it can't rain all the time

Although we planned on leaving early in the morning yesteday to start our long journey home, a few things changed our plans and we left about 2 hours later than we first planned.
After out last day of work, we initally planned a small dinner with a few friends, but then it grew into a pretty large group and we all went to cancan for a few drinks. Tony and i really only had one, although many were bought for us: ) we had a lot of work do on friday.
After some hard good-byes-but not final ones, because we will be back to visit soon-we walked back to our place and got right to bed. Friday morning we packed all day long. After packing nearly everything in the trailer, we wentfor our last dinner at Belltown pizza with our friend Regina.
We woke up early Saturday morning, put the last of our things in the car and drove east. It was a great day of driving. About 3 or 4 hours into the drive, we watched some guy riding his bike backwards on the freeway. Not backwards like he was sitting the wrong way. backwards, like he was sitting on a bike, in a normal fashion, headed turned slightly around, and pedaling the bike backwards and the bike was going backwards!!! We nearly swerved off the road trying to figure it out!
Our ride went smoothly, and we got about 600 miles under our belts when we decided to stop in Butte, MT. Mostly because it was the nearest city that had hotels, that wasn't right on top of yellowstone park, were there surely would be no vacancies.
Tony got out of the car and went in to get a room, and was promptly turned away, as with the next hotel and the last one that we tried.
Turns out this is a big weekend for Butte. There was a rodeo, a fair, and a folk festival, rendering all hotels, motels, and inn useless and full!
We drove another 100 miles to the next town and although nearly every hotel was booked, the nice fella' at the ramada ( which i vowed to not make fun of-the hotel that is- for a least 6 months) was nice enought to call 4 or 5 hotels and got us the room we stayed in last night. The lewis and clark motel. It wasn't a bad place, but it is also connected to a casino! there will be some photos when we can upload.
We decided to skip glaceier national park because it is a steep uphill ride and 8 hours out of the way. We weren't worried about wasting time, but the uphill battle with our trailer was not worth it.
Today we are going to ride through and check out yellowstone, grand tetons and hopefully stay just outside of south dakota were we hope to see mt. rushmore and crazy horse before taking the longest ride across the plains.
more to come. gotta get some coffee and go!