In the morning, we headed for Yellowstone. Our hope was to head out hwy 212 towards Billings, but it closes in mid-October. When we went into the park, they had a big sign saying it was closed, so we planned for a different route. It still took us through a part of the park we hadn't been to yet.
We stopped at most of the stops this time. We say the Norton Geyser Basin, the Lower Falls, the Mud Volcanoes and a bunch more. It was lots of fun and lots of walking, though tiring. We ended up leaving Yellowstone around 5pm and started working our way towards Billings.

We got to Billings last night and just stayed in a Walmart parking lot. This morning, we were getting up to go have breakfast with Sara (Joe's sister) and her boyfriend. It was fun to be able to sit and chat for a bit.

We are now on the road and headed for home. Our hope is to get at least partway through North Dakota today, find someplace to stay, then be home tomorrow night.

I'll get photos posted once we get home.
-Miranda

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We did check out Craters of the Moon National Monument. The most recent lava flow there was about 2000 years ago. The rock there was really neat. So many fun formations. We drove around the loop they have there to see the volcanoes and lava flow. There were also some caves. They were a lot rougher than the lava beds, and they were a lot shorter, but still very neat. The two we went into had ice and were quite cold.

We debated on staying in the campground there, but decided against it. We figured it would be better to get closer to Yellowstone. There was a state park before Yellowstone, so our hope was to stay there. I finally looked at the weather for Yellowstone though and it was supposed to be in the teens that night! We decided we would just be driving through, not camping there at all.

We started driving, but right around the time the national forest started, we started climbing a mountain. At that point we realized, it was going to be a cold night. Instead of waiting for the state park, we found a road and drove down it a short ways, then parked. We emptied our sink water and hopped into bed.

Neither of us slept very well. We kept waking up, making sure Curly and Pickles had some blanket on them to help keep them warm. In the morning, the temperature was 16, so I have no idea how cold it got, but it was pretty chilly.

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Saturday we drove after we let the cats out for a while until we reached the Oregon/California border where Lake Goose State Park is. State parks have showers, so we stayed there for the night. In the morning, we headed out again and basically drove all day again. We stayed at a rest area near Boise last night. Our aim today is the Craters of the Moon National Monument.
-Miranda

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We woke up the next morning to rain. Joe went down to check out the possibility of surfing, but it looked pretty bad. We decided to just head out. We had to stop in Bandon to pick up some deworming medication for the cats. (Curly had tapeworms.) From there we ended up stopping at Cape Blanco. It was so foggy, we couldn't see a thing. The sites were $20 for hookups, so we decided to stay.
That night we did the pills for the cats. I'll tell you one thing, I'm never giving Lucy another pill. She was freaking out so much that her mouth started foaming. Pickles took the trick of putting it in cheese. All the other cats had to go the hard way.
It poured all night. The next morning we hooked up to the electricity and got the battery fully charged before leaving. We ended up spending the afternoon in a grocery store parking lot to get some work done. There was a decent pizza place in town that had a really good salad bar. We had dinner there before heading out again. Still in the pouring rain. We ended up finding a road in the forest that was gated. We parked near there for the night.
Let's just say we've done a lot of movie watching... Right now we're at a Fred Meyers in Brookings. The rain seems to have stopped but it's super wet and foggy out there. It's supposed to clear up tomorrow. Hopefully that holds true.
-Miranda

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We ended up not having any issues that night. We woke up and headed to a gas station. Fortunately it was a larger station, so plenty of room for us to just park. We stayed there for a bit and worked until lunch. For lunch, we stopped at a yummy Indian buffet. After, we decided to pick up a few things from Petco. It turned out that a Verizon store was in the same area, so Joe went to go check out their plans and see if what they have would work for us. He had learned earlier that apparently when Sprint is roaming, it's typically on Verizon's network. Since we use Sprint roaming quite a bit, it makes sense to try out Verizon.

We ended up getting a global broadband card. Then we'll be able to use it when/if we do some global travel soon, which we are hoping to do. He tried it in the parking lot and it worked great!

Our next stop was to the vet. The whole reason we came to Corvallis. The vet was very nice. She said that it was an odd showing of a Herpes virus, or something along those lines. Apparently all cats are basically exposed to it at some point, it's just what their body does with it. Something must of stressed her out to the point that this happened. Probably getting the scratches on her cornea? Not really sure. Anyway, she gave us some steroid drops, but took a scraping of some of the cells off her eye to go in for testing just to be sure that's what it was. I just got the email from the vet and we are to start putting the drops in now. Hopefully this clears it up. *crosses fingers*

Our plan from there was to head back to Newport and see about staying at South Beach again and do more surfing for a few days. On our way there, we saw a large black dog running around the highway. It was going to get hit.... We pulled over and eventually caught it. It didn't have a collar, so we used some rope we had to create a make-shift lease. It was a huge sweetheart. Walked right next to whoever had the rope. We obviously couldn't bring it with us to a town so I went to the nearest house. It was a nice older lady that had 3 dogs. I asked her if she would be able to call animal control or something. She kindly got a collar and leash for it and said her granddaughter was stopping by soon and could probably bring it to Newport. So, hopefully it ends up with a good home, or even has a microchip in it so it can go back to its owner.

It was really warm in Corvallis and until right before we got into Newport. We crested a hill and dropped down into Newport and entered a fog. When we got to the campground, is was so packed! Apparently all the 'old timers' come out when the kids go back to school. There were no spots even close to the closer trail to the ocean. So, we would have had quite a walk with the boards in order to go surfing. Since it was foggy, I headed down to the beach to see if it was even surfable. It was so foggy, I could barely see into the water. So, definitely not very safe for surfing. Since it was supposed to rain for the next few days, we decided to just head out.

Not long after leaving, we noticed three bicyclists on the side of the road hitchhiking. Joe was like, really?!? So, he stopped. Turns out one of the guys' knee was bugging him. Joe didn't think all three bikes would fit, so we were just going to take the one guy to Yachats and they would meet him there. After getting the one bike in, he decided that maybe they could all fit. We ended up getting all three bikes and all three guys in there. We were going to head up a national forest road near Cape Perpetua, so we stopped there to drop them off. It was around 6pm and we had a lot of spaghetti and a jar of sauce that we've had since we started the trip. We could never open it since we can't refrigerate it. We offered them a spaghetti dinner which they seemed to greatly enjoy. It was fun to sit and chat with them a bit.

The road we took was mostly paved. It turns out that it connected up with the road we had taken up into that forest just a few days before. We were hoping to find a place where we had service. That didn't happen. By this time, the Verizon card stopped working for some reason. It would give me one error and Joe's computer a completely different error. Since we weren't having any luck with server, we wanted to go back to where we stayed the last time. By this time it was 10pm. Unfortunately, someone was already there. We went back up the hill, waited until it flattened out and stayed on the side of the road for the night.

Today, we headed into Florence and Joe spent a good 2 hours on the phone with Verizon trying to get it to work. We finally got it working again after having to do a bunch of crazy commands in the device... Apparently hooking it up to my computer with the Sprint SmartView program messed it up?? We're not quite sure, but we won't be using it on my computer again apparently.

We're now somewhere south of Dun City. I think we're on some timber company's land? We don't think it's national forest land, but it looks like it can be used by hunters and the public. We haven't decided if we're going to stay here tomorrow so we can let the cats out yet or not. We'll see.

-Miranda

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