Road Trip

It’s been over two years since we’ve been on a cross-country road trip, so we’ve been looking forward to this one for awhile, even though it’s going to be a lot of miles in a short time.

We got off to a later start than we had hoped yesterday evening. We planned to drive for several hours after we all got off ‘work. Laura and I were ready to go by mid-afternoon, but Lyle had a last-minute rush job come at the print shop. It was after 6:00 when he got home, and pushing 7:00 by the time we finished loading and got on road.

We had motel reservations near Butte, which was about 5 hours away. There were snow flurries as we drove through the Silver Valley of the Idaho panhandle, and over Lookout Pass into Montana. The interstate was clear, though, so it didn’t slow us down much. We are pulling a small utility trailer so Lyle is trying to keep the speed at a steady 65mph to help with gas mileage.

We got to our motel about 1:00am MST. Today will be about 14 hours on the road, so we needed to get a pretty early start. We left the motel about 6:45. We stopped for gas 50 miles or so down the road. Next door was a wonderful bakery and deli, Wheat Montana. I had seen signs for it along the road before, but we hadn’t ever stopped there. So, of course, we had delicious pastries and coffee for breakfast. Their lunch menu looked really good, too, so we’ll have to keep that in mind next time we’re in the vicinity at the right time of day.

Central Montana is currently sunny and warmish– in the mid 40s. Today’s destination is Mitchell, South Dakota.

Stay tuned for more updates as we travel.