OSU needs to be (just a little) more like UO

I'm still having trouble writing that, but it's true.  Just look at these two promotional ads for the universities:

Pretty boring, and just a little cheesy.  Hey, come to OSU, you can go to a farmers market and ride your vintage bike with a ridiculous wicker basket attached to the front!

Nice right?  It's clean, crisp, and shows a much more dynamic university.

Oregon State has gotten way too concerned with what UO is doing .  We've heard the whole "big brother, little brother" mumbo jumbo so much that we're starting to buy into it ourselves.  "We're not the little brother, we'll show them!  We'll be completely different!" 

In fact, we've almost become what we used to make fun of Oregon for being.  Are you more likely to find a guy with dreadlocks riding a bike in Birkenstocks to the farmer's market to play hacky sack with his friends in Corvallis or Eugene?  At this point, you'd have to say it's a 50/50 thing at best, right?  It's starting to drive me nuts.  Is Oregon really that bad?  Maybe, but that doesn't mean they're always wrong.  As a university, they've established themselves as a place for energetic people who want to lead and do great things.  OSU has established themselves as a place to quietly go about your business and not get recognized.  It's ridiculous.  Have a little pride Beavers!  Beat your chest every once in a while and let everyone know that you're here.  





Lasselle Family Vacation, Part 3 - Go West, Young Fam!

Day 1 - Richland Center, WI to Lincoln, NE - 491 miles - Let's See if You Can Hit my Curveball

We hit the road and headed straight for Dyersville, Iowa to see the Field of Dreams Movie Site.  We'd been there once before, but we went in May when there was no corn growing, which really took away from the atmosphere.  I really can't explain it, but just stepping onto that field I felt an overwhelming sense of joy.  It really felt good to run around the bases with Jonah and play catch with him along the first base line.  There were a few other groups of people there, and one of them had a wood bat and a few balls.  We stood in the outfield and shagged balls for them for a while, and then they offered me a chance to hit.  After a few mammoth pop flies to first base, I mentioned that it would be pretty neat to hit one into the corn.  The guy pitching commented that he once got one in on one bounce, but that was as close as he'd ever come.  I wondered how often he'd come to play there.  On the next pitch, I got a good piece of it and put it about fifteen feet back in the corn in right field.  It was kind of satisfying, but that was quickly erased when I realized I'd just deposited a ball that belonged to someone else into a giant cornfield.  Jonah and I walked through the corn for about 10 minutes before someone else came out and found the ball.  The guy that had thrown the pitch then gave me the ball and said "here's a souvenir for you."  It was a nice gesture, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to put the ball in the trophy case I don't have or on a shelf in the bedroom.  It's a pretty neat place where they just allow anyone to come onto the field and play around, and I'd encourage anyone road tripping through Iowa to check it out. 

The rest of the trip involved cornfield after cornfield.  We hit Omaha right around 5pm, and got stuck in some midwest rush hour traffic.  We briefly contemplated stopping at the Omaha Zoo, but Rachel wasn't feeling that well thanks to a blocked milk duct (yet another thing that makes me glad I'm not a woman) and we just pressed on to Lincoln so Jonah could go swimming in the pool at the hotel. 

Day 2 - Lincoln, NE to Casper, WY - 572 Miles - Moving the Wagon Down the (Oregon) Trail

