Roadtrip Day 3: Montana & Idaho

We are making seriously good time on this roadtrip. I think we are a full day ahead of schedule! We have driven about 650 miles each day since Friday, and are now in Couer d'Alene, Idaho.

Today's route:

90 from Sheridan, Wyoming straight on through to Couer d'Alene, Idaho. One road, 650 miles!

Montana is much more picturesque than Wyoming. It is named Big Sky Country for a good reason. It seems to be rather sparsely populated and everyone has a view of verdant hills teeming with evergreens or snow-capped mountains. The skies are enormous and blue and filled with puffy white and gray clouds.





Here is a photo of our hotel from last night, which used to be a flour mill:



I can't believe I've been getting up at 5:45 every morning since Friday. It's actually not as hard to do when you go to bed by 9:30 p.m.! First thing after waking up, I put on my shorts and hoodie and running shoes and take Tilly outside for a short jog. We've been going about a mile or so, which is not very far for someone who's supposed to be training for a marathon, but I'm on limited time and I've got a dog who probably can't go as far as I need to. Anyway, I think I'm doing good to be getting any exercise at ALL on a cross country roadtrip.

This morning I let Tilly off-leash in the hotel parking lot (it's fenced on 3 sides from the street with a nice grassy area at the back), and ran her from one side to the other at top speed for a few minutes. She can outrun me, easily, even when I sprint. She has this awesome bounding run and she'll cross diagonally in front of me as if to trip me up, and then she'll stop at the end of the parking lot and look back at me like she's laughing.



As we drove through these beautiful hills and valleys today, I wanted to stop on the roadside and let her out to just run up and down the hillsides. Too bad most of them had fences a few dozen yards back from the highway. I guess somebody owns every square inch of America.

We stopped to pee in a cute little town called Livingston, where I overheard the woman behind the store counter at the Exxon station tell a local customer "And she actually asked me, 'How safe are your hotels?' And I told her 'Honey, I'm at work and my house is unlocked, that's what kind of town this is!' And she sniffed and walked out without a word!"

We ate lunch at a Quizno's in Butte, where Tilly charmed everyone who walked past our patio table. And later in the afternoon we stopped for gas in Wallace, Idaho, a tiny town nestled along a river in a valley, that is very well kept up and apparently just held some sort of weekend festival. There were far more cars parked in the antiquey looking downtown area than could possibly belong to just the residents.



And now we're at the La Quinta in Couer d'Alene. We got a bottle of wine and had cheese, fruit, snap peas and crackers in the room for dinner.

Tomorrow morning we are having breakfast with Doc's mom, who is driving down from Sandpoint about 40 miles north of here. I'm looking forward to seeing her.

Roadtrip Day 2: Colorado & Wyoming

Today was a pretty damn boring drive. We covered the entire states of Colorado and Wyoming from south to north.

Today's route:

25 from Trinidad, Colorado to Buffalo, Wyoming (600 miles)
90 from Buffalo to Sheridan, Wyoming (30 miles)

As we were leaving Trinidad, I noticed that it has a Stargate!



That 600 mile stretch from Trinidad to Buffalo was, nearly without exception, unendingly boring.



Outside of Colorado Springs we drove past Pike's Peak, but we weren't sure exactly which one it was in the mountain range because nothing looked impressive or terribly peaky and we kind of thought it was supposed to be rather pointy. I called Doc a bit later to express my disappointment in Mr. Pike and his so-called "peak," and he said that when you're travelling across America at 25 miles a day on horseback, after going through Kansas you tend to be easily impressed.

The most interesting event of the day was the windstorm that blew through as we were standing outside the Loaf 'N Jug gas station in Casper, Wyoming (seriously, it was called the Loaf 'N Jug, how awesome is that?!), trying to get the dog to pee. The gust slammed into us and then a cloud of dirt and gravel came roaring in without warning. We ran for the car, dirt in our eyes and stinging the backs of our legs and arms. We waited until it subsided a little before getting back on the highway, but the muddy rain made it hard to see for a while.







Tonight we are staying at the Mill Inn in Sheridan, Wyoming. It is an old flour mill converted into motel rooms, very nicely decorated with Old West art, wooden furniture, track lighting, and Starbucks coffee in the room. Instead of going out for dinner, we bought cheese and crackers and fruit and snow peas at a grocery store, and looked in vain for some place to buy wine.

Tilly and Tigger are doing really well. Tigger has had some intestinal upsets in her carrier, but once you let her out to roam around the backseat, she does fine. I think the carrier makes her nervous. She loves being in the motel rooms, she just wanders a bit and then curls up on the bed and goes right to sleep.

I have some photos of the hotel but it is late, we are getting up at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow, and I will just post them tomorrow instead.