Rocky Mountain Oysters / Bull Testes

I can’t keep up.

Where were we last? Montana? Seriously? No way. That was forever ago. Okay I’ll start there.

Yellowstone National Park costs 25 bucks to drive through, but hey we did get to see a few bison hanging by the road, some elk roaming in the distant fields, and Old Faithful blew her top while we drank Montana soda pop. The area was seriously insane. Paint pots gurgled in a creamy white paste, bacteria mats were plastered around the sulfurous geysers, and steam constantly spewed from cracks in the earth. Then, you drive for two minutes and you’re back in lush wilderness. It was like being on another planet.

Leaving Y-stone was the worst, as it dumped us out on this terribly tiny road that we were stuck on for seriously 4 hours. We drove through a town with population 47, no joke. Gas stations were shut down, there wasn’t any food in sight, and we had to grin and bear it until we found a Taco John’s by the University of Wyoming way down the road. We saw 6 deer during that drive, all of which were right by the highway, and three came out at the same time when a momma deer walked her two babies right in front of our car. We were going 75 and had to slam on the breaks to just miss the collision. Deer need to evolve and realize that pavement is a no-no.

Then came the real trouble. We started calling hotels in Casper, a town 100 miles away at the time, only to slowly figure out that every room in the entire area is booked because of a freaking rodeo fair. Apparently, as we understood it, this is Wyoming’s big rodeo week where all the hillbillies pile in their F-150’s, trailer hitch a steed, and zip on down for some good old fashioned fun in no-man’s-land Wyoming to out-redneck one another in competition. For this reason, every neighboring town west and north of the area had been booked for months. We were stranded.

We wanted to sleep at 11:30, we got to sleep at nearly 4. We drove all night until we reached a town called Chugwater, Wyoming, where we stayed at the Buffalo Inn & Grill. Signs along the walls of the entryway said things like “Cowboys”, “Cowgirls”, and “Cowkids”, which had Abby laughing for twenty minutes. Nobody was at the front desk, so we rang this bell forever until this mammoth woman emerged from her lair, squinting but not saying a word. She was able to check us in in one of the funniest moments we’re had on the trip so far. She was so mean to me, had gray-stubble on her chin from where she hadn’t shaved, and had the neck of her sleeping shirt drooping low over her left shoulder, which revived my number 8 taco combo from 4 ½ hours before back to the brim of my throat. She handed me a key with nothing on it, told me to check out room 206, and proceeded to hand me the TV remote to the room. We were so tired that all of us were delirious and thought it may have been a dream, but in the morning we were reminded that she in fact was a troll and that every bit of her disgust was retained.

We bounced on to Denver, CO, a place not previously charted on the AAA travel sheet. We thought it would be a huge bonus to see the city, but in actuality it was pretty lame. Granted we only spent 4 hours in the city, and at least 3 of them consisted of eating at Noodles & Company and walking through the Denver Art Museum (DAM). We grabbed a beer on the way out at a less than memorable tap-room called the Great Divide Brewing Company. The beer was mediocre and the room felt the way it does when you shower for twenty minutes in a small room, and the steam takes over your lungs and turns your legs to jelly. Hit some traffic on the way out, and we landed in Goodland, Kansas.

We’re currently staying at America’s Best Value Inn, which is seriously an amazing hotel. Best continental breakfast ever, with fresh self-made waffles, biscuits and gravy, oranges, the works. It's here that we watched Harry Potter and a program about America’s best steaks until we passed out from the traveling.

We’re off to do it again, next stop Lawrence Kansas to see the amazing Emily Renfro, one of Abby’s buds from school. Can’t wait to hang out with somebody.