Who Knew Idaho was so Perrty?

7.22.11

I wake up in the van, Cb was driving and he has stopped. Ususally, this means van trouble, I peek outside to investigate. He's outside taking pictures, and suddenly I realize where we are… or at least, the nature of it…
He had pulled off the side of the road en route to Missoula. It was dawn. Cb and I are often the first and only ones up in the morning, so we end up sharing a lot of moments like these. He smiles from a ways away and I look around and see why. We are next to the most pristine picturesque mountain stream, surrounded by steep mountains peppered with evergreens and brush, the sun kissing the river side and great mountain shadows shielding their western faces from the morning. The air was crisp and cool, everything was so perfectly still, and you could hear the water running below us. We immediately get to snapping pictures.
Cb just smiles like an ol' wise man. Words really can't express what we saw, it was pretty darn divine.

From here, Cb drives until he's ready for some sleep. His trucker DNA affording him heroic acts of geographic transportation of our little circus, he's been known to take the longest shifts of all of us. I take the wheel to get us closer to Missoula.


We are driving north through Idaho, and in case you've never been and just imagine potato fields, let me take a sec to describe it. This is my 3rd full United States tour in this van, I can say at this point that I have seen quite a bit of the states and I've been around. This was the most beautiful stretch of road I've ever seen. At this latitude in Idaho, the geographic vocabulary is like Yellowstone… the famous park itself being only a bit to the southeast. These roads were winding through huge mountains and are always flanked by rivers trickling, washing, raging over rocks. The sky is cloudless, the water deep blue, the rocks are unreal in their contrast and ruggedness, and the trees are lush and seem to go on forever. I was constantly beside myself at the wheel.

We were all a bunch of bedazzled tourists with iphone cameras glued to the windows through Montana.
Check the album for pics…


We get to Missoula and pull into a walgreens to get some supplies and contact our contact!
When we get back to the van, our rear driver's side tire is flat!!!!
This is the "new" tire CB replaced in Denver. What a miracle it happened here and not in the middle of the mountain passes we just came though!
We drive to a Firestone and they patch it up and put it back on.
Off to the venue - Zoo City Apparel, a silk screening / arts collective that inhabits a huge showroom and warehouse in downtown missoula. We get burritos, the band splits up, brandon works on getting a new phone, cb sleeps in the van, and evan and I walk around town and chill.

When we all reconvene to play the show, the tire is flat again. All places are closed, tomorrow is a sunday. We miss the first band's set because we're all outside doin' what we do on this tour - change tires!
We place the full-sized spare on the van and head inside to get ready to play.

The show turns out to be awesome, we met some new friends, played well, put all that vehicular frustration into loud guitars and drums and screaming vocals and jumps and strums and headbanging. some cans of shocktop are passed to us, we shake hands, smiles are everywhere, all is well again.

We retire to Josh's house (THANKS AGAIN FOR PUTTING US UP!!!) and clean accommodations.

another day, another dolla' into ol' blu
^_^