Washington to Montana

I assume I somehow deleted the post below because I specifically remember writing it... I'm going to try to remember it now.

We left our cozy motel in Washington at 9am, said our goodbyes to to the Korean lady and set off. She sent us off with lots of breakfast... muffins, danishes and fruit again. It was very interesting driving through Washington. From my perspective, there were two parts of Washington: the lush, dense forests and the desert (once you pass the mountains). It was just a sudden change of scenery. In Canada, I noticed that this kind of change in scenery was actually denoted by the seemingly arbitrary province lines. Ontario which is hilly and rocky (Canadian Shield) gives way to Manitoba, which is pretty flat, which gives way to Saskatchewan which is really flat, then there's Alberta which is desert-y, and BC which is foresty and mountainy. I think these province lines were drawn with thought and consideration.

The American lines are a different story. So when I saw the change of scenery, I immediately thought we were in Idaho, but as it turns out, we were not. Once we did get to Idaho, we stopped for lunch. We really wanted to try out Sonic, because we see it so much on TV, so we punched it into our GPS. There was a Sonic in some little town that I don't even know the name of in Idaho. Now, let me explain Sonic to you. We thought it was just an ordinary, super cheap fast food burger place. But it's not. It's an old-school car-hop drive in. You pull into a parking spot which is equipped with a drive-through menu on both sides. You push a button on the menu, and a person answers the speaker and you place your order. A few minutes later, someone comes out with your meal... and yes... they are on ROLLER SKATES! How cool is that? Andre and I weren't sure if you should tip them, but the guy was sort of lingering and kept asking us if we needed anything else, so Andre quickly went into his pocket and grabbed whatever was inside and gave it to the guy. Turns out it was a $1 bill... but thankfully American money all looks the same and I don't think the guy noticed that we shafted him right away. We felt a little sheepish, so we quickly ate our gigantic burgers and got on the road. We didn't have lunch until 2pm, so we were good until we reached our motel in Montana.

We got to our motel in Missoula, Montana around 9pm. We stayed at a Super 8 this time, because our booking of hotels in the states turned into a frantic "oh my god, there's nothing left" exercise. After a quick check to see if the local KMart was open for a T-Shirt (it was not), we went to Safeway to pick up a couple of groceries for the next day.

We headed back to the hotel for the night, watching HBO. I'm glad that most of our motels had HBO for free.

For some reason, I had high hopes for Montana. I had these images of myself and Andre going into a little western diner filled with locals eating their pie and them recognizing that "yer not from 'round here". And then they would proceed to make fun of us Canadians and then tell us old Cowboy and Indian stories...

I think I watch too many movies. No such luck.

Our Super 8 was dank and dingy, although it was actually quite clean. It was a half-basement room with the window high up on the wall which I think made it feel that way.