Last of Bozeman

Wrapping things up here, I suppose...  I didn't realize how long it'd been since I updated, but wow, this post took forever!


Wednesday 07/30
Chris and I went to Bite of Bozeman our second-to-last Wednesday. Nick was supposed to come but forgot and was riding his bike when we went to get him. This seemed to happen an awful lot this summer...

Basically what happens is restaurants around town set up stands and have sample-sized foods you buy.  There was some really good grilled corn, steak and mushrooms, mashed potatoes, and some other stuff Chris had that I didn't care for.  And dessert thanks to the Sweet Pea Bakery.

The bands were actually good at this thing, which seems to be a rarity at small-town events.  Then again, so says the music snot...

I was really jealous of those guys on the roof.

Nifty clouds!

Thursday 07/31
The next day I had to give my presentation to my lab group! Hugh wanted me to present to the lab as a trial run, and even though it was a test, it was way more terrifying because I actually cared about their opinion on how my presentation was. Unfortuately I had this conundrum where I wanted my morning espresso, but didn't want it to make me jittery. Instead I just gave a sleepy presentation which didn't go as horribly as it could have, which was all I was really asking for that day. They told me to add more pictures - because everybody likes pictures - and Dr. Smith got nitpicky about the words "convert" and "ideally".

After this I was pretty much done with work, other than making some minor improvements to my powerpoint. That night I met some of Chris's lab (and, well, Chris too) at Plonk wine. Tasty times. I got to be really jealous as the lab made plans to go to Yellowstone the next Tuesday. Why couldn't my lab go to Yellowstone?!


Friday 08/01
Not much happened on Friday. Nick had decided to do a crazy-long bike ride the next morning, and Chris and I were hiking with Robbie and Ben to Heather Lake. Therefore Nick, Chris and I just watched some of Eagle vs. Shark and went to bed.


Saturday 08/02
Hike photos! I'm sure they all look the same to you guys by now...

Ben took that one up there.  He always takes the best pictures.

We got back in time to chill out before Lebowski night.  A long time before it was decided that we needed to dress up and watch The Big Lebowski and drink White Russians.  Nick, Chris, Eric and I went to Nathan's that evening (through a storm, which is another story entirely) to celebrate.  Orion and some of his friends were there in fantastic getups.  Orion had the hair, robe, shirt, boxers, and general attitude down perfectly, and his friends were all decked out in bowling wear.  One even had a bowling jumpsuit!  Chris and I were nihilists, Nick also wore a bathrobe, and Eric just came as he was.  After the movie the guys started up some beer pong, and halfway through the game Nick looks over at me and says he wants Perkins, so we just get up and head to Perkins.  Eventually everyone else realized we were gone and gave us a call, and after that anytime someone vanished we'd joke about how they must be going to Perkins.

Blurry beer pong with Nick and Bowling Jumpsuit Fellow.

Nathan somehow lost his bowling shirt that evening but kept the pants.  After Nick and I vanished, Eric joined the other team and Nathan and Chris, who were doing well before, lost haaaard.  I'm not really sure if this means that Eric has skills or there was just a sobriety handicap going on that evening - I was enjoying a waffle at Perkins.

Sunday 08/03
I went to Donut Man in the morning with Nathan, Chris, Eric, and Nick, and as usual, we went to the duck pond. There were all kinds of baby ducks being adorable, but every time I tried to feed them I just hit them with donut pieces and made them freak out. I soon gave up.

That afternoon I watched Juno with Chris, and we got popcorn and drinks from the grocery store on College Street in our pajamas because it was Sunday and we didn't care. We decided to keep the pajama theme going, and for dinner we ordered pesto pizza from McKenzie River. We were shocked when it was delivered to Chris's room and not the front desk, but it was nice that the lazy theme of the day was obviously smiled upon by fate.


Monday 08/04
I dropped by the lab for a bit, but there was not much to do, honestly. I left after lunch and it made the guys jealous.


Tuesday 08/05
I attended the Solar presentations - Dario, Keara, Chris Plumberg, Krista, and Ben went.

This was the last Colombo's family night, and I went with Nick, Nathan, and Brian. Nathan and Brian got there first and split a pitcher, but Nick had to finish our pitcher by himself because I don't like beer. He also cursed me many times for not liking beer, but then again, he did that all summer long. We also cursed Chris for being in Yellowstone and missing the last family night, which brought Nick full circle to cursing people for not helping him out with his pitcher.


Wednesday 08/06
I went with Chris to the second part of Solar presentations. That day was Eric and Nick in the morning, followed by Jacob and Jenna after lunch. After presentations Nick rode Bridger Canyon, and then got angry when Chris and I invited him to Aleworks in the middle of it.

Eric being all cute about it.

Nick and his bowie.

Nick and his feet.


