Travel day! You know the drill – get up early, eat, get pack … NO. No, not today. Sleep in a little bit, then eat, then get packed up and headed out. No rush today. Only about a five hour drive or so, with lunch.

And then, as we get close to Yellowstone, the curse returns! No, no, not THAT curse! Jeez, The Bear is post-menopausal for crying out loud! No, the RAIN curse! kinda like this:

Rain, rain, rain. At least it’s on a travel day.

Here’s another shot of the storms later in the day:

Yeah, I think it’s lovely!

Oh, yeah, there IS another thing … when you travel, you often have to go to the bathroom. I had an interesting experience at a rest stop. I walked in, and was confronted by this, except someone was blocking my view of the rightmost fixture, so all I saw were the left two. I was confused for a moment … I’ve seen some weird-looking urinals in my day, around the world, so this threw me for a bit. Fortunately, I paused long enough that the person left, and I could see that I almost made a very embarrassing mistake! Hey! It could happen to anyone! And I said ALMOST. I didn’t. Whew!

Ok, so speaking of bathrooms … do they not teach hygiene in school any more? One thing I’ve noticed most the further West we go – guys don’t tend to wash their hands after using the restroom. The Bear started noticing the same thing in the women’s restrooms after I commented on it. I mean that the women don’t tend to wash up either. One scary moment (lucky for me I did not see who it was … or maybe unluckily) was when I heard a guy flush the toilet (I was likewise occupied), and then he quickly exited, immediately turned on the hand dryer, and then left. Yeah, you got it right – never turned on the water to wash his hands, just dried them. Ok, so I’m thinking, he needed to dry his hands … because they were wet or damp … from … using the toilet … but he did not feel the need to wash, just to dry …

Sometimes (MOST times), after I wash my hands in a public restroom, even if I only went in to just wash my hands, I will hope and pray they have paper towels, so I can use one to turn the knob on the way out, because you never know what disgusting things the previous person did in there, to that poor knob. Yuck!

Anyway …