City Center Motel Missoula

Leaving Missoula via The KBGA Bus!

I am writing this entry from comfort of my living room in Missoula, Montana.
Kingston (my dog) is staring up at me and laying his muzzle on my knee, looking at me, sniffing, licking, calmly telling me to get off the computer and go play with him in the sunshine ...

... and Gullfoss

That's it so far, I have a long way to go.

Once in Scandinavia I'm hoping to jet north. (no detailed plans here yet) I'd like to venture around Bergen and possibly up to Trondheim when in Norway, and if it's not to freezing, head up to Lapland north of the Arctic Circle, especially if I didn't get a chance to see the Aurora in ...

... flow. However, I didn't see the captive audience thing in the car coming. She's only covered thru 1984 in her file of things I haven't listened to since 1971. Also, Mrs. Congeniality has caused us to meet way too many nice people. Today at breakfast a cute couple married 60 years would still be talking to us if I hadn't given them my ...

... skinny, it took pretty much forever. Construction, and windy up hill roads don't equal speed.
We rolled our way into Missoula about 5PM, mountain time, and decided to check out the downtown area. There happened to be a music festival, with BEER, going on downtown. Some local bands were playing, and there were tons of people out and about. Missoula is a pretty cool ...

... been privy to, on my adventure. The whole idea of couch surfers and trying to make the world a better place, one couch at a time, could be a nieve idea. But I have seen first hand, the love and kindness people can show to a complete stranger, and it can be overwhelming. I have become a full advocate of the couch surfing community and spirit. It's what people did before there were hotels and hostels, and in my ...

... we couldn't take pictures inside the house.

We arrived in Missoula early afternoon. We relaxed before heading to Jane's cousin David's home for dinner. We had a wonderful evening visiting and catching up with David and Maureen and their 5 year old Krista. Unfortunately, we didn't take our camera with us, so we have no pictures of them.

... and maxed out at 88 degrees with the temperature on the van thermometer going up to 127 degrees wile sitting on the interstate due to a wreck. I'm not sure what actually happened but from what I saw it was a tractor trailer, a van, and a motorcycle. The ambulance and wrecker were both driving on the shoulder of the road and the ambulance was running over the reflector posts, wow. Anyhow, thats about the extent of the excitement besides picking up 5 geocaches. Our plans have us staying ...

... Oddly, though, when I write those items as a list, they seem like plenty.) Perhaps it's because neither of us is working, and there is no real routine - no daily job, no summer camp (Aislyn signed up for Missoula Children's Theater Cinderella camp, but, not surprisingly for her, bailed after a day), no weekly meetings or classes. But summer in Northampton is not so different from that; Joe and I are both teachers, Ren is too young for camp, and Aislyn wouldn't (and ...

... m all, "Who's Pat Benatar?". OK, maybe I thought about her A LITTLE when I needed an oxygen tank and Depends on the hike up and down the mountain (by the way, Leigh's three year old made it like a trooper!) to the "M". Maybe next time Pat! Today was Grizzly game day. It's a huge deal. It says, "Go Grizz" everywhere and the fans are fanatics. They have huge tailgates ...

... starting to develop on the front wheel. There were a couple of times when I thought I was going to have a close encounter with the local flora/fauna (bloody chipmunks!), but it's all gone well so far. Not only have I got to know the outer workings of the bike relatively well, I feel a closer bong with the innards. It seems that I've fumbled around with these an awful lot over the past few miles. At the current rate of repair, I'm looking for the ...