Thursday 08/07
Mine and Chris's presentations - well, all of the CM ones - were today! Nick was the only Solar kid that came, but Eric and Jenna apologized for sleeping through mine and Chris's. I was second, Chris was third, and Robbie was fifth, right after lunch. We all made a pact the night before to "shoot for average" so that we'd stop stressing out about it, and it seemed to have worked, because I think the three of us easily got above the mark. Actually there wasn't a bad presentation on anyone's part. My lab came to see me again, and it was kind of nice because I was the only person whose entire lab came to see them. And they got to see me dressed up! *gasp* I solved the espresso problem by waking up at 7 to go to Daily and drink it, and by the time I gave my presentation (~10:30) any jitteryness had vanished.

That night Nathan, Eric, Robbie, Brian, Nick, Chris, and I all went to visit Orion at his job as a sushi chef...and of course to eat some sushi! It was a tasty celebration indeed. Nathan and Brian knew one of the other sushi chefs, so they ordered two "chef specials" just to see who could come up with the best roll. Orion cooked up some insane roll that blew away the Originality contest, but it was decided after some debate that the other got the Taste award. Of course there was plenty of nigiri and shashimi to go around on top of the rolls, so I was happy about that. Rolls are just texture parties, and that's too much for me to handle.

Orion's crazy roll.

The other one.

It was a pretty swanky place.  I didn't want to use flash, though it would have helped a lot.

Friday 08/08
I went with Chris to pick up his friend Cole from the airport...apparently his parents flew him out just to drive back with Chris. The two of them were booking it to Wisconsin for a canoe trip and I guess their parents didn't want them to try to drive 20 straight hours alone. Because that's what they would have done. So it was rather sad that Chris's last day was cut short, as they left at 7-ish, but Carbondale's a reasonable 5 hours away, and I'd say some visiting will go on.

There was a final REU picnic at Dr. Neumeier's house, but it was rainy outside and I was just kind of bummed the summer was over, so it wasn't super great. Ironic in that our first picnic was rainy, I suppose. There was also a magic pen that Nick couldn't put down, and a bird that really enjoys attacking people.

Nick and I just packed after that, and wondered how in the world we were going to fit two rooms and two bikes into his car.


Saturday 08/09
I couldn't sleep at all that night after we got my bike in the car, so I just wandered around Roskie for a bit and eventually ran into Ben, who also couldn't sleep. He said that a bunch of them were leaving at 4:30 and if I was still up I should run down and say bye. And wouldn't you know it, I was still up then. Unfortunately it seemed that everyone but Robbie, who was riding to the airport with Max, had gone outside to wait on thier cab. Seeing as I didn't want to stand around in 45 degree weather in pajamas, I just sat with Robbie until Max came. This meant that I had the pleasure of seeing Eric tumble out of the elevator with three bags and a pillow at 4:29 AM. He hastily checked out, said "see you guys" as he opened the door, paused, and then ended it with "well, probably not."

It was one of the best goodbyes I've ever witnessed.

I eventually did get to sleep, but woke up at 8 to shower and finish cleaning my room. It took all of two minutes to check out, and then it was off to Donut Man for one last time with Nick and Nathan. We had warned him we were cleaning him out on our last Saturday, so he was prepared. We got all kinds of tasty donuts, Nick got to make his own sprinkle donuts, we got free cinnamon rolls, and a mix CD for the road! That brought immeasuable amounts of joy to our souls.

We got the car packed.

Barely.

Making sprinkle Donuts!

Mmmm donuts.

Documenting the drive to Denver would be overly tedious. It was a gorgeous day, as you will see, which meant that I was super-sad we were leaving and Nick got angry that he had to go back to Tennessee. We also talked a lot - so much that my throat was sore the next day, in fact - bought Donut Man silly postcards at gas stations, ate a lot of subway minis and cheeze-its and donuts, and switched off driving at gas stations. We also thanked NSF everytime for paying our way back home.

Goodbye Bozeman...

Hey there again, Wyoming.

We drove through a thunderstorm, and on the right we watched the sun set, while on the left there was the largest complete rainbow I'd ever seen.  It was kind of magical, as dumb as that sounds.

We stopped for dinner right before the kitchen closed (9:50) at Oscar Blues in Lyons, CO. It would've been faster but we got a little lost without adequate signage and streetlights, and eventually I had to call Kelsey to get directions from her magical iPhone. They didn't have whatever beer he was pretty pumped about, but it was a good (if sleepy) time nonetheless. I resumed driving to Denver, which was thankfully uneventful. We just listened to a lot of Radiohead. By the time we got to his friend's house it was around 1 AM and we simply crashed on some couches in the basement.

