Back home, years ago.

Three years ago today I woke up in St. Louis, Missouri!

Our first stop of the day was Anheuser-Busch! (just fine, and yours?? – I pretty much said that every time someone said Anheuser-Busch. GET IT??)

Photo Opportunity! (plz note Brandon’s Stoner Drug shirt!)

Kim and Brandon.

After our tour of the brewery, we went to the St. Louis River front and the Gateway Arch. For the uninitiated, that’s the Mississippi River in the background.

I have no idea what’s going on here, but that’s the arch in the background.

I WOULD!!

This is the view from the top of the Gateway Arch! That’s a limousine and a school bus down there. Oh, and the Mississippi River too.

Kim’s feet don’t touch!!

I WOULD!!

After visiting the Gateway Arch (and buying jerky and Red Bull!) we drove on to Nashville Tennessee. As you can see, Kim was bored again. That’s her view from the back of the truck. It’s actually fairly accurate, as you can see in these two pictures.

We drove through Kentucky…

And we finally made it to Nashville. (I’m just going to skip over a little drama we had with finding a place to sleep and pulling a uhaul trailer down Nashville’s Second Ave.)
More pictures here! Also, here is a shitty video Kim made of Brandon.

So The Rock Crest Lodge is pretty much the gnarliest place I have ever stayed! We got there late and we were pretty beat. The place just had a creepy feeling to it. We got into our room, and I was like… “This isn’t the Rock Crest… This is the Bates Motel!!” Seriously, it was spooky!! The website makes it look pretty good, so maybe it’s a lot nicer now. After all, it was 3 years ago when we were there. If I were to find myself in Custer South Dakota again, I would for sure stay there again, just because! And the “Custer Southern Exposure Family Package” sounds enticing! Anyways…

We survived the night and started the day with some LOLz!

Here I am surfing the innernets or something. (The room was so small!)

I had been to Mt. Rushmore before, and was vaguely familiar with the area. I knew I wanted to drive through Custer State Park to get to Mt. Rushmore, but I didn’t anticipate how difficult it would be to navigate those mountain roads with the big Dodge Ram and a uhaul trailer. It was a little stressful at times, but I feel it was worth it.

Kim, Brandon and me at Mt. Rushmore.

Me and Brandon at Mt. Rushmore.

Me and Kim at Mt. Rushmore.

From Mt. Rushmore we drove east and stopped at Olde Glory Fireworks where I dropped nearly $100 on firecrackers. No jerky or Red Bull was available.

Further down the road we found ourselves in Wall South Dakota. Naturally, we made a stop at Wall Drug for Red Bull and jerky. Here I am on a dino! Here I am… Uh… Well, there I am! (what you can’t see is that there was a group of strangers off camera and they were all like “Man, who put the retarded guy on that thing??”)

Kim and Brandon rode a South Dakota Jackalope! Here’s a video of a snake oil salesman! Brandon and I played a prank on Kim! She had been riding in the back of the truck with Sadie the whole way, and while we were at Wall Drug, we left Sadie in the cab. Brandon bought some fake plastic dog poop, and ran it out to the truck while I kept Kim busy. When we were leaving, Kim opened her door, saw the fake poop on the seat, and she called SHOTGUN! Brandon and I were cracking up on the inside, but we were trying to get the most mileage out of the joke, so we kept fairly straight faces. We had Kim snowed! She totally thought Sadie took a dump in the truck! Also, here is a video clip of Kim eating a Root beer float.

I thought I was going to be able to bone my way across the US, but I think this was the most action I got on the whole trip. =(

We stopped at this Sinclair filling station for Red Bull and jerky.
We drove on late into the night until we hit Sioux City Iowa. There was some road construction going on and the detour made us miss our exit so we had some extra driving time that night, but it was ok because we were watching King of the hill on my Sega Game Gear!
More pictures here!

There’s no better way to start a day than with a can of Red Bull!

Hey, there’s something you don’t see everyday in South Florida!

This is Kim and Brandon at Spasm Geyser.

I think Kim was trying to make out with me but I was like blegh!

Me and Brandon at Old Faithful!

We almost froze to death taking this picture! That’s Lake Yellowstone or Yellowstone Lake or something. It was frozen!! (plz note Red Bull in hand!)

