More adventures at the ren faire and movie update

I wanted to throw in one more picture from the ren faire. Here are the
gentlemen from the mud show. It was hilarious. I would have liked it
even more if we hadn't gotten splashed with mud.

Now we are back in Minneapolis. While here we have basically been
hanging out with poodle's friends and catching up on our movie
watching. We saw "Get Smart," "Wanted," and "The Happening."

Get Smart was a lot better than either on of us thought it would be.
It was predictible, but hilarious.

Wanted was also better than we thought it would be. Some of the action
scenes were really good, it was also a little funny, and we got to
hear Morgan Freeman say the f-word. That alone was worth the price of
admission (we snuck in.)

The Happening, which we unfortunately paid for, was something of a
disappointment. Now, before you say something like "no duh," please
understand that we are big, big M. Night Shyamalan fans. BIG. Like, we
both liked "lady in the water" big. This is the level of commitment I
am talking about here. So i don't say disappointment lightly here. For
starters, marky mark never took his shirt off. Not even once. I mean,
seriously, what man sleeps in a shirt and jeans? Secondly, despite the
R rating and some impressive b-movie violence, the movie just wasn't
all there. It needed more or it needed less, either way, we were left
wanting.

Well, that's about it here. We are planning to go see Wall-e tomorrow
before our three big travel days from Minneapolis through Chicago,
Ontario, and Cooperstown, before landing at my friend jon's house in
Warner, New Hampshire for the cutest fourth of July ever.

-wm

Wisconsin state renaissance faire

We are at the wisconsin state Renaissance faire right now. It is way
better than the travelling faire we caught in the keys. They have
actual buildings! And cheese curds! I love Wisconsin!

Here is a picture of poodle on stage during the "pizpor show."
Pizpor's magic is nothing to write home about, but his comedy was
outstanding. We had a great time.

We also saw an awesome whipcracker do a firewhip routine. It didn't
hurt that "Adam Crack" is pretty darn cute either.

We are getting ready to go see some armored combat and we will stick
around for the peaceful joust before heading back to Minneapolis.

The Sioux falls koa...

...is bullshit.

Our tent site was so lame weve decided to skip it all together and
spend an extra night with poodles best friend in Minneapolis. A long
day of driving but totally worth it.

-wm

Deadwood and Rushmore

Here's a picture Poodle took of the grave of Wild Bill Hikok. She swears the ghost in the image is a fence post, but I'm pretty sure it's Wild Bill himself.

Today we went to Mount Rushmore, visited the graves of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane, and went for a swim in the pool. We also finally got to use the computer to upload images from our digital camera (instead of the cell phone pictures we've been posting). We've added a widget to the bar on the right for the slideshow of images. You can click through them by hovering over the image and clicking the forward arrow, or go directly to our picasa site by clicking on any image.

Mount Rushmore was rather anti-climactic. We both somehow thought it would be bigger.

We slept much better now that we're on level ground, but Poodle is still getting sick of camping, so we've changed our plans to omit the camping in Lake Wissota State Park in Chippewa Falls, WI, and instead will spend three nights at her friend Maria's house in Minneapolis.

Tomorrow, we break camp early to drive from Deadwood to Sioux Falls. We're staying there one night (just to sleep really) and then heading out to Minneapolis bright and early.

-wm

Stupid picture didn't show up...

The drive from yellowstone to deadwood

Greetings, faithful readers. It appears that I lost track of how many days we've been gone already, so I'm going to start titling the posts by the major event of the day.

Today was mostly a driving day. With construction and a misread of the map (we took the NE exit out of yellowstone instead of the mid-east exit, adding 25 seriously chicane-ridden miles to our trip) our trip wound up taking around 9.5 hours instead of the 7.5 we had planned. BUT as a result of this detour, we got to drive a lovely stretch of road, and see a bear, a wolf, and a moose.

We very nearly ran out of gas before cody, wy, because i thought gas at yellowstone was too expensive, and the sign said cody was in 65 miles. 65 miles doesn't really mean 65 miles when you're going 30 mph in lower gear through some very serious mountains. Our gas light came on 16 miles outside of town We stopped at the first gas station we saw, where prices were more expensive than they would have been in yellowstone. Oops! Damn the lack of cell phone reception in Wyoming, or gas buddy would have told us what's what. (if you don't know what gas buddy is, google it, it will save your life--or at least a few cents at the pump.)

Anyway... We made it to deadwood in one piece. The picture here is of one of the actors in the main street reenactment of the shooting of wild bill hickock. The shooting part was cheesy. We are hoping the "trial" we go to tomorrow will be somewhat more entertaining. We're also planning on panning for gold, visiting some graves, and other wild west type stuff.

Hope all of you are doing well. We're excited to finally be sleeping on level ground again, in a place without snow.

Still no fisticuffs on our part. I guess we must be growing up.

-wm
{picture didn't upload for some reason, is now attached to subsequent post}

Old faithful

Day 3

Sorry for the delay, it turns out there is no cell service in
yellowstone, except right around old faithful, where we are currently
awaiting said geyser to do its faithful thing.

We saw some more bison today, still no bears or wolves, but mike says
that if we take a night drive, we'd definitely see wolves. I'm not
sure I want to drive these dark, windy roads at night though.

Yesterday we saw mammoth hot springs and went back to our site to play
trivial pursuit, book lovers addition. We left it at a draw, both of
us missing the "non-fiction" pie. At one point we were laughing so
hard we were crying. We've been having a great time, although poodle
is pretty much sick of sleeping in a tent already.

After the geyser, we'll be making our way down to teton for some more
sightseeing. Tomorrow we break camp early at yellowstone and drive
about 8 hours to deadwood, sd.

We'll be keeping up with the blogging better when we reach civilization.

-wm

Days 2 and 3

After we dried out our waterlogged tent, day two was a whole lotta
driving. We kind of got into a minor fight about watermelon being too
bossy, but it was worked out using only words.

The drive from Missoula to yellowstone was beautiful and rather
uneventful, which is good, because at&t apparently feels no need to
provide cellular service to either Montana or Wyoming.

We got to our campsite at canyon campground around 6:30, and found our
campsite waterlogged with standing snow. Rather than setup camp in a
freezing, muddy puddle, we decided to set up on a slightly inclined
(but level) spot nearby. We spent the whole night sliding down the
incline in our sleeping bags like it was a slip-n-slide but it was
probably still better than the puddle. The temperature also dropped to
33 degrees overnight, but our sleeping bags kept us plenty warm.

Poodle had a great day of firsts. It was her first campfire (that she
remembers) and the first time she's seen snow (also that she remembers).

Yellowstone is absolutely gorgeous. We've seen bison and elk so far,
and some amazing scenery. We're still holding out for a grizzly
(hopefully at a significant distance) and maybe some rams.

We'll be incommunicado for the next couple of days here in
yellowstone, but we'll be back to twittering in no time.

Sent from my iPhone

Day 1 (& 1.5) - It's raining, it's pouring...

Missoula, MT (Missoula KOA)

Well, we made it to our first campsite safe and sound. I am writing
this from the relative safety of our Big Agnes Big House tent, where,
if you can't tell from the picture, it's raining like it means it. Of
course it was beautiful out when we set up the tent, so we didn't
bother staking out the extra eight cords of the rain fly, but right
now (5:30 am mountain time) the tent is doing a great job keeping us
dry.

I'm awake because the sound of the rain is so overwhelmingly loud.
Hopefully it will shut the hell up so I can get some more sleep, and
so the tent can dry out a bit before we head down to yellowstone.

Our first day (yesterday) went very well. We covered around 350 miles,
got a better-than-expected 35 mpg in the Corolla, and my iPod playlist
has been awesome.

Sorry to report to those of you who took the "under one" in the
"turning around" or "someone gets killed" betting pool, but we managed
to make it thru day one (and two weeks of prep) without a single fight.

In all honesty, I did get a bit snippy when I thought that poodle lost
my headlamp, but she managed to find it without me having to punch her
in the face, so it all worked out.

On today's agenda: dry out tent (fingers crossed), buy some groceries
for dinner, drive to yellowstone, set up tent, chill.

-wm

T-minus 14 hours (and some change) and counting

Omniscient Narrator:
This blog chronicles the epic journey of two sisters through a strange land known as the "United States." Their journey begins in the Pacific Northwest where they will travel in a conveyance known as a car, using (lots of) a resource known as gas. They will then head East until they reach the Atlantic ocean, south until they see Elvis (or at least his house), West again to the Pacific ocean, and North to Seattle. All of this will take a little less than two months to accomplish.

Their journey will be chronicled here for all to see. Of course, it wouldn't be a proper epic without some serious struggle--overcoming obstacles and whatnot--so one of these sisters (we'll call her Poodle) will be giving up smoking for the trip, while the other will give up a near-daily fast-food habit (we'll call her Watermelon).

Those of you who know our heroines are probably scratching your heads trying to figure out why they have been named Watermelon and Poodle... these names came about during dinner when one of their parents, concerned about the notoriously vicious siblings safety on such a long journey, suggested that they use "safety words" to let each other know when they need a break. The use of safety words is a fairly common practice in the S&M community, and putting these two (completely opposite) ladies in a car together is somewhat akin to a steel cage death match without all the extra space.

Watermelon:
Anyway, we're looking forward to sharing our journey with you. We hope you're looking forward to it too. Please post comments or suggestions of things for us to keep in mind during our journey. We'll be posting frequently. We'll also be micro-blogging via twitter. You can find the last five posts of our twitter feed at the bottom of this blog, or you can subscribe to updates at www.twitter.com.

Poodle:
...

Watermelon:
Poodle was supposed to post something here, but she's being a crabby b*tch cause she hasn't had a cigaratte in four days.