Sunday 08/10
This girl's parents are the most hospitable people ever, which inevitably ends up making me look like a jerk at mealtimes. I'm a supremely picky eater, and all I wanted was some milk and one of Donut Man's cinnamon rolls. I instead got offered cheerios, sausage, coffee, orange juice, cranberry juice, eggs, omelets, bagels, wheat toast, scones...probably more, and none of which I liked. (Yes, that's right, I don't like any of those things I just mentioned.)

We took off and Nick told me we were going to find Mondo Vino, or something like that, which apparently is a wine store in Denver with a fantastic beer selection. We got a bit turned around, but it was short-lived, and soon found ourselves at an AMAZING wine and beer corner store. I picked out a Cab - I love Cab - and the friendly salesman (Note: Salespeople TERRIFY me normally. These people did not.) pointed me towards some stuff he thought I'd like from South America, which was incidentally cheaper than what I had chosen. Thanks, friendly salesman!

Nick got a box of brews - supposedly what amounted to a veritbale treasure chest of beer for a beer geek - and then we were faced with the grim reality of having to find a place in the car for all of our purchases.

After all of the excitement of the morning...there came Kansas. Can we please just erase western Kansas? Please? It's the most terrible thing I've ever seen. An ocean of land that fails to be broken up by anything remotely resembling anything of interest. Bleh. I napped while Nick drove and listened to some stuff I told him he should, and while I drove Nick read me some of Griffiths' quantum book, followed by some Salinger short stories. 

Dumb postcards for Donut Man.  I hope he likes them...

This got us to lunchtime - Subway minisubs again! - and after that my voice had returned and we spent the rest of the time between lunch and dinner alternately bashing Kansas and trying to figure out where the nearest Chick-Fil-A was. Then we remembered it was Sunday and were just left with Kansas-bashing. The best:

Nick: *scrawls all over our map of Kansas*
Me: *glances over*
Nick: You know, I'm not covering up anything we need to look at....because there's not fucking anything here to cover up!

Missouri, comparitively, was a wonderland of stuff to look at.

Monday 08/11
We made it to Big Cat's house at around 2 AM and did a repeat of the night before; that is, we crashed.

The next day the guys had gone to pick up Patrick's (the Big Cat) car, and I got to lounge around, update this blog, shower...enjoy not being in a car, basically. Then Patrick, who works at the arch taking tickets, took us there and got us in for free. The guys didn't care too much, but I hadn't been so it was pretty cool.

Then we met John and Aaron at Schlafly Brewery for a tour and a trade-off (<-me, that is), and got some samples at the end of the tour. I gave the guys my samples, which of course meant that I had to follow Big Cat, who's under 21, back to his house with Aaron's car to load it. St. Louis driving is a bit stressful...

I ended up driving Aaron's car the entire way from St. Louis to Lexington, but mostly because I didn't want to have to sit in the back with all of my luggage.

Yesterday 08/12

Hung out in the guys' kitchen with Aaron, being music geeks, then got Indian food at Punjab with John, Aaron, and Kels for dinner.  Basically...home-sweet-Lexington.

Real Snappy

I'm on my way back with Nick, and we're in St. Louis, staying with his friend the Big Cat. John and Aaron should be picking me up in a few hours and then I'll be back in Lex! How I'm getting to Ashland is a bit more up in the air but *shrug* The important part is down.

I'll have a few more real (meaning: pictures) posts when I get back in...just wanted to keep everyone posted...ha-ha.

Bad puns = best ever.

Last Weekend

I went to the Tetons with Nathan, Chris, and Nick, and I've been waiting for Chris and Nick to post their pictures  of the trip so that I could ruthlessly steal them and add them in here...but they're slackers and have not done so.  You'll have to deal with a few less pictures than normal, oh no!

Nathan lives in Jackson, WY, right outside of the park, and was going home with his roommate for the weekend.  He said that we could crash at his house Friday night and then we'd go hiking on Saturday.  On the way down we stopped in Yellowstone because Chris and I hadn't been there.  Nick has many times over, which is ironic because he really doesn't like Yellowstone...he thinks it's too touristy.  Now that I've been there I have to agree...

Though I really, really, really liked how much blue action was going on here...

...and this was incredibly neat, despite being at least 100 degrees because of the steam...

Old Faithful was just ridiculous.  The three of us spent more time being entertained by the people-watching than the geyser.

Definitely touristy.  I didn't really want to battle the crowd to get a picture, so I just lifted the camera up over my head.  This means worst horizon lines ever!

The Old Faithful Inn was amazing, though, even if you're not an architecture nerd.

After this we drove on our way through the park and entered Grand Teton National Park, which impressed us far more than Yellowstone did as soon as we got near Jackson Lake and the mountain range came into full view.  That it's not so touristy also gives it points.  And that people didn't (illegally!) stop their cars in the middle of the road to look at a bison.  Or elk.  Or marmot.  Wow those people are annoying.

