Birdwatching (Rated R, don't say I didn't warn you)

We spend the night in Missoula, MT. We are exhausted, I start writing the blog while Peanut tries to log into the wireless internet, he falls asleep with his laptop resting on his knees, and obviously Adam is already sleeping. We get 8 hours of sleep for the first time all trip. Wow, does it feel good. Adam spends the whole morning shopping, the kid brought enough luggage to displace himself permentantly, what the hell else could he possibly need. He buys breakfast for us (thanks, I think we eat fruit for the first time all trip), gets hiking boots, water bottles, jeans, I don’t know what the hell else he bought. He was gone long enough for Peanut and I to get kicked out of our room by housekeeping. We spend the morning in the lobby finishing the blog while eating breakfast. ONTO YELLOWSTONE!!!!! We regain some steam and listen to good tunes all morning, spirits are high, and we know we are in for the indescribable. I buy my first Playboy Magazine somewhere in the middle of Montana mostly to just entertain us in the car. Most would think it’s full of debauchery, it’s actually not. Maybe 10 pages of nakedness in the entire 150page magazine. Go figure the issue I buy has there first 3D centerfold. Hahahaha. Made for some funny conversation and pictures. We all took turns with the glasses.

Let me just elaborate on our car rides a bit. We listen to music mostly, ride with the windows down when its not snowing, and talk minimally. I think we are just all in our own places taking in as much as we can from our surroundings knowing that we might never be able to see places like this ever again or at least in this point in our lives. We are silent in our own thoughts until someone has something funny to say or has to drop a window because they’ve farted. At least once a car ride I get these overwhelming feelings of freedom being on the open road and hang my body outside the window to remind myself that this is all real.

We take in the scenery of Montana, truly unbelievable for east coasters. Snow. Snow everywhere. It feels more like March we decide than June 1st. We make a stop on the way to Yellowstone at a place called Earthquake Lake. We see something but are not sure where the lake is. We walk inside the ranger station and ask like the dumb tourists we are, “where’s the lake?”. “Right there”. “Oh ok”. We leave 3 minutes later after Adam used the bathroom.

We booked a cabin in what we thought was a campground right outside of Yellowstone, we should have known better after typing in the address of 1200 Electric Avenue. Hahahahaha. We stay in a cabin in the center of town. Pretty cool though. Single room, 200sq ft. Queen bed, bunks, table, heater, and a little grill outside.

Yellowstone…are you serious? You should be your own country within the United States. Bigger than the state of Delaware, better than any other state by means of scenery and wildlife, just succeed from the rest of us.

We drop our stuff off and head into the park at almost 7pm. Within 5 minutes we see two bald eagles perched on stationary logs in a river. We pull over, snap pics and some vid and then we see MOTHER FUCKING BUFFALO!!!!! WHattttttttttttttttttttt!!!! These things are huge, over 2000lbs. Enough to destroy your car, we figure it’ll be like hitting a Mini Cooper. We can’t decide what’ll be worse, hitting a moose or a buffalo. We get close to the buffalo, too close to the buffalo. I’m talking close enough to smack them on the ass. Peanut is driving (god help us all). He tries to pass the buffalo in the road and Adam and I yell at him for passing on the right, we have to maintain some sort of rules of the road even if we are in pandora. We decide we feel like we are driving through a zoo. Animals are everywhere, it’s pretty ridiculous. We get bored of seeing buffalo and elk (that sounds crazy right), but they are everywhere and are very photogenic. Peanut is driving as mentioned earlier and he maybe looks are the road every 8 seconds or so, the rest of the time he is in the left lane or hitting the reminder strips while pointing out the 4 elk at our 3 o’clock or the 17 buffalo at our 8 o’clock. Adam and I spend more time watching the road for him, reminding him to slow down, turn the wheel, or brake. We spend the entire night in Yellowstone, climb Mt. Washburn in the LOUMN (mini van) at an altitude of 9,000ft. Boy is it struggling. We are driving in between 4 foot snow banks. We can’t believe our eyes, there is no grass, just snow. Hey Dad, enough to ski, I was itching. We barely make the road cut-off of 10pm and head back to our cabin in the middle of town. We break grounds rules and we cook dinner outside at 11pm. Brats on the grill boiling in all sorts of beer, Peanut had the final say on what kind and how much of each beer we were to use, whata snob. Red potatoes, left-over ribs, garlic bread. We aren’t doing so bad for ourselves.