This was perhaps the most uneventful day of our entire journey.  It was straight driving through the heartland.  I took us on a minor detour to see Chimney Rock, as I am a sucker for anything minutely historic.  Growing up playing the Oregon Trail game, I knew that this Rock was a big landmark on the trail.  Unfortunately, the rest of my family is not as into historical landmarks as I am, and I got a few eye rolls from Rachel and a couple "I just want to keep going to the hotel to go swimming!" from Jonah.  Jonah, remembering his bee-sting episode from our last historical stop at Little Bighorn, wanted to know if there were any bees at Chimney Rock.  I made a sarcastic comment that I hoped he got stung, which made him start crying.  Lesson learned - three year olds can't process sarcasm.  Rachel placated me by taking a few pictures of Jonah and me at the rock, and then we moved on.  We pulled into Casper hungry for pizza.  We tried ordering online from Domino's on my iPod Touch, but that quickly turned into a near disaster.  I tried to order a hand tossed Canadian bacon and pineapple pizza to be delivered to our hotel, but when the confirmation came at the end, it had the delivery address as the address of the Domino's - essentially saying we were going to carry it out.  I called the Domino's to correct this and found out that the pineapple had been changed to chicken.  We got the pizza sorted out, and then the delivery guy showed up with a stuffed crust pizza.  He apologized, but said "Our cook is new and still learning, but hey, it's a nice surprise for you, right?"  I'm not sure that the newness of the cook had anything to do with him accidentally baking a ring of mozzarella into our crust - rather I think that had to do with him being a moron.  And anyone who tells you that stuffed crust is a nice surprise still thinks it's 1994.  It's just not that good. 

Day 3 - Casper, WY to Red Lodge, MT - 525 Miles - I Will Drive No More Forever

Wednesday was the day of travel I'd looked forward to since we planned the trip - Yellowstone!  We hit the road early, leaving our hotel around 6 am.  We drove through Grand Teton National Park, but had a rough view of the mountains thanks to an overcast sky.  We didn't see any wildlife either, although some guy with binoculars told us there was a bald eagle in a tree on the other side of the lake.  We snapped the obligatory "We paid $25 to drive through this park so we're going to take a few pictures of cloud covered mountains, damnit!" shots and then moved into Yellowstone.  I hadn't been to Yellowstone since I was a teenager, so I was pretty excited.  The first thing I learned is that you should never go in the South Entrance.  It's just basically a forest.  You can get almost the same experience driving highway 20 to Newport.  Until you hit Yellowstone lake, there's really not much to write home about.  Rachel, riding in the back with the kids, dryly remarked "so this is Yellowstone, huh?"  Her first trip to the park was not going as she envisioned.  The scenery changed about the time we hit Yellowstone Lake, and we veered West to see Old Faithful. 

Old Faithful is a lot like Mount Rushmore in that you need to see it based on reputation only.  There's not a whole lot you can do other than take a picture and move on.  Unfortunately, unless you time your visit right, you have to wait a while to snap that picture at Old Faithful, and on this day that meant sitting through intermittent rain showers.  The other bummer is that another geyser a couple hundred yards away was erupting with great gusto, but you can't get nearly as close to that one...so we waited with a lady from the south who kept saying that she didn't remember Old Faithful "teasing" the crowd as much on her last trip.  This was a full fifteen minutes before its scheduled eruption, mind you.  Right on time, Old Faithful did its thing, and Jonah said what any three year old would say after hearing about Old Faithful from his dad for about seven straight hours prior to viewing it:  "That's it?"  Yep son, that's it. 

We got back in the car and kept cruising through the park.  Finally, we spied our first buffalo.  Now the family was starting to get excited.  Rachel hopped out of the car to snap a picture of a buffalo grazing in a field, though she didn't get as close as she wanted to for the shot.  "I didn't want to be the girl with the camera who got gored that everyone reads about in the papers."  Jonah thought the buffalo were cool, but he was more interested in seeing a moose.  There were herds of buffalo everywhere, and it seemed like every corner we went around we'd see a line of cars backed up as people tried to get the perfect shot of them.  Jonah was starting to get tired of seeing buffalo, and groaned every time we saw another herd.  I really don't remember there being this many buffalo the last time I visited the park, and I wonder if that had to do with the time of year I was there (early summer as opposed to mid September) or if conservation efforts were leading to a population increase.  In either event, it was pretty neat to witness these giant animals roaming free.  One was walking on the road right next to our car, and hearing the clapping of his hooves on the pavement was a pretty surreal experience. 

