Honeymoon

I was thinking that today would be the first day of the count-down to the finish-line, after getting through the middle of the trip, and getting closer to the destination.
Also, today was scheduled to be one of the longest drives of the trip (discarding the flat tire incident), so the initial mindset was not 100% positive.

Things turned out to be different. We started off in a cold and crispy September-summer morning, with an incredibly beautiful landscape of Montana.
My wife had some Starbucks coffee, which also helped to set a good mindset early in the morning :-)

As the day progressed, I never thought about the count-down anymore, and was just engaged in the moment(s), spending another day with my wife with a wonderful backdrop of views, landscapes and picture-perfect scenery's. It made me think of honeymoon, even though I never had one.

Maybe this trip can be classified as one (I am sure Alexandra will claim that she needs an official honeymoon, but that is another story...). I am spending 24/7 with her, and we are doing this for a total of 7 days. We have never done this!!!
I can recommend to every couple to do this, because it is turning out to be a wonderful experience, despite the tough waking-up schedule, driving schedule, dog-maintenance-schedule, hotel-experiences, daily load and unload, junk-food, etc.

It is wonderful, and I started to think that I will be a little sad when it is all over...
How strange: I started the trip thinking it would be a tough undertaking, and now, I start thinking the opposite.

Even the greyhounds are starting to adjust to the ever-changing environment, and are starting to realize the daily sleep-overs are safe. The 24/7 time spent with them also allows me to bond a little bit more with Lady, who is always so difficult to relax. The two of them also bond as they spend a lot of time in the car, where physical contact is difficult to avoid: they almost always touch each other, whereas at home, they don't seem to be close to each other at all. At least not when we're around...

I know I wrote about solitude yesterday, and am writing about honeymoons today, which is quite conflicting, but that is the nature of the human mind. Contemplating, thinking, wondering, estimating, guessing and elaborating. Or maybe it is a Belgian thing...

Enough for now:
* Yellowstone is amazing: Everyone should visit it once in their lifetime.
* Montana is beautiful: I should have bought a couple of hats and boots. And maybe I should organize an official honeymoon there: just to make her happy and avoid all future references to a 'never had honeymoon'. I have to be careful though; maybe I'll lose her to one of those good-looking cowboys she craves for...

I love Montana

Today was a humbling day. Nature can have this effect on people. Whenever I go to such an astounding place, I feel very small, I realize that my problems are insignificant before such magnificency and perfection such as Mother Nature.

Montana is THE state so far. It is even more beautiful than I expected it to be. We started the day with bright sun and blue sky, moved into fog (to the point we could see a few feet ahead of us) and then cloudy. The we started going higher and higher and higher and the sun shone bright and clear again.

We stopped at a real road stop (not the McDonalds type) and everyone stopped talking as we walked in, like in a cowboy movie hehehe. The kitchen even had the old fashioned saloon doors.

Look at the hay rolls... We called them cow sushi (hehehe)

The open fields gave way to hills and canyons and then to the majestic mountains. And then we got to the Rockies. Oh my God, that is all I have to say.

We then took a shortcut through Wyioming that saved us about 70 miles and put us right in the middle of Yellowstone Park. And I really lost it. There are many pictures and videos from our short trip through the park, so Jos did his magic and combined them all together in one single video so that you can see it in sequence. It is unbelievably beautiful and very very humbling.

We saw Elks and Buffalos and forest devastated by wild fire. We went 7,000 feet high and our ears clogged. We saw weird looking bugs that made funny rattling noises, waterfalls and creeks and rivers. We had delicious ice cream and bought souvenirs. We did not want to leave.

The greys had fun with the bugs and left their mark on Yellowstone too, if you know what I mean :-).

Here is Lady, taking a comfy nap

And here is Shooter, as usual, looking around and checking where we are:

But we had to, so we are now in Idaho and we have one more night and two days to go. I am looing forward to getting to my new home and setting roots down. It is fun to travel but it is comforting to go home.