The Little Things: It was the best of towns, it was the worst of towns.

Wow, what an eventful few days. We visited Yellowstone, camped in a very scenic valley, stayed with the Pfeiffers in Sheridan, WY (who are AWESOME), rode horses, saw Mount Rushmore, and drove through "The Best Town on Earth," Upton, WY. It was on their welcome sign, and it was on their water tower. Unfortunately, their slogan was a little bit of an exaggeration. I'm pretty sure their slogan should have been "The Best Town on Earth... if there are no other towns after a nuclear apocalypse." Sorry, Upton.

Yellowstone.

More Yellowstone: hot springs falls that looked like they were frozen and a gorgeous water fall.

Now it's story time. After we drove through Upton, we decided to stop for lunch in a little town called Newcastle, WY, near the border of South Dakota. Our options were very limited, so we pulled into a Subway. Across the parking lot, however, was a drive-in called Howdy Drive-In.

A visit to the lovely Pfeiffer residence/arena in Big Horn, WY. And the best pie on the trip! AND the nicest cat ever.

Yogi, horseback riding, and Mr. Pfeiffer "reigning"

"Why don't we stop there, you know, support local business?" I said. So we decided to try it out. We pull into a spot but realized that the drive-in part wasn't really functional anymore. We walked inside and sat down at a booth. A girl came up to us to take our order, and there's no way she was more than 14 years old. She seemed really unsure of what she was supposed to be doing, and another woman at the store (maybe her mom?) kept telling her everything she was doing wrong. Ok, people have to learn and there are many different learning styles... So we tried to cut the girl some slack because it almost seemed like it was her first day. She forgot my chocolate milk shake (which we heard the woman say was done with chocolate syrup and vanilla ice cream unless the customer asks for chocolate ice cream, ok fine), and then our order came out wrong. Not her fault, the cook's fault. Then it came time to pay. I stood up there as the girl rung up the bill. She told me the amount, $16 and change (let's say 63 cents), and I gave her $20. She looked at the open register and the woman came up behind her and said, "Alright, count your change." The girl still stood there and stared at the register. Then the woman started counting "7, 8, 9, 70. Now a quarter, that's..." No response from the girl but she started to pull out the change as the lady said. "95, and a nickel, that's ..." No response from the girl. "17, now your dollars, 18, 19, and 20." This all occurred behind the register, and Mike and I were watching everything the girl was doing. Then the girl came in front of the register to hand me the change, and she started counting it out in my hand. I told her not to worry about because at this point, I just wanted to get the heck out.

"No, no, she can't do that. We have to count the change," the lady said. So I said, fine whatever, and let the girl count the change out into mind hand. Scratch that, as the girl put the change in my hand and the lady counted it out. Obviously there are two possibilities: 1) the girl doesn't know how to count or 2) this concept of "making change" was not taught to her properly. Or at all. Part of me now wishes I had sat the girl down and taught her what was going on and/or went to the local store and bought her a calculator. But what happened was I said thanks, and we ran out of there.

In all honesty, I was really pissed at the whole situation. Here we were in the middle of nowhere and we could have gone to a chain restaurant, but instead we decided to support a local business. Now I will be suspect every time we go to another town and have the choice between a chain and a local business.

Our visit to Mount Rushmore. It rained before we arrived, so it looks like George is crying.

None of the other "towns" we went through were much better, but that's ok. We did stay in a the Nebraska state park Fort Robinson that was hosting an intertribal American Indian meeting with a powwow. That was really fun to watch but the town, Crawford, NE, was just terrible. After experiencing these towns, I apologized to my father for ever saying I grew up in the middle of nowhere.