Out there

We've reached Seattle! Our route took us through Pittsburgh, Chicago, Minneapolis, Rapid City, Cody, Grand Teton National Park, Bozeman, and Spokane. Here are some of my favorite photos (warning: this is photo-heavy):

The tabby apparently trying to avoid the journey by donating himself to charity:


The cats in the car. We kept them crated except when they were in hotels.


A brief stop in Chicago at Arcadia Knitting for the Panopticon's 1000 Knitters photoshoot. Here is the man himself, holding the Argosy scarf I worked on for most of the trip (more on that later):


The cow-cat lounging in a Chicago hotel. At king size, this was definitely the biggest bed we saw on our trip, but the two cats still managed to spread out enough to take up at least a quarter of it. I think they come with little air pumps or something that they use to inflate themselves when needed.


The Argosy scarf, somewhere on the way to Minneapolis.


A brush fire beside the highway in Wisconsin. Yes, we called 911 about this and yes, they already knew.


One of the dozen or so Wall Drug signs we saw en route. I wish I'd caught the one that said "ONLY 355 MILES TO WALL DRUG!"


The Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. We didn't go inside. We did, however, stop for lunch at Ziggy's, a nearby hot dog place that won me over when the women let us bring the cats inside (crated, of course) so they could sit in an air-conditioned area while we ate, instead of out in the car on a sunny 100-degree day.

Something we saw near an Old West ghost town in South Dakota east of the Badlands. We still have no idea what it was for, but it looked pretty cool.


Badlands National Park. It was hot and dry but beautiful. We saw deer and prairie dog colonies and the tiny town of Interior, SD, population 67.





The Cody Nite Rodeo. We got to see the One-Arm Bandit and his bison. They started off going in circles on the ground, but eventually the rider herded the bison up a ramp and onto the top of the van.


Grand Teton National Park from the east side of Signal Mountain, just before sunset.


The Tetons from the west side of Signal Mountain during sunset.


One of the buffalo we saw. This one was calmly grazing right beside the road in the park.


Yellowstone Lake in Yellowstone National Park, behind some roadside geothermal activity.

Old Faithful doing its thing.

Mammoth Hot Springs.


Part of Mystery Stole 3. I started this in Montana when I got tired of working on Argosy.


We started keeping an eye out for amusing/odd signs somewhere in Ohio. Somewhere in western Montana, we spotted a large banner that said...well actually, we weren't sure what it said at first.

From a distance the letter "c" looked like an "o" and I caught myself wondering if this was some type of pasta I had never heard of before, but as we got closer we saw the alarmed cartoon bull on the sign and realized that it was an ad for the upcoming Testicle (i.e. prairie oyster) Festival. By the time I switched the camera on we had passed the sign, so we ended up turning back east at the next exit so we could drive by again for a picture.

Knitting
I finished the Pomatomus socks before the trip but didn't get around to take a picture until today.


The Argosy scarf is currently resting. I started this one for the Tour de France knitalong and managed to get through about 18 repeats before deciding I'd had enough (temporarily) of the yarn-pattern combination. In hindsight, I probably could have made it a bit wider.

I'm on clue 3 for the Mystery Stole.

This new place of ours has had a couple of warts, including the fridge that doesn't really refrigerate (we had to throw out a 3-day-old carton of milk before I would finally admit this; fortunately the freezer works just fine), but the location is pretty good--we're minutes away from a lot of the things we need and the nearest yarn store, the Fiber Gallery, is only a 20-minute walk away. I think I'm going to like it here...