With mountains as its jagged teeth, the horizon loomed ahead like a devouring mouth stretched wide, hungry. With nothing to block the way save for a rare tumbleweed or cornstalk snake, the smooth highway lapped us deeper inside.

Like this, we drove across South Dakota, through southern Montana and on into the slick, snowy hills of Idaho. The small towns along the way hosted truck stops and the occasional IGA, selling knives and bison jerky to the pilgrimaging hunters. Schools resembled penitentiaries. The pit-stop motels of these towns are tropes for the modern-day writer, plucked by the likes of Cormac McCarthy and the beloved Nabokov, signifying the simultaneous freedom and imprisonment of anonymity. No one knows you, no one can track you down. But no one will save you, and no one cares. You become a target.

On the highway, the scenery romances its tourist. A cattle ranch in Montana doesn't sound so bad after all, especially considering the easy access to four-packs of sarsaparilla.

The Badlands, as Matt describes them, resemble some alien planet or lunar surface. For hours there is little to see except for flat grasslands, then with a slight detour off I-90, long-eroded ravines and towering rock formations in gray, yellow and sienna dominate the landscape. Signs warn of rattlesnakes and cars pull off the road to photograph mountain goats. Just outside of the park, we passed a large prairie dog colony and, nearby, a patient hawk.

Idaho possessed none of the flat potato fields I expected. Instead, we drove nervously along high ridges, overlooking the snow-covered evergreens of national forests and wondering if it was too late in the season to spot a bear. Our iPod, fueled with over 24 hours of short fiction and other storytellers, kept us going.

We arrived in Seattle midweek, reaching our short-term sublet just south of downtown. The next day I began a Netflix account (our apartment has a projector and large pull-down screen), and Matt walked down to the central library. Yesterday - Thanksgiving - we went for a run around Green Lake on the north side of town, putting up with a little drizzling rain. Our dinner was late (9:00), but neither of us minded. We made a small vegetarian feast complete with pumpkin pie. For our main course, we made a broccoli-portobello-gouda quiche with homemade crust. For our sides, we had a cranberry-walnut sauce, garnet yams with a butter and mustard vinaigrette and garlic sauteed green beans. And with plenty for leftovers!