Upon leaving the park, I noticed a sign that said Construction Ahead - Highway 212 closed 8pm -6 am.  It was only 6:30, so I thought we were golden.  We made it to the summit of the pass around 7:15, where we encountered a flagger.  She informed us that the road was already closed, and we'd be lucky to get through.  She suggested we drive back and take the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway, which would only add about half an hour to our trip - a half hour we'd probably have spent waiting for them to let us through on the road anyways.  We took her advice and almost instantly regretted it.  I'm sure the highway is scenic, but I couldn't tell you.  It was pitch black and foggy.  I could barely see ten feet in front of the car.  The website linked to above mentions "world class opportunities for wildlife viewing."  If near heart attacks from deer, rabbits and foxes darting in front of your car as you drive white knuckled down a mountain road in zero visibility is your thing, then by all means take this road.  It was insane - it had so many switchbacks and 15 MPH turns that it easily added an hour - if not more - to our trip.  We finally pulled into our hotel in Red Lodge, MT at 10 pm....16 hours after we'd left Casper.  The kids were amazing on the trip, and thankfully Jonah slept for the last few hours. 

Day 4 - Red Lodge, MT to Coeur d'Alene, ID - 515 Miles - Jonah Reunites with Future Fiancee

As we planned our trip, we noticed we'd have another chance to visit our friends the Coxes in Idaho.  We set up a play date for Jonah and Lizzy to go swimming at our hotel and grab some food.  Our trip started out alright, but somewhere between Roscoe and Absarokee, MT Jonah starts to complain that his mouth hurts.  As Rachel questions him on this, he starts to projectile vomit all over the backseat.  We pulled off at a historical marker sign and spent half an hour cleaning puke out of the car.  Jonah kept apologizing, saying he was so sorry.  We finally figured he'd drank too much milk at breakfast (which would account for the amount of vomit) and had gotten carsick from the less than straight road that his Highway 78.  Rachel and I both said a little prayer, thankful that Jonah had slept through Chief Joseph's Scenic Highway the night before.  The rest of the trip was smooth sailing, and we pulled into Coeur d'Alene just before 4 pm.  The Coxes came over shortly thereafter, and we went down to the pool to take a swim.  Unfortunately, the Comfort Inn seemingly dumped extra ice from the ice machine in the hallway into the pool, because it was insanely cold.  We swam for maybe five minutes before violating rule one of the pool area and allowing children under six to use the hot tub.  Not wanting to cut the kids playtime short, we moved the party to the Carl's Jr. down the street, which had a playland.  Jonah and Lizzy had a great time playing, and two hours later, they were still not ready to say goodbye.  We finally were able to get them out of there by promising ice cream at the Dairy Queen two blocks down.  Another minor battle ensued to get Jonah to leave DQ, but I was able to tempt him by promising he could play Angry Birds on my iPod on the way back to the hotel.  Angry Birds is turning out to be a pretty quality download!

Day 5 - Couer d'Alene, ID to Albany, OR - 449 Miles - Home at Last!

Let me just say that five days straight of car travelling is one too many.  We were all ready to be home, and nobody was looking forward to the last leg of our journey.  Not a whole lot happened.  We tried to stop at the fruit stand in Eltopia that we visited on the way out, but it didn't open until 10 am and we passed it at 9:30.  Either the GPS was screwed up or I took a wrong turn, because we ended up taking highway 14 on the Washington side of the Columbia instead of the quicker I-84 in Oregon.  No harm was done, and it was interesting to see the Gorge from a different viewpoint.  Also, did you know Washington had a replica of Stonehenge?  Oddly enough, it's apparently a WWI memorial.  We didn't stop, but you can see it from the road as you drive along 14. 

So we made it!  It was a fantastic trip with only a bee sting, a soul crushing loss by the Beavers, a brutal road construction detour, and one bout of carsickness detracting from the experience...and really, sometimes those negative things are the things that end up being the fondest memories, so I'd have to say the trip was as close to perfect as you could ever get for a road trip with two kids under the age of 4! 

