Halfway Home

Due to the huge number of people migrating by motorcycle toward Sturgis, South Dakota for the annual rally, we decided to take I-80 and avoid the actual rally itself, as well as Yellowstone. We were intending to spend a few days camping at Medicine Bow in Wyoming, but that will only happen if Zeus, the Volvo has healed in time for us to make it back to sunny Sebastopol on our regular ETA, August tenth. Besides mourning the loss of power to Zeus, we are also mourning our smallest and youngest guinea pig, Brownie. The only survivor now is the mother, Spot. What a bunch of inbred piggies they were. Spot was pregnant when we bought her. Brownie was the runt and longest lived of the litter of four. We are now in Cheyenne, Wyoming where the people are generous and the sky is hella large. Thunderstorms, mixed with intermittent sunshine, railroad tracks, paths through dead tall weeds crossing freeway on ramps to convenience stores mixed with cold outdoor pool and hours of media at our disposal. The kids have a cold anyway. The night staff at La Quinta put us up at the governnment rate, so Caleb wears his ipod like it's top secret during the day shift. They gave us the handicapped room to make life easier for us so we make Anja feign a limp. All kidding aside. That's twenty bucks off the regular rate per night, so we scored, just for the asking, in a situation, of course. La Quinta is my favorite hotel anyway. They always accept dogs for no extra fee, have free breakfast and wifi, a pool, and normally one can find a coupon at the truck stop. It's not medicine bow, but we can make quesadillas in the microwave and I was wondering how the rice noodles would taste out of the coffee maker. Actually, we have two lovely restaurants within walking distance as well, and being forced to take a big time out in a clean safe friendly place is not such a bad thing. We are sharing the motel with many friendly bikers who are dog and child friendly as we are still in the path of the northern traveling Sturgis bound crew. We are almost exactly halfway home.