The route that broke our car

As we were leaving Devil's Tower it occurred to us that we should probably make a reservation at Yellowstone. Admittedly, it didn't actually occur to US, it occurred to ME while I was on passenger duty and I just waited until it was my turn to drive to pawn off the duty to Angie. No such luck. She refused to leave until I had made the call. As it turns out, we had no problem reserving a spot! WITH A SHOWER!! I should note that at this point, 2 or 3 days into the trip (it all blends together), we had not showered or changed our clothes. Don't judge us. 

HOT. MESS.

If it looks like we were dirty and smelly and wearing the same clothes in all the prior pictures, it's because we were.

We left at about 4PM, and we were supposed to arrive at Yellowstone around midnight. Fun fact: when the GPS goes gray because there is no traffic information, it means that you are going to go through mountains. We would not realize this until later. 

Between Devil's tower and Yellowstone lies the great behemoth know as (maybe) Mount Bighorn. We hit it precisely as the sun went down.

It may be pretty, but you can see the line of mountains we were about to hit so it was mildly terrifying.

 I don't know how people speed around on these damn mountains, but I certainly couldn't, especially given that I was grinding my teeth, white knuckled and leaning not a little bit forward to moosh myself as close to the windshield as possible, thinking it would improve visibility enough to see the herds of deer everywhere. 

I won't go into details, but it involved a lot of screaming, a lot of going -20 mph, and a lot of near death experiences. We saw 26 deer and a skunk that stopped in the middle of the road, swung its head in our direction, and gave us a look of "WHAT." before he waddled on. I also have no idea how to drive a car up and down a mountain, but I understand the basics of no riding the brakes. It doesn't really matter when the whole goddamn thing is a 7% grade. By the end, our brakes were toast. Loss Damage waiver high five! By now, we know that a 6% grade is a piece-a-cake, but a mere percent higher means we go careening down the mountain to our doom. The brakes still work, but they make high-pitched squealing noises. All. The Time.

At around one, we started hitting signs for Yellowstone. Hooray! We're finally there! Naaaht. Yellowstone is massive. Huge. We booked a campsite at westernmost point of it, and had to drive through more mountains and twists and overhanging rocks with little signs that showed a dude being crushed by falling things. There were also signs that promised "SLIDES" but we were really disappointed/terrified to figure out it meant landslides. 

We were completely cracked out by stress and fatigue by the time we entered the park, and really couldn't handle the drive. Angie was in the passenger seat going on about LED reindeer elk and Rudolph being an asshole for inventing the laser because of some flashing sign that probably just meant that there were more friggin' deer/elk/moose/whatthehellever. Regardless, we drove for another two hours through the park that stank of rotting eggs. 

By the time we finally found the campsite, we were in hysterics. I mean really, truly gone. We flew out of the car, snapped the tent upright in about 2 seconds flat, and started humming in the sleeping gear while laughing without a single breath in between the whole time. When the tent was ready, I flopped into it and laughed so hard I had tears screaming down my face. For my coworkers that are keeping count, day 3 was when I went postal so I think I won my own bet.

I grabbed Pandarilla, snuggled up, dutch ovened us both, and fell asleep.