…so then we’re driving East and we come upon this beast eating roadkill! IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD! She peed on her find as soon as she saw us coming and started heading for the side of the road, but I guess she took our slowing down as a sign that she should go back and finish her meal (fresh pee and all). We sat there for quite a while waiting for her to finish and get out of the way. It was amazing! I hope I’m never that hungry.

Oh, hey, we found snow!

Lots of snow!!

Oh, man! I totally forgot about this place… We had been driving for a few hours and pounding the Red Bull! I think Brandon and I had each drank 8 cans by then. Well, I had to pee like REALLY REALLY bad so we stopped at Pahaska Tepee outside of Cody Wyoming. Check this out, I got out of the truck and waked to the bathrooms. I started to pee and was going for a good 15 -20 seconds before Brandon walked in. He peed and left and I was STILL peeing! It was like Austin Powers’ pee, and then some! That was something to be proud of!! Anyway, I think I bought some jerky and Red Bull and we were on our way again.

This is definitely not 95 South!

Rodeo Capital of the World!

We stopped at this place in Cody Wyoming for lunch. I’m really bummed I can’t remember what it was called, but that doesn’t really matter… The place was huge and when we walked in it was like a scene from a scary movie. The place was freakin’ deserted! We’re standing there like…??? I was waiting for a piano to start playing by itself and ghost cowboys to pop out and start shooting us. It was really bizzare! The freakiness didn’t even end there! We made our way to the back of the place which turned out to be the bar and when we walked through the swinging doors it was like we had scratched the needle off of a record and stopped the party music, because everybody (apparently locals there to get their afternoon drink on) stopped their conversations and stared at us. I was waiting for someone to be like “zOMG BROWN PEOPLE!!! GET THE ROPE!!!”
Anyway, lunch was pretty good and they had a couple of hot waitresses so all was not lost.

Me and Sadie

Kim and Sadie.
We drove on to Custer South Dakota that day. Up until this point I had made our hotel reservations online before we even left Othello, but since I didn’t know where exactly we would end up 3 days down the road, I we didn’t have a place lined up to stay in South Dakota. We stopped at some hotel in Custer, but they didn’t take pets. They advised us that The Rock Crest Lodge was the only lodging in the area that allowed pets. We turned around and went back to this place and that’s where we spent the night.
More pictures here!

Three years ago today, we woke up in Coeur d’Alene Idaho. I’m the fat guy on the right (haw haw you can’t see me because my layout sucks, and I’m too lazy to resize these pics.), and what you can’t see is that the pointer finger on my right hand is bleeding. It got smashed between my fat ass/chain from my wallet and the rock when I jumped up there. I guess that’ll teach me!

We drove across Idaho and entered the great state of Montana, We stopped at the $10,000 Silver Dollar Bar (I must have lost my google mojo because I couldn’t find an actual site for this place!) in Haugan. I had traveled to Montana (and beyond) many many times with my family, and we would always stop there, so I had to show it to my friends too. Brandon tried to count all of the silver dollars on the walls, but we didn’t have enough time for him to finish.


Kim and Brandon tried on new hats! I don’t remember what all we bought there, but I’m pretty sure I bought a hat or 2 and I think maybe Brandon bought a belt buckle. And I kind of remember him buying some trinkets for Kim. Oh, and Kim and I smashed some pennies!

We drove on and a while later we needed to pull over to replenish our in-cab supply of Red Bull and let Sadie pee.

We picked a great spot to stop! We literally just pulled off of the road and there was a trail that lead to a river’s edge. Here’s a dumb little video from there.

I took this picture while we were stopped there.

We found this there too!!

I wish we had “Kum & Go” on South Beach! I made Brandon exit the interstate or whatever main road we were on so we could stop and I could say I went to “Kum & Go”! I think I bought Red Bull and jerky.

Then we drove and drove and drove and outside of West Yellowstone we saw a couple Wolves in a field. They’re there if you know where to look. I swear!

We spent the night at West Yellowstone. It was slim pickens for places to eat after 9 PM and the womens were nowhere to be found. There was a busload of AZNS at the lodge we stayed at, but they didn’t seem to know much english. =(

With all the anticipation of spending the next day traveling through Yellowstone, it was kind of hard to sleep that night!
More pictures here!