It’s been cold here, consistent 40 degree temperatures and in the 30’s at night. Our cabin has a heater that we call “a good warm”, but we wake up in the middle of the night in a “bad hot”. We are all sweating profusely in our beds. We arise at 8am, shower, book our next stay outside the Teton National Forest south of Yellowstone and head into the park for the day. Well now that Peanut doesn’t have to drive, it’s his turn to sift through the Playboy. He props it up, reading it in the passenger seat as we pull into the ranger booth at the entrance of the park. The elderly female ranger was not too impressed, she called us “disgusting” as she handed us our Yellowstone Map. Hahaha. Peanut giggled while wearing the 3D glasses. Whatever. It’s funny now that Peanut is riding shotgun, he sees no animals and only focuses on what’s between the edges of the magazine. I now become the park ranger/tour guide while driving. We meet up with Miss Old Faithfull, sit on her banks for an hour and watch her spew her water 50ish feet in the air, oh yea, of coarse it was raining on us, no rain gear, awesome. We get in the car wet, drive further northeast into the park to hit the Upper and Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River. We follow the marked path for a bit but then decide it’s more exciting/dangerous call it what you want to hop off the path and get as close to the falls as possible. This equates to some pretty hairy climbing and sliding in mud (its raining) towards the edge of the cliff. I’m first down and Adam is above me pushing melon sized rocks down the mountain side at my ankles, they hurt. We snap pictures looking for the perfect facebook profile picture, lol. Asian tourists actually take pictures of us as we traverse down the side of the muddy cliff, probably to point out to their family at home that we were the dumb American’s that died the day they were at Yellowstone. We proved them wrong, suckazzz!!! And got better pictures than their telescope lens SLR’s will ever get. We hike the upper and then lower falls, making our own paths, crossing brooks by logs and hiking up muddy cliffs. Peanut pushes a bolder off the cliff about “127ft” high he says, into the river. Adam and I film, it creates destruction on the way down, wicked cool. We call out loudly every 1-2 minutes to scare bears that could be in our path. Adam and I are not ready to see a Grizzly on the hike, Peanut wants to see one so he can attack it with his knife. He actually says, “there are three of us and only one bear”, he thinks it’s a bar fight or something. Adam also accomplishes a personal Yellowstone goal of his own. He wanted to find a secluded area with a large pile of animal poop, well we did on this hike, and wants to squat over it. He does, and does this with a magazine. Check.

We see a large group of cars pulled off to the side of the road and they are all sporting these huge cameras and binoculars, this means pull the car over, now! I hop on the roof, Adam pulls out the tripod, and I think Peanut sends a text, I dunno. We ask what we are looking at, (this next section is not for the squeamish/sensitive), we are now watching a wolf on top a ridge chase off 3 coyotes, why? Well because the wolf is eating the baby coyotes. It’s crazy, the coyotes charge the wolf and then the wolf counter-attacks and chases them off the ridge. We watch the wolf tear flesh for 35 minutes or so until the vultures start picking at the left-overs. Adam’s got in in high def, it’s unreal footage of nature and survival of the fittest at its finest. I think I hear Peanut say, “that’s why I’m so huge” during this realization of Darwin’s Theory. We also see a black bear foraging in some grass at dusk, we get too close once again, maybe 15 yards. We convince Peanut not to attack it. We leave Yellowstone wet and tired after hiking for a few hours in the Yellowstone River area, it starts sleeting. There is still snow on the ground here, did I already mention that?