Lasselle Family Vacation, Part 2 - America's Dairyland

Wisconsin!!  It truly has become my home away from home.  During the fall, it's really difficult to tell the difference between Oregon and Wisconsin.  The weather was dang near perfect the entire time we were there.  We didn't do much the first day, just laid around recuperating from the trip out there.  Jonah went to the fire station with "Papa Badger" (his name for Rachel's dad), in which he had to sit behind the wheel of every single vehicle.  I think there are 18 or so.  The next day was the hottest day we had out there, about 98 degrees.  We made our mind up early to find some sort of pool or water park to go to.  Wisconsin Dells is a city about an hour away from Richland Center, and I think it can best be described as the Vegas of Wisconsin, if water parks were casinos and it was for families rather than single people and gambling addicts.  The whole town is water parks and other attractions.  Unfortunately, our kids can't swim, which makes the idea of paying somewhere around $100 to splash around in a wading pool.  So we looked at other options.  We finally decided on a hotel about an hour in the opposite direction in Prairie du Chien.  The Country Inn and Suites had a water park that you could use for $7 a person, plus it was called "Bearfoot Bay."  The hotel is built a ways out of town, and seems to be built for the sole purpose of housing people who are visiting the local Cabela's, which is right next door.  It turned out to be great for our family, as Jonah loved splashing around in the wading pool which had all sorts of fun water features, and we got to practice his swimming in the deeper pool.  Despite the sweltering heat outside, nobody else was using the water park, so we had the place to ourselves for a few hours.  After we left, we drove next door to the Cabela's to check it out.  I'd never been in a Cabela's, and I don't plan on heading into another one.  Aside from the display of stuffed animals of North America, it basically seemed like a fancy GI Joe's.  I will say this though - they did sell some mighty tasty gummi orange wedges in there.  We left Cabela's and drove about an hour (there's something about Wisconsin in that everything seems to be about an hour from everything else) to Rural Route 1 Popcorn in Montfort.  This place sells some crazy popcorn flavors - I enjoyed some warm and spicy Cajun seasoned popcorn.  Jonah ended up picking out some Packer popcorn (green and yellow, flavored like green apple and pineapple), while Rachel got some Brewer popcorn (Blueberry, Caramel, and Vanilla) and some Chocolate. The night concluded with us watching the Badgers lay waste to UNLV and give me a taste of what the Beavs were in for the next weekend. 

The next days included roller skating at the local skate rink, trips to the apple orchard for some amazing apple cinnamon donuts, and just hanging around the house.  We stumbled across the show American Ninja Warrior, and Jonah had us set up a ninja training course for him in the yard.  It was pretty entertaining to watch. 

We also got Jocelyn baptized at a church in Cross Plains (you guessed it, about an hour away).  Rachel's mother's cousin is a priest and agreed to do the baptism, despite the fact that it was his birthday.  The ceremony was short and sweet, and then we all to the rectory for a barbecue.  We had some beef and chicken kabobs and spent a few hours visiting with Rachel's extended family.  The highlight might've been the conversation that revolved around a 3 foot likeness of Pope John Paul II, who resides at the top of the stairs in the rectory and basically is a Catholic Chucky doll.  The thing is seriously creepy and I could feel it judging all of my past sins.  No way I'm getting into heaven now that Pope Chucky has seen directly into my soul.

Labor Day revolved around an early birthday party for Jonah that could be attended by all of his Wisconsin family.  It was also a way to make Jonah feel special since so much attention was directed towards his new baby sister.  Jonah's favorite toy is an Optimus Prime toy that says things like "Decepticons incoming!" and makes a maniacal laughing noise when you rev his buzzsaw type weapon.  I'd say it's creepy, but that would do a serious disservice to the Pope doll.

The rest of the week included some day trips.  The first was to a local produce stand that also moonlights as a petting zoo and mini golf course.  Jonah got a kick out of feeding the potbelly pigs and pygmy goats. We also went to the county fair, where Jonah and I marveled at one of the most perfect looking roosters ever created.  

If this rooster didn't win first prize, I don't know what the heck judges look for, because that is a text book rooster in my opinion.  It's great having the fair in town, but for some reason they didn't open the rides until later in the day, so Jonah didn't get to do the Ferris wheel, which really bummed him out. 

