pulled into spearfish, at the north end of the hills, about 7 or 8 pm. we had been stopped for 45 minutes for construction about 20 miles from spearfish and figured oh well.

as it turned out, the universe was doing us a favor because when we got to the motel (we had not made any reservations) the guy at the desk said they had just had a cancellation and it was all that was available. thanks, universe! we had a late supper (rain still coming down in buckets) at perkins and decided we would spend the next day at the same place since we couldn't do a whole lot of sightseeing through the rain anyhow. still no pictures.

saturday we drove over to sturgis (M wanted to be able to say she'd been there) and looked around, then headed back to spearfish, and decided to have a late lunch at the latch string inn. it is a relatively new building -- definitely not the one i first saw in 1976. we then decided to catch a movie but arrived just in time to be an hour late, due to the time zone change. oh well, again, so we grabbed some food from the giant wal-mart, took it back to the motel, and lazed around reading and watching tv the rest of the evening. still no pictures.