Our West Coast party was over. Time to start heading east, through the trailer park wilderness of Middle America. We were understandably nervous and made sure we had an extra tank of gas in the car in case of running out of petrol in the middle of nowhere. No matter what you have heard about American flags, you have no idea. They are everywhere. Almost everytown in Middle America has a giant one, we’ve even seen several flying from the tops of trees and the peaks of hills in the middle of nowhere.
Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to visit the Hotel as used in The Shining, but our first stop was just 30 or so minutes out of Seattle and the Snoqualmie Valley, where they filmed Twin Peaks in the 90’s. we only discovered this amazing website afterwards, but check out this guy who has done a hardcore blog finding the locations in 2008 from the 1989 Pilot: http://www.intwinpeaks.com/
PIC - Twin Peaks
Really nice drive today, we were absoultely stoked to see a dozen or more “dust devils” - some mini-twisters.
PIC – Crappy shot of a dust devil (guess you had to be there)
One is particular was actually really decent and was throwing up heaps of grass and crap….it got really close to the other side of the highway (check out my pic…you can’t make out the twister, but can see the carnage).
PIC – Shrapnel from the decent twister
After you pass through the very crappy town of Spokane, the drive from there to Missoula is incredible. Half the time it feels you’re driving through Switzerland, in particular, the area around Coeur D’Alene is amazing. We passed this incredible big block of ice just in the middle of a field, it didn’t make any sense, we haven’t seen anything else remotely like it the whole time. Check out the pic…and how big it is compared to the house.
We were pretty paranoid about the show tonight, a Tuesday night in Missoula, but luckily it was a show presented by the local radio station KGBA and they got a great crowd along. We played at a place called The Badlander, its actually part-owned by a real big fan of Bevan Smith’s work so we stayed with him after the show. The venue is amazing, its sorta 4 venues in one, upstairs, downstairs, all over the place…the are hallways like catacombs leading you throughout the rooms. The show was in the room called The Palace. We panicked a wee bit cause we were unfamiliar with the venue and after the local support act Apples of Dischord played the room emptied out completely and we thought everyone had gone home..this is how we discovered that everybody just goes to all the other bars…as soon as the opening notes of the band start, everybody just appears from the different rooms and comes together, awesome.
Rapt as with the show tonight. A band from Portland Musee Mechanique http://www.myspace.com/museemecanique jumped on the bill last minute as they were passing through town and played at the end of the show. They were great and anyone who is a fan of The Phoenix Foundation/Ghostplane etc should check em out.
I slept in the van tonight to keep the gear safe, i saw this fullah looking at me in the middle of the night. Coulda just been a deer, but who knows.
