The Long Way Home: Cleveland to Missoula
On May 9th, a friend of ours tied the knot on an apple orchard in a small Wisconsin town outside of Chicago, and since Chicago is just a mere 6 hour drive from our hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, we took the wedding as an opportunity to drive back east for a few weeks of family, friend, and food time.
As it happened, our friend Ryan, the grand adventurer, was also making a stop home in Cleveland on his way back to Arizona from Iceland. Therefore, as has become our Cleveland tradition, we headed for the beach to play photographer. If you peak at his Instagram page, you’ll find that Ryan has a thing for long exposure photography. Thus, here I am above, caught in a successful attempt at fifteen seconds of complete stillness: the amount of time necessary for the camera to capture me in the almost darkness. Fifteen seconds is an eternity.
We ate, we played, we got Dinah laparoscopically laser spayed and once again we hit the long wide open road. Then, aside from a quick romp at the Saks Off Fifth Outlet near Mall of America in Eagan, Minnesota (just outside of Minneapolis), and beers with our local friend Kevin from Big Sky, who had recently moved back to there, driving through the midwest was one lengthy bore.
That is, until we reached North Dakota’s Painted Canyon in Teddy Roosevelt National Park, which comprises three geographically separate areas of Badlands in western North Dakota, and marks the beginning of the picturesque west.
That evening, we arrived in Billings, Montana, where we dined at Ten, which, after everything I’ve heard about Billings, turned out to be surprisingly satisfying. This was my first visit to Billings and I liked it. Billings seemed diverse, alive, and full of asian tourists. The following morning we ate breakfast at a downtown diner and proceeded to make our way southwest towards the town of Red Lodge.
From Red Lodge, we headed for the Beartooth All-American Road, also known as the Beartooth scenic highway or Beartooth Pass. It’s a road that gives Going to the Sun Road at Glacier a run for its money, and one that is generally referred to as “the most beautiful drive in America.”
Well known for its high number of motorcycle fatalities, Beartooth Pass is a 68 mile beauty amongst beauties and before this fateful afternoon, I had only ever seen it in dirtbag ski photos.
The Beartooth Highway spit us out near Cooke City at the entrance of Yellowstone, so we looped back through Yellowstone and made our way home.
On the road, we caught a double rainbow.
When we arrived, our yard was a jungle.
Now, we’re catching up on life and welcoming summer. It’s hot.
