Missoula, Montana

March 6, 2014

March 6^th 2014. Somehow I'm still sick! I haven't started feeling better at all. Actually I think my throat is getting worse. And even after our 12 hours of rest, I'm still sick. 

We had some coffee packed up the car, and headed out. Thankfully Courtney’s dad told us about MT Hwy 200, which gives us a more scenic route and takes about the same time it would have taken us if we would have dropped back down to interstate 90. Driving around Lake Pend Oreille is breath taking. We drove out north of Sandpoint around the lake then started hugging the Clark Fork river into Montana. We just realized that we also switched into Mountain Time and lost an hour. It also started raining, which is a bummer, but we came across the Buffalo Inn, which had awesome buffalo burgers and huckleberry milkshakes. We were starving! This place was super tiny, but cooked to order. It was also in the middle of nowhere and looked closed from the outside. After we ate we headed  into Missoula for our show at the Badlander. Aaron actually got an email yesterday asking if the local radio station could play his music. His cousin in Montana also posted a picture on Facebook of Aaron’s picture in the Missoula paper. I guess people are excited to hear him tonight, as they should be. J This was so crazy, as we were driving into Missoula ironically the radio station we were listening to started play Merle Haggard's "Big City". I have a great video I'll have to share. We stopped by the Badlander to check it out. Aaron went in and I stayed in the car, because I still feel so badly. We checked in the hotel, showered, then headed back to the bar. There was no one there. Thankfully, he had some awesome family show up. There were a handful of family and actually there was a group of 20 somethings that saw that Aaron was play that night, looked him up, and came out to the show. Not many more people ended up showing up, but it was a Tuesday night in rainy Missoula. We didn't make much money, but Aaron sold a CD, which always feels good. I hope we get back to Missoula, because it was a great town. One of the younger guys came up to Aaron and talked about this taste in music, which aligned right with Aaron's. They hit it off. They hung out until the end of the night, which was great. They told us about this bar/diner that had been in business since the 1880s. We asked them if their food was good and he told us not to expect much. I had eggs and toast, which is really hard to mess up and Aaron had a BLT. It was actually pretty good, but apparently they did have brains and eggs on the menu. We opted out. This place was interesting. You walk in and to the left was a full blown game of Texas hold'em going on, then the bar was to the right and somehow went from bar right into diner.  I thought the food and the crowd watching was pretty awesome. We ate our late dinner then headed back to the hotel, don't worry, we felt very safe, because we passed 4 police officers in Dodge chargers on the way back. 

Sandpoint, ID

May 4th and 5th, 2014

Sunday morning we got up, showered, and then headed out. Of course we stopped at the risqué peak a brew for some coffee served to us by a girl in pink lace bra and panties. #awkward It was such a treat, my café ole had spoiled milk in it. Yum. We drove back up through Ellensburg and back over the Columbia River Gorge. We stopped in Moses Lake for a quick bite then headed to Sandpoint. The drive went by so fast we started the drive out listening to Richard Dalstrom from Bethany for our Sunday sermon, then went straight to the Jeff Foxworthy station on Pandora. Aaron laughed so hard you would have thought he hadn’t already heard it 16 million times. We arrived in Sandpoint around 6pm to find out that our show venue knew nothing about our booking. #awkward The bartender, Paws, said, “Go ahead and set up we’ll still pay you”. The show was great, we met friends and family, as well as a gentlemen from Dyess, Arkansas whose father was childhood friends with Johnny Cash. They spotted Aaron’s tattoo and called him over to tell him the story. Johnny and Jerry Lee Lewis were at his father’s funeral. Eichardt’s was a small dinner crowd, but people really enjoyed it. Aaron sold a CD to a young couple who later that day wrote on his Facebook how much they enjoyed the show. After that we went to see Courtney’s roommate play at another bar downtown. The night took a wild turn when several musicians in the room including a bongo player, an incredible beat boxer, Aaron on guitar, and I on tambourine did a wicked country/blues/hip-hop/reggae jam. This went on for quite some time and we closed the place down, then proceeded to head back to Courtney’s sisters, Chelsea’s, house. We piled about 10 people in a jeep Cherokee cab and headed to the house where the country/blue/hip-hop/reggae jam continued. I started to fall asleep on the couch so Chelsea put me to bed, but rumor has it that this went on sometime past 4am. The most beautiful part of this entire night is the fact that Aaron and I had the most comfortable bed to sleep in. It was incredible. We slept in until 11am and when we woke up Aaron said, “I feel guilty, no human should feel this comfortable”.  Sandpoint has so much to offer, but we had even more to offer it, by staying in and watching 6 movies. Happy Cinco de Mayo!  Courtney did make some incredible margaritas and tacos. In the spirit of the holiday we ate tacos and watch Nacho Libre. There’s not too much to write about except that we had a day of extreme rest. We even went to bed around 10pm.

Yakima Sport Center

Saturday, May 3rd, 2014.

Saturday morning, I woke up even worse. Not to mention our plush air mattress somehow stop holding air and we woke up on the floor. So, we don’t have a soft place to rest our heads and I feel like death. So far the trip is awesome. I’m not one to complain when I’m sick, but told Aaron I need to go to the doctor. Nate said we could stay another night, which was a huge blessing, because originally the plan was to go camping, but with the air mattress situation and me carrying around the plague having somewhere to sleep in doors was heaven sent. Aaron took me to the urgent care where I saw a really funny doctor. I spent $75 to have him tell me I have a virus and to keep taking Mussinex. Awesome. Once I had some medicine in me I started to at least feel a little better. We went back to Nate’s house and barbecued outside. Aaron was convinced that we needed to play an impromptu show somewhere. We drove around to a couple different breweries and then went downtown. Downtown Yakima during a Cinco de Mayo celebration, what a treat. Aaron got some Mexican corn, I had some churros, and then we stopped in the Yakima Sport Center bar to see if they had any entertainment going on that evening. Just so happened that they didn't so it was a good thing Aaron and Nate had already loaded the car up with gear so they could play. Aaron was determined to play that night one last time with Nate come hell or high water and the Sport Center just so happened to be the best place to play in town. Aaron was in heaven. We loaded in and rocked the place. Aaron sold 3 CDs that night and we even had a husband and wife take the tambourine and mic for a song. It was sweet. We played for a couple hours then called in a night. We headed home and crashed. 

May 1st and 2nd

Thursday, May 1, 2014 and Friday, May 2, 2014
Holy hell another cleaning day. By the way, every day I’m getting more and more sick. Awesome. We woke up made a little trip to the QFC to get more cleaning supplies and some coffee. Then we went to work. After we were done you could lick the floors. I don’t recommend it, but you’d probably survive. In the middle of this cleaning Aaron decided to pack the car, which we quickly found out that we had too much stuff to fit in the car. Great. So we had to downsize a bit. I had to go from 3 bags and one shoes bag to only 2 bags. Outrageous, I know. Of course, conveniently, the U-boxes have been gone for a day so he had to drive down to Auburn and put the stuff we couldn’t fit in the car into storage.  We finished and had the walk through around 4 and then sat outside, because Aaron’s CDs were supposed to show up with UPS around 5. We just laid in the courtyard waiting for Aaron’s 3 boxes of CDs… They show up after the trip down to Auburn. Perfect. We took our picture in front of the apartment and headed to the 9lb for a drink and a few pictures before we headed to our friend Max’s house. The 9lb hammer was where Aaron and I met for the first time. He was “interviewing” me for the band. The table behind the picture below was where we sat and chat about the band and probably everything else that came to mind. We hung out forever that night just talking. Crazy that’s where is all began. Classy, I know. We left the 9lb and headed to Max’s to hang out and bbq. I ended up heading to bed early, because my health was going downhill. The next day was our last day in Seattle. I pulled the pictures off my work laptop and then handed it back in to amazon. Aaron and I headed to Paseo’s one last time to get the most perfect Cuban sandwich. Oh my goodness this sandwich is so good. On our way through Ballard we stopped at Bopstreet records to hand over a few CDs to our friend Bob and Dave that own/work at the record store. Bob was the one at Aaron’s last show that just loved the music. I bought a Louvin brothers record and they are shipping it to Texas for me. We left Bopstreet and went down to cupcake royal one last time so I could get the lavender cupcake. Yummmmmy! As we were walking back to the car we past back by Bopstreet and they were blasting Aaron’s record out into the streets of Ballard. So awesome! It’s also ironic that Ballard is the music community that Aaron was really trying to break into for years and as we leave he’s getting calls from bookers and Bopstreet is blaring the album. Just funny how that happens. We left Ballard, dropped off the cable box and headed out. Seattle in the review and stuck in traffic. We started our having our second disagreement, but once I could get Aaron to just stop talking everything was a bit better. Once we actually got on the road and started driving through the mountains we just started realizing how lucky we were. We are so blessed to be doing what we are doing and driving through the most beautiful part of the country. We were headed to Yakima to stay with our friend Nate. Nate was the drummer in “The Grandtours”.  We got to the house around 7ish, hung out with Nate and his wife Emma at the local Yakima brewery then headed home for a relaxing evening.