Thursday brought my dad and his friends Jerry and Ralph into town.  They had flown in to Chicago on Wednesday to take in the Cubs game before heading to Wisconsin for a few days before the football game.  Jonah had a difficult time comprehending having both is grandpa's in the same house.  He kept saying "Grandpa Dale is coming?  But he lives in Oregon!!"  Dad and his friends were staying that the Park View Motel.  It's aptly named, as it is directly across the street from a park.  Jerry and Ralph just ripped on Dad mercilessly for picking this dive.  Dad kept trying to justify it by saying "But it's a little piece of Americana!" which got him absolutely nowhere, given the fact that the guy that checked them in was a dead ringer for "Peggy" from the Discover commercials. 

Then came gameday. 

Moving on.......

Actually, aside from the score, the day was awesome.  There were 16 of us that went to the game, including Grant and my friend Dave from college, who flew in from Austin, TX.  Dave was up to his typical Dave antics, falling asleep for a few minutes in the second quarter and then disappearing in the second half to wander the stadium.  I kept getting text messages from him saying he was lost and looking for an "alumni center to get a beer."  After the shellacking the Badgers laid on the Beavs, we headed down to the UW Memorial Union Terrace for some more beer and hanging out.  Seriously, I can't think of a better place to hang out after a game - it's just filled with people eating brats and drinking beer.  There was a live band doing a cover of a Blackstreet song, and we could watch the sailboats out on the water.  Dave made sure to comment to Jonah's 14 year old cousin Brett that "if he played his cards right, he could look like this someday" as he patted his belly.  Little by little, people started to head home from our group, until it was just Dave, Grant and I left.  We hung out for a few more hours, chatting with some other friends from college who made the trip.  Then we headed to State Street Brats to conclude our evening.  Dave and Grant challenged each other to drink a "boot." which was about 2 Liters of beer in a plastic boot.  Given that the game kicked off at 11 am and they'd both been drinking fairly steadily for about 10 hours prior to this, I wasn't optimistic about the rest of the night.  Dave tapped out early, then had to find half empty glasses of beer on other tables to dump out his boot and save himself the embarrassment of returning a 3/4 full boot to get his deposit back.  Grant fared much better, but also had to waive the white flag before finishing.  The Badger fans were very gracious to us Beavers, with everyone thanking us for making the journey and asking us if we were being treated well on our trip.  We made it back to the hotel around 11, and Grant promptly propositioned the front desk girl to order us a pizza.  "Justine, Justine!  If I give you $5, will you order this pizza for us?"  She declined, and I ended up making the call.  We ordered from a place called the Glass Nickel Pizza Company.  We ordered a bacon cheeseburger pizza and a chicken cordon bleu pizza, and both were fantastic.  I think Wisconsin is underrated in the pizza game.  The cheese makes it fantastic.  You can keep your Chicago or New York style pizzas....give me a Wisconsin pizza any day.  Keeping up with the good food theme, we ate breakfast at Mickie's Dairy Bar the next morning, before dropping Grant and Dave off at the airport and returning to Richland Center to prepare for our trip home. 

Lasselle Family Vacation, Part I - The Journey to Wisconsin

Welcome to the official blog of the 2011 Lasselle Road Trip, brought to you by the all new Dodge Journey.  I've finally got a few minutes to put fingers to keyboard and document our adventure.  I've decided to break down the trip into three parts:  Oregon to Wisconsin, the stay in Wisconsin, and the trip back.  This will be part one.  While the idea is to do this so that Jonah (and I guess Jocelyn) can read this years from now and remember our first big road trip as a family, I hope anyone else who stumbles across this blog enjoys reading about it, and is maybe encouraged to take a road trip themselves, because we've had an amazing time so far.

Day 1 - Albany to Couer d'Alene - 452 Miles - The Journey Begins

Jonah woke up this morning and immediately started jumping up and down saying "today's the day!"  He was extremely excited, to say the least.  We had breakfast, loaded up the car, and hit the road.....to soccer practice.  Before we could officially get on the road, we had to attend Jonah's last session of Lil' Kickers.  This was strategic - we wanted him to be a little tired before we got on the road.  Soccer went well, we even exchanged numbers with the parents of another kid in the class.  The possibility of making new "couple friends" seemed to be a good omen for our trip.  Couple friends are extremely hard to find, but that's for another blog, and I don't want to jinx it anyways. Jonah was pretty distracted throughout the session, continually coming over and saying "I just want to go to Wisconsin." We made it through somehow, and the trip kicked off in earnest.

