from rapid city, south dakota to billings, montana

up and at 'em! crappy expensive buffet breakfast. BLECH!

my brains are so scrambled and fried that i can barely write anything but a recitation of facts. this has become mainly a log so that i have some memory of what occurred on our trip across this HUGE country of ours. because with the state of my brain i have no confidence that i am going to remember any of this.

we drove from rapid city, sd to the devil's tower, which was spectacular. devils tower is an igneous intrusion, inhabited by pack rats, and therefore is some kind of religious temple for jak. we were both feeling stressed about time so we walked up to and a little ways around it, and then continued on. once again, it would have been nice to do the hike(s) around it, but there wasn't enough time.

all of south dakota and wyoming are spectacularly scenic and beautiful, the views and the vistas were amazing!

we drove to buffalo, sd and stopped for another lunch of burgers. when we asked our waitress about the quickest route to cody, which was our next intended stop for the night, she made noises about snow in yellowstone (which is where we wanted to spend tomorrow), and we started getting nervous about driving up into the mountains and the weather and...

it had been really frustrating to only get a glimpse of the black hills and the devil's tower. the idea of squeezing 3,472 square miles of park into a few hours started to sound more frustrating than enjoyable. so we decided to go back to our original itinerary and head north for billings.

in billings we got settled and started juicing up our peripherals, answered some emails, read a few blogs, planned an ctivity for tomorrow and then went about googling for a place to eat dinner. we found a couple thai places and a tapas joint, all within a few blocks. we are desperate for anything green, vegetable like, anything that is not part of a cow, so we went on a walk to review the options and stopped at the tapas place for martinis and we split a salad. the most amazing part of this meal was the fact that two bombay sapphire martini's added up to a grand total of $10! where we come from it is more common to pay $10-14 for ONE martini. thrilling.

the sky sure is big out here.