Greg has a confession...

I've been unfaithful to Le Tigre.  I was tempted by the charms of another, only to find that they were mere illusion.  I've come to my senses and begged forgiveness.  Le Tigre has taken me back on the condition that I punish the imposter.

But seriously, they made at least two of these in 1988.  We know because we own them both.  I found Tiger deux, we'll call her "Fake Tigre", in Minneapolis.  Another great deal, or so I thought.  Fake Tigre includes additional options such as a shower, water heater, and toilet that our more basic Le Tigre didn't get at the factory.  Fake Tigre was the same price as Le Tigre and looked great in photos but proved to be much more of a project than I was led to believe.  Not only that she developed some mechanical issues on the drive home from Minneapolis, although we did make it.  Fake Tigre has proven useful and already provided several items to Le Tigre such as a new set of tires, curtains, and other little bits.  I've really come to appreciate the simplicity of Le Tigre.  Here's a few photos of the bumper sitckers that were on each Tiger when purchased to illustrate their personality differences.

Le Tigre Lover...

Aahhhh, more good vibes...

Woah, Fake Tigre angry

My Mom accompanied me to Minneapolis to assist with the driving (1200 miles / 20 hours straight) Thanks Mom!!!  We spent the night with my cousin, Chris and his family.  They made the trip totally worthwile and we'll definitely be mooching on their hospitality more in the future.  Awesome breakfast! 
Thanks Chris and Diana!

Oh, and I should mention, today is me and Angie's 13th anniversary so I'm only fickle when it comes to vehicles.

Random Shots

We haven't done anything with le tigre recently.  Except take a ride with Kipper to our friends' house for dinner and football.  Kipper seemed to like the  view........

Maybe he needs a seatbelt?

We bought a big wall map so we can put pins where we want to go to help us plan our initial route.  We quickly ran out of pins.

Mt McKinley! Denali National Park!  Anchorage!

Yellowstone!  The Grand Tetons!  Devil's Tower! (where, hopefully, we will see some UFOs)

My birthday was a couple of days ago and my dear friend gave us a couple of books that will add to our growing library of road-worthy books, gifted to us by friends, family, and Half-Priced Books (well, Half-Priced didn't "gift" them per se, but they're so dang cheap there!).

We've also been Netflixing "Ken Burns: The National Parks-America's Best Idea."  It's a 6-part series about the history of the national park.   It's pretty interesting (or depressing, depending on how you look at it), if you like the story of the war between the  conservationists/naturalists vs expansionists/commercialism.  Of course, the money won out and millions of animals and people and acres were destroyed in the name of progress.  But amazingly, somehow, a little bit of common sense prevailed and Yosemite was born.  And Yellowstone followed.  And more and more parks came to be.  And there are some beautiful places out there!  And there's proof that progress can be smart and not all about destruction.

Cabella's

Last weekend, we went to Cabella's to look at camping supplies.  Good grief, what a place!  It's HUGE and there were approximately 763,420 kids running all over the place.  I think Cabella's is an actual weekend destination for familes.  They go to just hang out.  There are stuffed animal corpses all over the place and games to play and a cafe, so I guess it's a good place to spend a hot afternoon.

We, however, were on a mission. 

We were looking at:

camping toilets

with clever names,

 

showers,

(We're going to set up some sort of outdoor shower with solar heated water. 
But they'll have to be very short showers, so I think I'm going to try this out:

so I don't have to use a lot of water rinsing out shampoo. 
It's either that or cut all my hair off....)


 

sleeping bags,

(This sleeping bag is for two people and actually looks pretty comfy. 
We'll get something similar and just use it inside,
cuz that's where we'll be sleeping.  Of course, we'll get a mattress for under
 the sleeping bag, for super comfy-ness.)



and coolers.

(This thing supposedly keeps ice icey for 5 days!!)

Aaaaaaaaand, that's about it.  We didn't actually buy anything, we were just checking out the things we need.  We're itching to try out le tigre......soon, very soon!!!