WHOA. WE'RE ALIVE.

Folks, sorry for the lack of posts, national parks and remote places will do that to you. I'll catch you up on our last few days in installments, to make everyone's lives more interesting.
We last left you in Minnesota. We had an EXCELLENT day in Minneapolis. Took in the Basilica (first in the US) The Walker Art Museum's public sculpture garden (featuring the work of Alexander Caulder, among others), and a nice walking tour of down town. While having lunch at Lyon's Pub downtown, a well-dressed businessman wished our waiter "a successful evening" This struck me as odd, and fabulous... so I repeated this to Bax, and he promptly said "what did he say?" I repeated, and he bust out laughing. "Oh, I thought he said 'Sass-Fooey'...I figured maybe it was a Minnesota thing?" Needless to say, this stuck, so we've been wishing ourselves and others 'Sass-fooey' across our great nation. We met my friend Meredeth from BC, and she took us out around Uptown. The Bulldog Pub (serving tots!!!) CC Club and Galactic Pizza were very good to us. We stopped by Nye's Pollonaise "Polka Bar" on the way home... this ended up being a latino-rock band and piano karaoke bar. Needless to say, we enjoyed listening to the regulars who were a little too good at karaoke. Love the ringers. We walked back to our hotel and ended our perfect day in Minneapolis. Drinking schlitz made for a fun game of tallying our 'schlitzisms'. So much fun, and BIG thanks to the Morins and Meredeth! You guys are the Schlitz.
The next morning we drove from the Twin Cities on i94 to Teddy Roosevelt National Park, in Western North Dakota. This GORGEOUS park was teeming with buffalo, (the roadside ones startled us at first) and badlands formations. We grabbed dinner at The Ol' Missouri, whose menu had 8 choices: 4 burgers, and 4 cuts of steak...Montana micro brew Moose Drool polished off the burger nicely. We walked downstairs and were informed there was live music that night at the saloon. Perfect. We drank 7+7s, and I began my country music education. Baxter expertly compared the minstrel to Merle Haggard and Clint Black. The dancing cowboys and cow...women were awesome to watch. One cow-gentleman in particular dominated the dancefloor, and every song he had a new lady to accompany. At first I thought he was just dancing with everyone that he could, but after a few tunes we realized he was dancing with whoever asked him to. A gentleman...with the sickest soup strainer I've ever seen. For once, i didn't feel like an outsider in this new western/country situation. I felt right at home, and really engaged by the music. good times. Camping out the first night went super well. Incredibly gorgeous night sky in North Dakota. It's a pretty beautiful experience to see the milky way with your naked eyes. No wind, or rain.
That's it for now, I'll fill you in on further posts. More pictures to come!