on the oregon trail: day 6

I. LOVE. MONTANA.

That's what I've decided after spending parts of five days in that lovely state. I guess we should only count four of those days, though, because the first was just an overnight in Cooke City, and that "city" definitely didn't make Montana look good!

We left Sarah's at 10 this morning. Our first stop was, you guessed it, coffee! This time, we went to City Brew. Decent, but The Leaf & Bean is still the best coffee we've had on this trip.

Our first real stop was at Wheat Montana. We all got great cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

Nate & his cinnamon roll.

We ate lunch in Missoula. My friend Camilla used to live in Missoula, and she told us about some places to eat downtown . . . except I must have taken a wrong turn, as we never ended up downtown! Instead, we got sandwiches from Quizno's and ate on the road. Camilla had also told me about a breathtaking view along Highway 93 about half an hour north of Missoula. We braved the road construction (seriously, road construction has been everywhere on this trip!) and made our way north. We reached the observation point and saw . . . that it was too overcast to see much. All was not lost, though, as our subsequent drive back to I-90 along highways 200 and 135 was, in my opinion, the prettiest drive so far. We ran parallel to a river most of the time, and the view was simply gorgeous.

Google Maps, which has lied to me several times on this trip, gave us really odd directions to my mom's cousin's house in Spokane. At one point, it wanted us to drive down a dirt path! Nevertheless, we made it just before 6 p.m. After dinner, Sharon and her family took us on a walk around the neighborhood. They've been so hospitable--we had a wonderful evening!

As I write this, Steph's sleeping, and the rest of us are watching a movie. We'll leave (relatively) early tomorrow morning . . . soon we'll be with Beth!