9/23, North Dakota

Here begin the retroactive posts from my journey home.

Becca and Randy gave me two books full of vegetarian restaurants and stores along the nation's highways--perfect for a country-crossing herbivore like me. Unfortunately I spent most of this day learning firsthand a fact that, it turns out, is stated on one book's first page: Vegetarian restaurants go out of business a lot. Or move, I guess. Mostly they'd turned into veterinarians or UPS drop-offs or empty lots by the time I got there. From this I have determined that I will never live in North Dakota.

Also, this was my scariest driving day in years. Sometimes it looked like this:

But with more cars, and less visibility.

More pictures here. The gallery's very much under construction.

9/24, Montana

Victory for the vegetarian restaurant guides! The Community Food Co-op in Bozeman. Two stories (the top floor is a cafe) of everything you could want--in my case, an herbed potato frittata and some delicious soup. Friendly people, good food, highly recommended next time you're in Montana.

I got to Missoula early, planning to look around for potential venues for future trips. I thought I would start by picking up a local weekly paper, but then I saw a guy in the crosswalk with a snare drum, so I just followed him. He set up outside Fact and Fiction with two women playing guitar and ukelele ("not my main instrument," they both insisted as they traded it back and forth). When they took a break I bought a CD and chatted with them a while.

And that's how I ended up at a punk rock show at Area 5, an art gallery a few blocks from anything. To be honest, I went out to my car and napped while the real punk bands played. But I enjoyed the CD and the set by the Pasties (not the Pasties that an Animator used to be in), billing themselves as "wuss punk". And I loved the Blackberry Bushes, who turned out to be a straight-up folk trio, performing unplugged on guitar and fiddle and mandolin. And vocals (including one a cappella number). Both bands--based in Olympia--had just driven from Minneapolis, about twice as fast as I had.

Here are the Pasties (one of them almost invisibly blurry):

I took an even worse photo of the Blackberry Bushes, and more along the way.