Tastes Like Farts

---

Headed out early this morning, after a grueling day of last-minute preparations. We awoke at 7 AM at my house in Greenwood, had some coffee and cereal, said our goodbyes to my roommate Bill, and headed to Kara’s house to pack up the car and share some last-minute festivities with her longtime friends Brittany and Ellie. Kara’s roommates were stirring as we finished cramming every scrap of loose change we could into the car, a testament to Kara’s mastery of Tetris, and we were greeted with sad faces and semi-teary exchanges. Brittany and Ellie brought bagels, and after all of that emotional and physical labor, we were ready to eat and have more coffee. Finally, we said our farewells to all and got on the road at around 10 AM.

Nothing happened for about 4 hours. We listened to Blaze by Stephen King on tape and sort of felt numb about the whole leaving Seattle thing. I for one never feel my feelings at the appropriate times, so sometime in the next 6 months I will either burst into tears for no apparent reason or commit a massive homicidal spree. Stay tuned.

We stopped at Ritzville for lunch, and decided to go to the local Mexican restaurant downtown. A word about Ritzville’s downtown area: awesome. All this old, kitschy signage and these beautiful old buildings surrounded by a hundred miles of nothing. It’s kind of a shame, but then if it was a popular destination, all the old buildings would be circumcised to make way for condos, so maybe it’s just as well. Now a word on the local Mexican food: erm…there’s a reason Ritzville is not regionally recognized as a hotspot destination for authentic Mexican cuisine. Not horrible, but memorably bad.

Then we drove for another bunch of hours, saw a bald eagle’s nest, witnessed the end of what must have been a spectacularly fiery motor crash in Spokompton, listened to some more Stephen King, and stopped a few times to stretch our legs. We figured we would be in Butte, Montana by nightfall, and right we were. We were on the lookout for two things: 1) a grocery store, for a cheap dinner of sandwiches, and 2) a cheap motel. Eddy’s Inn, advertised on the Lodgings sign on the highway, looked reasonably janky, so we pulled off the highway, and stopped in. A sign posted on the door said a single room was 70 dollars a night, so we said, “Let’s try somewhere else.”

After driving around the strip of Butte and checking a couple more motels, we realized that Eddy’s actually was the cheapest in town, which was unsettling. We decided to press on to find a cheaper place. We found another place down the road about thirty miles, which unfortunately looked even fancier than the first few places. We checked and found that it would be over a hundred dollars a night there. We toyed with the idea of pulling into a rest stop and going to sleep in the car, but the idea of a restless and crick-in-the-neck-inducing snooze in the best-case scenario (with a break-in, rape, torture, and brutal murder being the worst case scenario) did not soothe us. We pressed on, and finally found a place called Fort Three Forks RV and Motel.

Success! For only 65 dollars (small victories are still victories) we rented a room, and found ourselves lounging in a bathtub, sharing a cigarette, and congratulating ourselves for being so awesome.

This just in: the water at this hotel tastes like farts.

---

Photos

Downtown Ritzville
Deserted on a Sunday afternoon.

Bearmouth Rest Stop
Nice view from the road.

Sky Motel
We didn't check this place, but it had a nice view.

Tastes Like Farts
Self-explanatory.