We stopped by the visitor's center for a bathroom break, food break, and to see what time we needed to show up to get a backpacking permit.  Turns out that that time was 8 AM.

For some reason it took them a much longer time than necessary to read that sign, so I got bored and took some window-pictures.  Dig the matching shorts and tube socks?

We got to drive past the range while the sun was setting.  I think this was when I heard Nick in the backseat go "Nick, stop reading trail maps and look at pretty things!"

I didn't really get any other good pictures...

Nathan's parents are both park rangers and so they had every map of the park known to man.  They were also very keen on bear spray even though we told them we already had bear spray...  They boarded us for the night and made us scones for breakfast the next day!  And then it was off to get a haircut for Nathan and then to get a permit!  The trail we wanted to hike was still covered with snow, and although that's our specialty, they wouldn't let us go on it without ice axes.  The appeal of hiking with ice axes wasn't quite enough to justify the cost for us, so we went on another, slightly harder trail...up Granite Canyon to the divide and then back down Open Canyon.

The morning started out warm...some beginning of the trail scenery here...

..and definitely only got warmer.  It was one of the hottest days I've experienced out here.  We kept taking breaks to dunk our hats and heads in the creek, which felt amaaaazing.

At one point Nick rounded the corner and had a moose's butt in his face.  We scampered around the corner as fast as we could - I don't think it even noticed us - shouted, and then cautiously rounded it again.  We would go on to encounter more moose as the day went on.

By afternoon we were climbing up the canyon walls - sad because there was no more cold creek, but nice because it was all of a sudden Wildflower Heaven.

We got to the Mt. Hunt trailhead and decided to go to the lake, which Nick claimed wasn't far but really is waaaay up that hill in the picture below.  I hate steep climbs, and partway up Nick looked down from where he was (way ahead) and just shouted "sorry!".  He's usually quite wrong about how hard most climbs are, so I wasn't surprised much.  The guys left their extremely heavy packs with some kind campers near the trail, but I kept mine because it was light and had food.  Me without food = bad news for anyone around.

 

We went to the lake with the idea of swimming, but it was so cold that only Chris got in.  On the way back Nick had a Diabetic Crisis, so it turned out to be a very good thing the food was with us.  Chris and I were walking in the front when we hear Nathan go "uhhh...guys...you should probably come back here" and Nick's just collapsed in the middle of the trail.  After a food break everything was fine, but Nick was rather gloomy the rest of the day which was very out of character.  He said it just came out of nowhere, so I don't know why he'd beat himself up over it happening... *shrug*

Once we got back to our packs we took another break to filter water - and wow, water filters are the most handy things anyone who backpacks could possibly own.  There is no convincing me otherwise.

Nick still gloomy.

Unfortunately after this we still had to hike to our designated camping area, which was further up the mountainside. 

By the time we got to our camping area we were so worn out we just picked a spot in the beginning of the zone, which meant more hiking for us the next day.  We also found out that it meant more mosquitoes, and so as soon as dinner was done we retired to the tent and went to bed.

The next day we woke up, packed up while dodging mosquitoes, and made our way to a creek to filter water and have breakfast.  Creeks are so, so, so handy.

About this time I realized my hair was INSANE.  Apparently sweat, dirt, sunscreen, and sleep make for a decent hair gel.  (Oh and parents, my face is no longer broken haha.)

After breakfast we continued on to the Mt. Hunt divide.  While hiking we realized that the reason I've been dying the past two hikes has been because Nick had been leading, and we have two opposite hiking styles.  He's an endurance master and I'm basically a sprint-hiker.  Near the divide Chris and I let him and Nathan continue plodding up the mountain and then sprint-hiked our way after them.  I fared so much better :D

Yay!  Please note that the divide is higher in elevation than the mountain we climbed last weekend.  We had lunch and then let Endurance Nick plod down the mountain the same way. I didn't care about the way down, but Chris prefers sprint-hiking down as well...

We had a pretty uneventful hike compared to the day before...stopped at a creek partway down to get more water and cool off because it was still insanely hot.  Around this time we noticed that our shirts were crusty in swaths from all of the salt in our sweat.  Basically, we were disgusting.

We decided not to go to Phelps Lake to swim because we'd already hiked 23 miles and were just exhausted.  Back at the Trailhead we realized that the trailhead map didn't have a good chunk of our hike on it, even though our maps did...  There should be a line connecting Granite Canyon (from near Marion Lake) to the Mt. Hunt divide.  Might explain why we only saw one other person on it all weekend.

Back at Nathan's his parents had made us dinner, and there was no better food in the world at the time.  Then Nick, Chris, and I took off and made our way back to Bozeman via Idaho, which Nathan suggested because he likes the wheat fields.  Nick began the drive and I finished it after we stopped in West Yellowstone for a snack break.

The Tetons from the Idaho side: