Montana!

School starts for me this Thursday so I decided to take one last vacation before I couldn't go anywhere anymore. I called up my friends, Laura and Dirk, and planned to go up to Montana to visit their family for a few days. The original plan was for me to drive up on Wednesday then come back on Sunday, as I figured they might, they asked me to stay another day and everyone I talked to about it suggested I stay longer as well so I came back today, Monday. The drive was just over eight hours so not too bad, but my knee and I are very glad that my car has cruise control and that I made a few CDs before the trip so I could just sing my heart out. My voice was a bit scratchy at the end of each drive, i really let it out when I'm the only one in the car.

Thursday, Laura and I went to the Western Montana State Fair with Laura's son and her friend, Nikki, and her kids. We let the kids ride a few rides and then we went to look at the animals. The kids got to ride a miniature horse and eat large bags of cotton candy. I got to enjoy the bumper cars and a ride that just went around in circles (it was broken). I also had my first corn dog from a fair...very yummy. That night, we were supposed to go up the canyon to make dinner and just have some fun, but it was raining off and on all day so we just stayed home and sauteed the meat and veggies we were going to kabob in the canyon. I want to say we did something else that night too, but I don't remember.

Friday, it was supposed to rain all day so Laura and I went shopping. My tire decided that it wanted to leak air off and on over the last few weeks and decided to be a lot worse after my drive (don't worry, I was very safe and kept an eye on it and didn't have any problems on the actual drive) so to be safe, I dropped it off at the local Les Schwab to get it checked out since I couldn't see anything wrong with it. Apparently there is a small leak on the sidewall of the tire so they patched it as much as they could and sent me on my way with a smaller leak (which really hasn't leaked very much since then) and suggested I keep an eye on it to make sure to add air when needed and check into buying a new tire to replace it eventually. Our shopping trip produced a few items of clothing for the new school year, but I still need to go looking some more in the next two days. That night, I played a video game with Dirk that he had gotten that day (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World). I'm not much of a video gamer, but it was entertaining. Apparently, we played for about three hours and Laura took some pictures since we were laughing so much while playing.


Saturday, we went on a hike with Laura's friends to Morrell Falls. It took about an hour to drive to the trail head and then 2 1/2 hours to hike the 5 mile (round trip) to the falls with 6 children. It was a pretty easy hike but at the same time we pushed ourselves. We were going to stop and go shooting on the way back from the hike, but we were all pretty tired so we went and grabbed dinner from Five Guys. Laura and Dirk (along with a few others) convinced me to stay an extra day so Laura and I went to another of her friends so i could borrow a skirt to wear to church the next day. On the way home, we stopped at a local ice cream place and had some very yummy "homemade" ice cream.





Sunday, we were tired...we didn't make it to church. After sleeping until noon, we decided to go shooting, but drove around for a few hours instead because we couldn't find the right place. We all took naps which made us all a little happier. Laura, Dirk, and I played a few card games. Dirk and I tried to finish the video game and then went to bed.

The drive home today wasn't too bad. It was probably good that I waited a day as I was probably more awake today than yesterday and there was most likely less traffic on the road. I hit downtown Salt Lake right at 5 pm so the last 45 minutes of the drive was a little hairy, but I made it home without any incident or problem. Now I just need to get ready for school...yeah.