PJ or Bust (Part II)

I was insistent that we visit Yellowstone national park on this road trip. At this point we had lost some time due to roof problems and tire blowouts but we also purposely built in some time, buffer time, in our itinerary.
Matt, being Matt, was a little ‘nerped’ that that we didn’t have enough time in our schedule to visit the park. That’s one reason I love Matt. He keeps me on point.

We drove through Yellowstone anyway and it was a nice detour from the I-90 route…

…but took longer than we thought it might so we stayed just east of the park in ….

The Cabin:

Some of the best scenery was just east of Yellowstone.

After that, we literally drove east for a day and a half… …stopping only to eat…

…Sleep…

…refuel…

…And grab some nifty souvenirs…

Note: somewhere in South Dakota, I noticed the Ironhorse’s spare tire was making a awful rattling sound. Learning from our tire incident (see PJ or bust Part I), we chose not to ignore the sound. It turns out that the ‘swing away arm’ that the spare tire rests on was cracked.

Long story short, we backed into a tree in the Alaska and it finally caught up with me. So now we have a spare tire as a companion in the van.

Speaking of companions, we met back up with Mike Moses after he finished his work in the state of Montana. He made a last-minute decision that was okayed by Laura, his wife, and hopped in the van on the quest for Pearl Jam.

Luckily he did because we needed his expert weather tracking skills to dodge one of the more gnarly thunderstorms we’ve encountered.

Nerpish:

Partial Nerpy:

Half Nerped:

Fully Nerped:

We finally arrived in East Troy on Friday evening, right on schedule. Massive love to Matty for putting in some long hours driving the iron horse.
We anticipate some great hangout time watching a band we grew up with. Perfect.

It’s funny, I can’t do as much physically as I used to, so sometimes I feel like I’m not helping on these trips. But, when we got into the hotel in East Troy, Mike and Matt commented that this is one of the coolest things they’ve ever done and I helped spearhead it, so that felt good. And we haven’t even seen any music yet!

Play the vid:

“…One night thunder cracked.
Mercy backed outside her windowsill.
Dreamed I was flying high above the trees over the hills….”