Fish n Chips Travel the world: Remembering Louise

Wednesday 2nd July

24 years ago today our precious Louise grew her angel wings. Not a day goes by that she is not in my thoughts. Part of the reason we are here is to attend the SOFT conference to meet up with old friends and make some new ones. We stay connected with SOFT to honour the memory of our gorgeous girl. I wonder would we ever have come to America if Louise had not had Trisomy 18? We have met some of the most wonderful people in the world through SOFT. Very blessed.

We left Yellowstone this morning after spending a wonderful three days exploring and seeing some spectacular sights. The weather has been perfect and today is no exception.

The scenery through Wyoming is so beautiful even outside of Yellowstone and so different from one (near Jackson and the Grand Tetons) to the area just south of Yellowstone. The Grand Tetons was large jagged mountains with snow capping them and trees along ther foothills whereas the area just south of Yellowstone is canyons with jagged rocks and it's very warm no snow through this area. Although we climb a high pass and again see snow it's very strange to go from warmth (where I need to remove my jacket) back to snow (where I am rethinking that decision LOL). We make it into Cody and experience our first roadblock of the day. Cody Wyoming is the rodeo capital of the world and each night there is a rodeo in town. Today is the first of their 3 parade days leading up to July 4th. Today's parade is the Kiddies Parade we grab a coffee/hot chocolate (worst David has ever had!) and a muffin and stand on the street to watch it go by.
We stop in a small town after the Big Horn Mountains called Dayton we buy fuel and then ride to a small bar we have seen on the way in for lunch. As I am walking in the door I see a sign that says "this is a smoking establishment" should have been a clue you'd think! Anyway we go in and it doesn't smell too bad and there is absolutely noone there so we sit up to the bar and order lunch. The burgers are pretty good and just as we are finishing a man walks in and the barmaid immediately knows his order and then of course he lights up and then his wife also comes into the bar and lights up too thank goodness we were finished eating but then he gets chatty and asks "Where you kids off to next?" so we chatted a while and then got out of there!! I needed a mint after that!
We stopped in a Maccas in Buffalo it was the dirtiest Maccas we have ever been in every single table was filthy!! we finally sat down in one corner and there was a man sitting in the other corner letting rip with his backside!! David said "maybe he's deaf" next minute his phone starts ringing and he answers it LOL and conmtinues to let rip it was hilarious!
As we pull inot Gillette and try to find the hotel we run into the second roadblock of the day the main street of town is shut down for road works we manage to find our way around the blockade to our hotel. We walk in the front door and our noses are immediately assaulted with the smell of cigarette smoke!! we figure that it's because people have been smoking right outside the door and it has wafted in. So we check in and find our room. David went next door and did our laundry while I had a shower and washed my hair (mmm in hindsight a waste of time!).

When David came back we headed downstairs to the restaurant for dinner. We walk in and there is a NO SMOKING section!!!!!!! yes they allow smoking in the restaurant!! we figure we could and go somewhere else but realise that we may take hours to find a smoke free one so decide to stay and eat. We both have the spaghetti special which includes soup and dessert for $8.95 yes you are reading right!!! the soup ham and beans (canelli) is really tasty!! the spaghetti plate is huge and comes with garlic toast too and it's really good, dessert was a small bowl of rice pudding which was a little dry but OK so altogether dinner cost $21 and we both had a beer!!!! the room was OK but when we turned the A/C on we could smell smoke aaarrrrggghhh!! OK rant over