Animals we’ve seen at Yellowstone:
1. Bald eagles
2. Buffalo (tatonka - Dances With Wolves translation)
3. Elk
4. Mule Deer
5. Black Bear
6. Coyotes
7. Wolves
8. American White Pelicans
9. Moose

We stay inside the Teton National Forest in a cabin aka a suite. Living room, kitchen, fireplace, full bath, and two queens. We walk through the snow to the jacuzzi. I start the path through the 4 foot base with my high top Converse sneakers and am sockless and Peanut says, “ey the base is pretty solid”, then I sink to my knee and pack my shoes with a snowman. We hit the jacuzzi while drinking mico-brew Teton beer and bs about life, skeletons in our closets, and our future life endeavors. We head back and I can‘t resist the temptation to push Peanut into the snow bank as he wearing just his bathing suite.

Early rise this morning, drove 8 hrs to Mount Rushmore and then another 6 hrs to Sioux Fall, South Dakota all in the same day. We traveled into the future today or a reminder that we are heading back to Connecticut. We head out behind schedule as usual, hit a new elevation high in the mini van, 9600ft. The thing is really really sucking wind. We drive through desolate Wyoming until Adam meets up with…Miss Johnny Law. Hahahah. Peanut and I laugh at Adam because he’s got a female officer to deal with because they have a reputation for being, how to I put this politically correct, “Bitchy”. Peanut sets up the camera and Adam hands over his immature faced license/registration/insurance, but to our surprise returns shortly and says, “slow down, and have a happy birthday tomorrow”!!!!! Good for Adam, bad for the undercover footage we were getting and the blog. Yeas, it’s Adam birthday tomorrow, he’ll be 14, I mean 24. It’s Peanut that’s 14. Now that Adam gets pulled over he drives like someone from Oregon (from a few blogs ago) aka under the speed limit. We hit warm temperatures for the first time in almost 5 days. 66 degrees feels like 80 to us now. For the most part today’s drive was pretty uneventful. Lots of sunflower seed eating/spitting. Honorable mention though was the random fly that landed on my shirt in the co-pilot’s seat. I gently pick it off trying not to kill it and go to push it out the crack in the window, I do so successfully, until it gets sucked back into the car and land directly on my lip. That fly could have been sucking on a cows ass for an hour before it landed on my lip.

Adam almost kills us round 2: He’d been driving for quite some time, maybe 4 hours on some pretty straight, boring highways. He drives through a town and then has to make a short handed left turn because a car is coming in oncoming traffic (You all catch the kind of turn I’m talking about? The ones that you need to cut the turn short before the actual intersection to beat the light or oncoming car). Well he does this and thinks the turn he is taking is into a highway onramp, a one-way highway onramp. Boy was he wrong. He drives like a European on the left side of the road until he sees a truck coming right at us, he jerks the wheel violently to the right and Peanut and I thrash around inside the mini van. Funnier though was that the lady driving the truck didn’t even know this was happening because she was looking in the complete opposite direction and was on her cellphone.

The scenery out here in eastern Wyoming is prairie on either side of the car as far as the eye can see. The only thing that breaks this view is the cows, pronghorns (deer looking creatures that look like they should be living in Africa), and then the wind fences built 100 yards off the highway to break up the cross-winds into the highway.

Adam suggests we stop at a Taco John’s which is a midwest chain similar to Taco Bell. First order of business is taking a piss. The bathroom is positioned at an angle that it is clearly visible from the dining room where people are trying to enjoy their grade F beef tacos. I get to the bathroom first and lock the door, and assume the position into the urinal that is also weirdly placed directly next to the door. BAMMMM! Peanut opens the door and looks right down at my crotch because he can see my Johnson and so does Adam following closely behind him, whatever, that doesn’t bother me, what does is elderly women and their grandchildren in the dining room eating their tacos looking at my Johnson.

