There’s one thing that I have yet to explain about our road trip. You see, the thing is, Jenn and I are both addicted to coffee. We like to drink it all the time. And, as I might have men­tioned once or twice, it’s hot here. When it’s hot, Jenn and I like to drink iced coffee. The funny thing is, appar­ently iced coffee is only a coastal phe­nom­e­non. If you go to the west (or Mid­west) and ask for an iced coffee, they look at you like you have two heads. If they’re really nice, they’ll say, “Ummm, no…but I could put some ice in some coffee for you.” Their hearts in the right place…but hot coffee with ice in it just isn’t the same thing. In fact…it tastes like crap. Iced coffee involves brew­ing extra strong coffee and not leav­ing it on a burner at all (process may vary…but essen­tially the same idea).

So…because of this little iced coffee snafu, Jenn and I have been sus­tain­ing our caf­feine addic­tions entirely with iced lattes (prefer­ably large with double or triple shots). How many shots really depends on the size. There are these weird little huts in park­ing lots here. They’re every­where. You can’t find a coffee shop to save your life, but there are these teeny tiny espresso huts in all of the strip mall park­ing lots. Jenn and I will drink two or three of these lattes a day. The strange thing is, there doesn’t seem to be any con­sen­sus between the huts on the exact pro­por­tions of a latte. The size, caf­feine amount and qual­ity vary greatly. We just ask for large now. At one hut, Jenn and I asked for a large and the woman held up two cups and asked, “Do you want the large or the gigantic?” We quickly looked at the cups and both said we wanted the gigan­tic. As it turns out, that par­tic­u­lar day we out did our­selves. The gigan­tic (which appeared so small when she held it up), was actu­ally a 32oz cup. It was so big, it didn’t fit in our cup holders.

This espresso high is impor­tant to con­sider because it’s led to a lot of ridicu­lously funny dri­ving moments. It’s also I think caused us to be incred­i­bly slow trav­el­ers. We can’t make it for more than two hours in the car with­out stop­ping. And, in the end, it will lead us both to extra­or­di­nar­ily bad headaches when we get home and revert to plain old iced coffee.

A couple of my Dad’s friends have Clydes­dales that they rig up for rides car­riage rides around Helena. These are the biggest horses I’ve ever seen. I wanted to take a pic­ture with my sister and I stand­ing next to them so that it would show just how huge they are. Here’s the shot. While look­ing at it, keep in mind that my Dad was taking the pic­ture while urging my sister and I to get closer to them.

Here’s my foot and com­pared to one of the horse hooves:

Here’s some pic­tures of my family’s cabin on Flat­head Lake.

Check out this pic­ture from my Birth­day cel­e­bra­tion. Note the table­cloth ruf­fling from how strong I blew on the candles.

The trip to the cabin on Flat­head Lake was entirely relax­ing. We read. We swam. We put together a puzzle. Then we read and swam some more. Good times. We also man­aged to see my Grandma and Grandpa while we were up there.

On our drive back to Helena today, we took the scenic route through Seely and Swan Lake. It’s a very pretty drive though the moun­tains. We passed through Lin­coln on the way (home of the Uni­bomber). We stopped to get gas and con­sid­ered asking a local where exactly the Uni­bomber lived. But after I got the ’slow walk by’ by a group of three people (old man with no teeth, very tall creepy kid and a scary woman in cam­ou­flage gear) and Jenn got whis­tled at three sep­a­rate times while pump­ing gas, we decided to aban­don the plan and get the heck out of Lin­coln. Oh well. My aunt Doris told us the Feds carted away his house so there wouldn’t have been any­thing there.

Speak­ing of Doris: thanks for mail­ing me my shirt! It was here in Helena wait­ing for me. It was even warm in it’s pack­age like it had just come out of the dryer.