Jonah immediately wanted to pop in a DVD.  Watching movies in the car is still pretty new to him, as we only let him watch on trips of an hour or more.  He selected his newest movie, "Tom and Jerry and the Wizard of Oz."  It's only 45 minutes long, so we were on to movie #2, Enchanted, before we hit Portland.  Unfortunately, Jonah has learned how to skip ahead in his movies to watch his favorite parts, which cut out about half an hour of Enchanted.  We only brought 10 movies for the trip, and Rachel and I nervously commented that we'd burn through all of them on the first day at this pace. 

After a quick stop in The Dalles for sandwiches from the cooler, feeding Jocie, and gas, we were ready to cross our first state border.  So far, so good on the trip.  Jonah had taken to playing "I Spy" with Rachel while I drove.  His new favorite thing to say is "I spy something beautiful," with the answer always being his baby sister. The kid is so proud of his sister it's ridiculous.  We hit Kennewick, and briefly thought about feeding Jocelyn, but she was still sleeping so we decided to push it.  Not more than 20 minutes later, she was screaming, and we had to pull off at a roadside produce stand in Eltopia.  We felt a little bad about pulling into their parking lot and then not buying anything, so we decided to browse the foods there.  They were super nice, and Jonah took full advantage of their free samples of blueberries.  We finally settled on some blueberries and a cantaloupe.  Of course, about this time, a lady in her late 60's pulled in and the lady working the stand remarked to her that we were "driving all the way to Wisconsin with two young children!"  The elderly lady looked at us and said "I'm driving to Wisconsin too, race ya!"  She went on to tell us that she lived in Wisconsin for fifty years, along with a brief history of every other place she'd lived.  Seeing people from Wisconsin along the way would become a theme, but at the Eltopia fruit stand was probably the most unlikely.

Back on the road for the final leg of our first day, Jonah got his hands on the GPS.  Every so often, I'd hear the GPS say "recalculating" in its female voice with the British accent.  I'm not sure why, but I feel more comfortable taking directions from a Garmin with an accent from across the pond.  It probably makes no sense, because an English person is probably less likely to know what the best route to Couer d'Alene is than someone from America, but whatever.  Jonah's button mashing on the thing had redirected us to the local police station, which he found hilarious.  He kept saying he was taking us to jail. 

About half an hour from our destination, Jocelyn got hungry again.  Not wanting to stop, Rachel, who was sitting in the backseat with the kids, experimented with "mobile nursing," just dropping a boob in Jocie's face while buckled in.  It was uncomfortable, but effective as Jocie got enough milk to keep her content for the rest of the trip.  Rachel remarked that she didn't understand why God didn't put nipples on our fingers, as it would make the whole nursing thing a heck of a lot easier, earning herself the quote of the trip award.

We made it to our first stop, our friends Josh and Jen's house, around 7:30 ish.  Jen had been Jonah's daycare provider when he was first born, and their daughter Elizabeth was Jonah's first "best friend."  They also have a son (Kolby) a few months older than Jocelyn.  Jonah and Lizzy started playing like they'd never been apart, running around the house and playing out in the backyard while we got caught up.  Lizzy was very excited to have a "sleep over" in the living room with Jonah that night, and took extra care to lay out the blankets and pillows perfectly when it was time for bed.  Jonah wanted to have a "three person nap over" as he called it, including me because he's a little scared of the dark still.  Rachel and Jen agreed to stay out there til the kids fell asleep, which ended up taking longer than expected.  Lizzy had brought her baby doll to the sleep over, and kept explaining to Jonah that in the middle of the night he'd have to change her babies diaper, because that was the daddy's job. 

Day 2 - Couer d'Alene to Bozeman - 366 Miles - Watch out for Buffalo!