We get to Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota by 4ish o’clock mountain time. Here were our comments, “that’s it”, “I thought it would be bigger”, me: “ouu ice cream”. We snap photos and do a small walk over the base of the carving. We walk into a small cave area that has a skylight that clearly shows just George Washington’s face, but when we asked the lady before us what she was looking at she said it was Thomas Jefferson. American History people what the fuck. He’s on the dollar bill for Christ (spell check made me capitalize that) sake. We make fun of her and now make jokes like, “look at Michael Jordan’s smile” or “why did they put Oprah up there”. We’re here for 30 minutes or so, snap pictures, use the bathroom, buy a bumper sticker, and get some ice cream, in that order. Adam says if he’s ever on a road trip and someone he’s with wants to stop here he’s gonna drop em off at a gas station and tell them to find a ride. Something else worth mentioning. While in the bathroom Peanut and I are sitting on the john’s next to each other talking poop and Adam I guess is using the urinal and apparently so was the old man next to him who was grunting and making “ehh, err, eyy” noises he tells us. Peanut and I ask, “well what was wrong?” and Adam responds “well I looked down at his dick“…WAIT WHAT!!!!!! Peanut and I interrupt him and don’t let this slide, we instantly attack him with questions of why he was looking at the guys weiner. He then call him a birdwatcher aka dickwatcher. We laugh hysterically at Adam for the 100th time on this trip and then hit the road out of the Black Hills National Forest. Or so we think…The GPS has given us a shortcut route before we leave the forest, we bang a right turn on a paved road that ends after 10ft and turns to packed dirt. We figure ey, why not, it’s on the gps and the next turn is in 2 miles. We take an off-road trip into the middle of the forest that took no prisoners. It had steeps uphill, and steep downgrades, mud holes that covered our entire wheels, ruts that were 2 feet deep and actually claimed the life of an abandoned truck we had to drive around. We are laughing and having a grand ole time and I’m filming our the passenger window. I have to get out a few times and direct Peanut around obstacles. The roadtrip wouldn’t be complete without something like this. Have I mentioned that I love the mini van and will wash her thoroughly upon return to Connecticut. Right now though we are driving to Sioux Falls in the dark and we can almost not see out of the windshield because the bug splatter is so thick that the windshield wipers are not even smudging the guts. We drove under the coolest rainbow we have ever seen today. We see all the colors, see its starting and ending points, and I have time to snap pictures and then hang my face out the window while it’s raining to Taste the Rainbow. Pretty good.

Things we’ve learned:
1. Rules are meant to be broken.
2. Reminder that when signs say “closed”, “paths unsafe”, just ignore and continue.
3. Peanut is dangerous behind the wheel even when he is not texting.
4. Adam says hello to everyone. His friendliness weirds people out. It’s awesome. There are only 50 people in the entire state of Wyoming and Adam has talked to 25 of them.
5. Peanuts pajamas include a shirt he and I got in New Orleans that says, “Relax, it’s just sex”. It’s 3 sizes too big, I’m not sure if he has shorts/underwear on.
6. Wolves are twice the size if not 3 times the size of coyotes and eat babies.
7. We have perfected the art of the drive-by photo. Passenger window drops, passenger hangs out the window or sits on the edge of the door and then the slider door opens (yes even on the highway, sorry mom) and navigator gets video angles. We’re trying to make a motion picture here.
8. Peanut and Adam have never been pulled over before until on this trip. They are obviously not driving fast enough, baby rump kissers.
9. Adam is dangerous behind the wheel.
10. Every hitch hiker I see I blurt out “PICK EMMM UPPP” from Dumb and Dumber of coarse. Everyone in the car expects it and they call me out when I don’t.
11. Peanut knows more about my GPS than I do and makes fun of me for it.

Birthday beers for Adam tonight. 8 hour drive to Peanut’s uncle’s outside of the Chicago tomorrow. Be easy.