Day Three

"A man's got to know his limitations"

- Dirty Harry (as played by Clint Eastwood) - don't click on the link if you intend to see the movie someday.

Current Location: Gillette, WY
Miles Traveled: 1978

Day three of the journey had a bit more of a relaxed feel to it. It was very nice to wake up in a bed for starters.

The plan for the morning was to meat up with Joan MacMillan (former RA in Roble) and Boise resident for brunch. We went to Goldy's Breakfast Bistro and the food was phenomenal! I had a two egg scramble with mushrooms and spinach, a chicken pesto sausage, red flannel hash (potatoes, bacon, and beets), and a blueberry pancake. SO TASTY!

Catching up with Joan was terrific, too. She's about to leave Boise for Moscow, ID to start law school, will be leaving her education policy job, and is also getting married in three weeks or so. My concentration for my Public Policy major was Education Policy, so we got to talk shop a little bit, too.

After breakfast, I headed to Tully's Coffee Shop to use their internet, just to find that it wasn't working. I was going to carefully neglect to tell you this next part since it makes me seem like a fragile old man, but oh well. So to make matters worse, when I got up to leave and picked up my bag, I felt a twinge in my lower back. I don't know if this is actually throwing out my back, but it hurts to stand up straight. I'm sure that sleeping in the car sitting up didn't help, but it's hard not to feel a little wimpy knowing that I tweaked my back just by picking up a bag.

Anyway, I then started my drive from Boise to Yellowstone. On the way, I saw that the Spain - Portugal game was tied 0-0 at halftime, so I decided to get off the freeway at Twin Falls (more on Twin Falls in another post) to watch the end of the game. I avoided The Olive Garden, Chili's, and Applebees and settled on Maxie's Tomato Shack (or something like that). It felt like a chain and looked like a chain, but I don't know if it actually was.

After chatting with a guy at the bar about soccer and how hard it is to be a referee (he refs a lot and I've done it in the past - we agree that it is very difficult), I was on my way. The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful. I stopped again in Idaho Falls to pick up some supplies, send some emails, and grab dinner. Dinner was an open face hot roast beef sandwich at Cedric's Family Restaurant. I apparently was starving since I finished it in about 5 minutes.

Upon leaving the restaurant, I started to notice that something didn't seem right. The sky that had been pretty benign up to that point was starting to get very dark... see below.
















It was also about 7:30pm, and West Yellowstone (at the entrance of Yellowstone) was about 2 hours away. As I drove north, the clouds just kept accumulating. I told myself that the storm was going to swing south of the park. Everything seemed fine as I entered the park and drove 14 miles to the first of three junctions to take me to my campsite.

As I turned to go south toward Old Faithful, the weather changed... dramatically. Lightning flashes came every couple of seconds, the wind started blowing hard enough to shake the car, and it started pouring. Undaunted, I trekked on. After a few miles, I reached a large clearing and two lightning strikes came toward me from either side of the valley accompanied by a loud thunder clap. "That's it, I'm done," I said to no one in particular and pulled over, contemplating a return. Figuring that it would blow over, I kept going when the same thing happened again.

Now, I've been camping a few times in my life, but I also know that I was going to be setting up a tent I've never used before in the dark, that the ground would be wet, and the drive was heading straight into the storm (and still had 30 miles to go). I heard Phil's voice in the back of my mind saying one of his favorite quotes, "A man's got to know his limitations."

30 minutes later, I was checking into a motel in West Yellowstone.