Day two started with some more play time for the kids.  After breakfast and showers, we took the kids down to Lake Coeur d'Alene for some splashing around in the lake.  Again, the idea was to break up the driving and also to tire Jonah out before we hit the road in earnest.  Of course, as we parked at the lake, there was a guy in a "Wisconsin Basketball" t-shirt that we chatted up.  He had just moved to Idaho a few months ago, but was nowhere near as friendly as the little old lady at the fruit stand.  The kids had a blast playing around in the lake, and Rachel and Jen hatched a plan to marry off our kids, even posing the kids for some shots for their "wedding slide show:"

After a full morning of playing at the lake, we hit Red Robin (Yum!) for some lunch, and then it was time to say goodbye.  Jonah's not very good at goodbyes and wanted Lizzy to come with us.  We left Coeur d'Alene around 2 pm and headed for Bozeman on our shortest driving day of the trip.  Jonah immediately fell asleep.  Jonah had made some comment in the weeks leading up to the trip that when we got to Montana he was going to "meet some girls."  Where that came from, I have no clue.  I can tell you that we definitely did not meet any girls in Montana, but the front of our car definitely met some bugs.  It got hard to see there were so many hitting the windshield.  Montana has plenty of bugs and plenty of road construction - at one point, the highway was cut down to one lane for 18 straight miles and as far as I could tell they were only presently doing construction on one bridge that was shorter than a football field.  Not cool, Montana.  Because it was only one lane, the speed limit was cut from 75 to 55, which was a huge bummer.  When we get back to Oregon, it's going to take some getting used to the speed limits again....driving 80 sure makes the miles pass quickly.  We got our first lightning sighting, which was exciting for Jonah even though he missed the actual strike.  I promised him we'd see more on the trip.  After a stop for gas, I let Rachel drive for the first time on the trip.  She was happy to chip in on the driving, but grumbled about how "of course I let her drive at night over the continental divide where there could be a buffalo in the middle of the road."  Point taken.  We pulled into our hotel for the night around 8:30 and promptly went to the pool for a few minutes so Jonah could swim.  This was probably the smallest hotel swimming pool you've ever seen, and also the warmest.  The Rodeway Inn was no Four Seasons, I'll tell you that much.  Heck, it was no Holiday Inn Express, but at least it had WiFi.  Why the cheap hotels offer free internet, but the expensive ones don't is beyond me.  I just booked a room at the Waldorf Astoria in New York for my boss at work last week for $559/night.  WiFi is available, for a fee.  for $559 a night you should get a complimentary laptop or iPad for your stay!  As we went to bed, Rachel and I remarked at how great the kids had been doing, and that this trip was going so much smoother than we expected.  Famous last words.

Day 3 - Bozeman to Hill City - 503 miles - Jonah's Last Stand

The day got off to an auspicious start when Jonah rolled out of bed and got wedged between the bed frame and the wall at 3 am.  I pried him loose and he fell back to sleep immediately, seemingly no worse for the wear.  We woke up early to get some of the Rodeway Inn's continental breakfast before getting back on the road.  Their breakfast consisted of a few different types of cereal, bread, and grape jelly.  That was about it.  Also, the Bozeman Rodeway appeared to be the official motel of Korean-Americans, as we were the only non Asian people in the hotel.  As we drove off, we saw a few giant tour buses outside, which explained things a little better. 

I wanted to make a quick detour to the Battle of Little Bighorn National Monument and see where this famous battle had taken place.  I knew going into this that I would be the only person in the family interested in seeing this, but I hoped that at least Jonah would like seeing some mannequins of soldiers with guns.  We pulled in, and immediately Jonah gets stung by a bee on his thumb.  You've never seen a kid so confused and afraid.  He's sobbing and panicking at every single insect he sees.  He kept saying "why did you decide to come here daddy?"  Good question, son.  I felt bad, but this is what usually happens when I try to plan something.  When Rachel plans it, everything goes off without a hitch.  When I plan something, chaos ensues.  We stayed long enough for Rachel to feed Jocelyn and for me to take three pictures of Custer's death site and then we were back on the road, $10 well spent.  Jonah had his thumb up like a hitchhiker for the rest of the day. 

