la vie en rose

We had a wonderful anniversary - nothing major, just out to sushi and home to watch "The Office" on Netflix. One of the things I really love about being married to J is that we are best friends+, and we really enjoy just hanging out together. When we were dating and I would drive over to Missoula from Seattle, we would always go out to dinner or go shopping or hike out in the mountains. The trips were always jam-packed with stuff to do. It was quite a transition when we got married and actually spent more than 3 days at a time together! Missoula definitely took some getting used to (and I don't think I ever really did). But I think if our "honeymoon" was any indication of how life would be with J, then I should have known we'd be in for a laugh.

We spent our 1st night at the Davenport Hotel in downtown Spokane. That place is old Spokane at its finest. In case you've never been there, or never heard of it, the Davenport was an old fixture in downtown, built in the early 1900's, and was completely overhauled and renovated to its original glory in 2002. It would be considered luxury even in Seattle, so it's a definitely worth checking out in Spokane. We've gone there before just to look around it, not even to stay there! Someday I'll actually go into the whole story of our wedding day, but I'll pick it up here when we jumped into my 1990 Chevrolet Cavalier after the reception and drove to the hotel. Let me tell you, it is a little embarrassing to show up at a fancy schmancy hotel and have them valet park your boxy little car that doesn't even have power windows and the speedometer only goes to 80.

A word of advice to my future posterity - you will not eat at your reception. You will not realize that until you have left it and you are starving. We walked down to the Red Robin and ate our way through our burgers and milkshakes in no time. I think we even had refills on the fries. I wonder if we had told the server that it was our wedding night, if we would have been given a free dessert or something. Also, valet parking your car in a secure underground garage does not guarantee that your friends will not persuade the guards to let them through and that the car will not be covered in paint and filled with toilet paper (stolen from the hotel, no less) the next morning.

We have only had 2 realllllly expensive and posh meals in our married life - one was in Hawaii this last April, at J's dad's restaurant, and the other was brunch the morning after the wedding at the Davenport. $75 a person for an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet, which included an omelet bar and a waffle bar (created by chefs - no do-it-yourself stuff here), fruit, sausages and bacon, sushi (for breakfast???), crab and other seafood, I know I'm leaving some stuff out...it was breakfast heaven for 2 people who love breakfast food.

We were planning on going camping in Glacier National Park, which is an absolutely beautiful place, but it was a dreary and wet September that year. In fact, we almost got rained out of our wedding, but the sun broke through that afternoon and we were very lucky (if a bit cold). One of J's friends (and one of his employees at Zumiez) gave us some gift certificates to Jackson Hot Springs Resort (when I was just looking up that link I found out that it is located in the Big Hole Valley. They weren't kidding). The Jackson Hot Springs are located south of Missoula, through the Bitterroot Mountains. It was a beautiful drive, but we realized that the towns kept getting smaller and further apart and we weren't really sure what awaited us. We left the mountains behind us and were suddenly in this huge valley. It was breathtakingly huge and I believe the reason why Montana's nickname is "Big Sky Country." We passed a sign that said that a battle had taken place there between the Nez Perce and the US Army as the Nez Perce were trying to escape to Canada and avoid being forced onto a reservation (what a sad history that is). The highway cuts through the valley and makes a right turn in a town called Wisdom. (A couple Fast Sundays ago a woman bore her testimony about living in Wisdom. It was all we could do to not bust up laughing in the middle of church.) Here's what we loved about Wisdom:


Yep, that's a scantily-clad Native American woman lounging across the storefront. Awesome!

Many times I have driven through very small towns. I had never, to that point, actually stopped in one. Wisdom has 150 residents. Jackson has 50. We turned right and realized that this place was literally in the middle of nowhere.

That's the whole town. There is a Mexican restaurant. There is a feed store. There are the hot springs. That's about it.

And oh, those hot springs! Right in the middle of town, comprising of a lodge and several cabins. We walked into the empty lodge to check in. The lodge has a wooden dance floor, with a mezzanine level over-looking it. Antlers of all varieties poked out from the railing and there was a jukebox in the corner. The restaurant was across the floor, in the back of the lodge, and the hot springs were upstairs (that concerned us a little). The lady at the check-in desk asked us how long we would be staying and then asked if we would be eating dinner with them that night. We replied, "Of course! We're so hungry and we've heard really good things about your restaurant." She said, "Well, you'll need to make a reservation." We hesitated, looked around the completely empty lodge, save for us 3, and said, "Okay, what do you have available?" She looked at her book and said, "We could fit you in at 5:30." We about died - yeah, sure, whenever you say.

She then grabbed the key to our cabin and walked outside with us. Just as she was about to open the door she said, "If you see any yellow jackets, please let me know. We just found a nest under your window and fumigated this morning." Again we looked around us and saw that we were pretty much alone. Why on earth could she not put us in a different cabin? It smelled awful in there, kindof like musty, chemical pepper.

We put our stuff down and headed back over to the restaurant. For such a podunk little place, that was some dang good food. I had the salmon and J had the steak, and we were both really impressed. I think the food alone would make people drive all that way to stay there. We went back to our cabin, lit a fire in the fireplace...and tried hard not to take too deep of breaths, for fear of ingesting too much yellow jacket bait.

The next morning we went to swim in the hot springs. We couldn't go the night before because they were cleaning the pool. Whenever I think of hot springs, I think of a bubbling spring, surrounded by rocks, steam and sulphur rising off the clear turquoise water, maybe some German tourists - all very natural. The Jackson Hot Springs are pumped up 2 stories up into a concrete pool surrounded by a fence and a few chairs. Oh well. It was really very relaxing to swim around in what is basically a huge, stinky hot tub, but we knew we didn't have anything else to do. I'm sure in the summer or in the winter when there's snow around that there is a lot more to go and do outside. We decided to head home a day early. On the drive home we hit up a candy store in Darby, picked up a ton of taffy, high-fived the high-fivin' bear out front, and ate ourselves sick. Skirpadoo.