Hello again,
We had a bit of a blog break for no real reason, but here we are once again, now nearing Missoula Montanta, driving up and over mountains that make your ears pop, through grassy plains stretching endlessly, and pleasant two lane highways that seem to go on and on. It's beautiful here, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
We got in to Kansas City, MO around 5pm on Sunday evening, and went straight to Lemonade Park, which is a medium sized outdoor venue in an old and seemingly unused industrial part of the city. The stage is the bed of an old chevy flatbed, and our greenroom was a closed restaurant next door. We got the entire restaurant to ourselves and Darlingside, and the kitchen provided us with some yummy paninis. We had a quick sound check, more like a line check, and went on to play one of our favorite shows yet. The sound and lighting were ideal, which made the stage feel sorta magical.
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| Lemonade Park - Kansas City, MO |
I talked a lot about Maine on stage and told everyone it was our first time in Kansas City. Lots of people came to the merch table welcoming us to the midwest and exclaiming their excitement and intrigue about Maine. Two people had gone on midcoast schooner trips on the Mary Day and the Grace Bailey, and we sold lots of merch. We unfortunately could only stay for a few songs of Darlingside because we had decided to get a head start on our 27 hour drive to Seattle and drive 3 hours to a campsite in Omaha, NE to sleep. We arrived around 1:30 am to Lake Cunningham Campground, set up our tents quickly and went to bed. We all awoke around 7:15, went for short runs along the misty lake, did pushups, used the lovely facilities, and drove out at 8am straight to Scooters for coffee. Turns out coffee is free at Scooters all of September! Although it was not good and not that hot, we were thankful for the unexpected gift. We got more free coffee a few hours later at a Sinclair in Mitchel, South Dakota! A kind man wanted to give it away to us because Elisabeth had told him we were a band traveling from Maine. That coffee was also quite mediocre, but once again, we love free things.
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| Lake Cunningham Campground in the morning |
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| Dan in the Badlands |
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| Dave and Dan in the Badlands |
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| Elisabeth & Louisa in the Badlands |
We saw bison from afar, which really excited Dave because he had been wondering out loud if every black cow we saw was a bison since we had driven through West Virginia. We got out to view some of these gigantic top heavy beasts from about 30-40 ft on the side of the road. As we were exiting the park, we were pleasantly surprised by a big guy who politely waited for all the cars to halt, and then graced us with his gentle amble across the road. Yes, we know it was a "he" from his giant hanging balls that we witnessed up close.
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| Large man |
Also, as promised, here is Dan's new tattoo.
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| Dan's new tattoo (from St. Louis) |
Our next significant stop was in Deadwood, SD where we ate very overpriced mediocre food that took far too long to come out and drank very sweet margaritas that tasted like lemonade, but alas, perhaps we needed the extensive car break. The town was interesting too, with a sorta cheesy 1800's western cowboy vibe, and a few "saloons" and a "brothel" that was actually a bar/T-shirt shop that sold conservative wear with slogans such as "Kamala isn't black" and "Fuck Biden". We got back on the road as the sun was setting with another 5.5 hours to go. Dan said he was feeling fine and we jetted off into the dusk.
There was a moment when we thought we might want to stop early, but Dan and Elisabeth held it down in the front seat giggling about various ridiculous things that had happened throughout the day. Leviathon also carried us through a significant portion of the evening. Dave and I cuddled in the back and rewatched a couple old episodes of The Last of Us. Ever since we had been in Kansas City, we had both been craving to see the part of the show that is based there again. It was actually really interesting to see the post apocalyptic Missouri highway landscape again after having just been there, and now we were driving through mountain passes on dark curvy roads in Wyoming. Gosh that show is so creepy. We had a great time. We stopped at a gas station 1.5 hours away and got water and hot chocolate and gas from the two ladies that were working behind the counter and chatting easily with each other about small town happenings, and right when we walked out of the store, the lights in the store shut off completely. We all wondered where the ladies went, since they did not come out of the store and we stayed there for a bit longer situating everything. We decided they must live there together and sleep in the refrigerators.
We arrived to our campground around 1 am and it looked kinda scary in the dark, but that was probably mostly because we had just been watching a show about the zombie apocalypse. This was a free campground right off the highway, so there were quite a few tents and trailers parked throughout the grounds. We found a nice enough spot and once again set up quick and went right to sleep.
In the morning, we awoke to a beautiful scenery, and Elisabeth and I dipped into the river to freshen up. There was a highway bridge quite close to us, but we still went skinny dipping because why the heck not. We stopped at one of those lil drive through coffee spots, and any size coffee was $1.00! And surprise - it was actually so good. We drove over rolling grassy hills, with snowy jagged mountains in the distance, to a quaint town called Livingston, MT. Dan and Elisabeth got food quick and went to "the best bookstore ever", while Dave and I went to a different cafe called Tru North Cafe and once again, got very overpriced mediocre food that took forever to come out. Alas, the cappuccino was delicious, and I think we're just really in the west now, where things move slower. Also, the people who worked there seemed cool and were very friendly, so that was nice.
Tonight our destination is a campsite in Sprague, WA.
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