Our bad luck continued as we made our way through the northeast corner of Wyoming and into South Dakota.  We planned on quick tours of the towns of Deadwood and Sturgis, but Jocie cried all the way through Deadwood, and Jonah slept through Sturgis, so those we never even go out of the car. 

Our luck started to change when we hit Rapid City around 4:30 in the afternoon.  We stopped at Dinosaur Park, which is probably one of the hokiest roadside attractions I've ever seen.  Jonah loved it though, and we had to get pictures with every single dinosaur.  We tried to have a lady take our picture, but we learned that when you have an SLR camera, you have to be selective of who you choose to take your picture:

Sorry Jocie, I guess you don't get to be in this family photo

Jonah also got some gummi dinosaurs as a snack, which fired him right up.  He forgot all about his bee sting and was talking a mile a minute as we got back in the car for an early evening trip to Mount Rushmore, or "Mountain Rush" as Jonah kept calling it.  Mount Rushmore, was pretty impressive, and had the kids been older and we had more time, I would've loved to have hiked around a bit and got a little closer to marvel at the level of detail that went into this project.  I can't help but feel like after they did Washington's face, they thought it was too much work and kind of skimped on the other three.  Lincoln's cheek basically blends into the mountain. Of course, the car parked next to us had Wisconsin plates.  As we took pictures, a lady offered to take a picture of the four of us, that turned out only mildly better than the failed Dinosaur Park family portrait:

It was now around 6:30, and we'd been on the road for about 10 hours.  Tired and hungry, we made our way to our hotel in Hill City.  Hill City is a tiny town that I think exists solely to house Mount Rushmore tourists.  We grabbed food at the only eating place we could find in the town - Dairy Queen - and pulled into the Comfort Inn for the night.  Again, the car we parked next to had Wisconsin plates.  Jonah got to go swimming again, in a much larger, colder pool than the night before.  The gummi dino's from a few hours earlier had still not worn off, as Jonah's "swimming" turned into him showing me how every superhero he could think of would jump into a pool.  It was quite entertaining for the one old guy hanging out in the hot tub.  We all slept well that night as we prepared for our longest leg of the trip the next day.

Day 4 - Hill City to Richland Center - 733 Miles - Finally!

Our plan to gradually increase the length of the driving each day had paid off thus far, but with a twelve hour drive ahead of us with no planned stops, we knew it was going to be a trying day.  Things got off to a good start as we had the car packed and gassed up before 6:30.  The Hill City Comfort Inn had one of the best continental breakfast I've ever had, with waffles, biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs that didn't suck, sausage and fresh fruit.  I made sure to tell them as we checked out that they were doing things right with that breakfast.  We were on the road by 7, and predicted that we'd show up at Rachel's parents house at 8:30 that evening. 

Our trip started off a bit rough, when our GPS decided to take us the most convoluted way ever back to I-90 in Rapid City.  We ended up on a street that was little more than an alley, and ended at a daycare facility on a cul de sac.  It took us nearly an hour just to get back to the highway.  Fortunately, traffic was light and the road construction was minimal, and we were able to make up some serious time on I-90.  Jonah watched a few movies, kept asking when we'd be there, and disagreed with the suggestion we stop for food because it would delay our arrival at Grandma and Papa's.  We broke out a few things we'd been holding back to entertain him, including a Scooby Doo Sticker Treasury and his Leapster Explorer, which had a cool photo scavenger hunt he could do where he took pictures of something that started with every letter of the alphabet.  Rachel offered to drive the last leg, but as it had started raining and was getting dark, I felt bad making her drive in the most difficult conditions again.  A quick stop at Culver's for dinner while Jonah slept in the car, and we pulled into Rachel's parents house at 8:35, five minutes after our predicted arrival.  In total, we logged 2,068 miles on the way out there, averaging 23.1 MPG - pretty good for our seven passenger Journey.  The car was in serious need of a wash, but the inside had stayed pretty darn clean.  Rachel and I high fived on our successful mission accomplished.

The we realized we still had to drive back next weekend.

To be continued.......