road trip to Montana

I took scads of pictures across the lower 48s last week. Below are some of my favorites. But first, the states Steve and I drove through:

Florida (departure state)
Georgia (highlights: Atlanta, seeing hills for once! in northern GA)
Tennessee (highlights: ChattanOOOOga, Lookout Mountain, Nashville, rainy nights, firework stands)
Kentucky (lowlights: bass fishing contest and tri-county prom = very hard to find a hotel room our first night)
Illinois (highlight: buying RC Cola at a gas station)
Missouri (highlight: driving through St. Louis! And we ate a Subway sandwich in the back of Steve's truck - which I loved doing. More: driving past the Kansas City Royal's stadium - it was so cool)
Iowa (highlight: photograph of an exit sign with my surname on it came out PERFECTly wonderful in pitch, pitch dark. Lowlight: it's IOWA. THEY CAN KEEP IT)
Nebraska (highlight: we barely drove through Nebraska - we skirted around Omaha, which surprised me so much, as it came out of nowhere and then was kind of ginormously pleasing against the night)
South Dakota (highlight: the Badlands, Wall Drugstore. Lowlight: Cole gets his first diarrhea attack at a ghost town exit - the ghost town was AWESOME, the poop not so much)
Wyoming (highlight: Sheridan, the Tetons, signs pointing toward Yellowstone, the feeling that we'd ditched the "prairie" and were getting closer to Montana)
Montana (highlight: Bozeman. Wow. I LOVE that town. Big Sky. A Safeway! Mother's Double Fudge Cookies! AND Oregon dairy products. Heart! Steve and I also took a detour to a campground that was deserted and took a whiff of the good life. A healthier Cole loved the snow so much he became a Labrador Re-penguin and played to his heart's content)

We completed our mission in Montana.

Return:

Wyoming again (lowlight: Steve ran over a rabbit that *almost* got away, but in the end, he was no match for I-25 and a fast truck. Highlight: 25 degrees! Cold fun)
Colorado (highlight: Denver, passing city buses equipped with WI-FI!)
New Mexico (highlight: sunset over Santa Fe (that has OPI written all over it), Albuquerque, the University of New Mexico, Route 66, first sighting of vintage windmills)
Texas (what can I say? What can I say about Texas? We repeatedly sang an 'ol PeeWee's Great Adventure smash hit: the STARS at NIGHT shine BIG and BRIGHT, deep in the heart of TEXAS, even though we never saw the stars)
Oklahoma (highlight: it's possible the X-Files could have been based on Oklahoma. Creepy, but a good creepy; Oklahoma City was interesting, and Tinker Air Force Base was cool to drive by, as my dad spent some of his formative years there)
Arkansas (lowlight: Arkansian drivers make this state, quite possibly, the worst state EVER. I can't even bring myself to talk about it)
Tennessee Again (highlight: this time? Memphis! And Lookout Mountain again!)
Georgia Again (highlight? We whirled through Athens and checked out UGA. Steve then remembered he had a deep, deep hate for Georgia frat boys. I laughed very hard as he described them as "newborn, pink-faced hamsters")
Florida. Home.
Sigh.
I really do love the USA.

And now for the pictures, in no particular order ('cause Blogger is cool like that):

Freak ice storm in eastern Montana! We actually passed a Corvette with Florida tags pulled to the side of the road, driving in reverse down the mountain pass. It was funny.














Me walking Cole in the Badlands National Park:














That picture was taken in the bathroom of our motel room here, in Bozeman, MT:














I heart windmills:



















Betcha can't guess where I took this:



















Y'all were right:














I am obsessed with Tennessee:














Just beyond Nashville:



















Running down a dream in Atlanta:














Blue skys in Wyoming:














Taken from the Interstate: