Missoula pt.1 - Headin' Out

We got up early on Saturday morning after the 4th of July, got coffee, and headed out east to the Old West (Uh.. what?)

The car was packed the night before, so it didn't take long to get going.

The trip was pretty uneventful thankfully.

I had tried to take my car in to get the tires rotated before we left, only to find out that I had an alignment problem and they wouldn't do it.

In fact, the guy at Les Schwab said, "I wouldn't drive all that way out there until I got this fixed. You should get it fixed and then get a couple of new tires before you go."

I told him I wasn't about to postpone my vacation until they could make an appointment for me to get my car in to them and that I would just have to take my chances and deal with it out in Montana. So I swapped the two front tires and hoped they wouldn't blow out on me during the 500 miles we had to drive.

With gas prices being what they are, I thought it would be easier on our wallets to bring lunch with us so we only had to stop for gas when we needed it and not food.

That worked out pretty well as we only needed to stop for gas just once right as we got into Spokane.

We ate lunch at a rest stop near Sprague Lake and were surrounded by seagulls who weren't about to take any crap from us if we didn't give them any food.

They sat around and squawked and kept inching closer while we ate. I got up a couple of times to shoo them away, only to have them move right back as I sat down again.

After we ate, we figured we'd better get out of there before they decided to mob us. So we threw away our trash (which the gulls were keeping a very watchful eye on) and got back on the road.

Hotness slept the majority of the trip, which was fine.

I hadn't told her about the issue with the tires and I figured it was better to have her asleep than to stress about it and keep bugging me.

We got to St. Regis and then took a different road into St. Ignatius where we were going to stop first for a couple of days.

This other highway paralleled I-90 but with a lot more twists and turns, so it was a nice change of pace from what we usually drive through into Missoula.

We got into St. Ignatius and were driving to their place when we got stuck behind a tractor towing a trailer after it. The road was too narrow to go around so I dropped back a bit and just followed until we got to the house where our friends lived.

By this time Hotness had to go to the restroom and slow-poking along behind tractor boy was not helping.

We got to an intersection where we needed to turn right.

Awesome! This guy is going straight so I'll lose him and we can get there.

Oops, no. He turned right also.

Well, I'll go around him now since the road is a bit wider.

Yeah THAT worked out until he started to turn left in front of me!

I guess he didn't see me behind him because he didn't use a signal. I didn't think he was going to turn since I didn't see any signal. So it was a bit of an awkward moment.

Luckily my car is small and nimble, so when he jerked to a stop I zipped around and kept going.

... all while a wagon full of Amish folk were watching. Way to go city-slicker.

We got to our friends place and called it good. We made it in one piece.

The tires were still intact and we didn't get run over by farm equipment.

It was about 7:00 p.m. local time, so we sat around for a bit catching up and they built a fire in the fire pit so we could make hotdogs for dinner.

We were treated to a wonderful sunset:

The next day we got up and had breakfast, then went out to see their herd of cattle and run a few errands.

After that we got some ice cream from Dairy Queen and went back to their house where everybody but me took a nap.

I opted to wander around their 40-acres and take some pictures.

A little later, a couple of their grandkids showed up and we ate dinner outside again before calling it a day.

On Monday morning Hotness and I got up and got our stuff back into the car so we could finish driving to Missoula that day.

We had breakfast, said our goodbyes and took off.

Along the way, we passed the trees that got burned in last year's fire that we were there for.

This year hadn't been as dry as last year, so the fire danger was much lower.

We pulled into Missoula and got settled at another friend's house where we were staying for a few days before heading over to see Hotness's mom (or Hotness 1.0).

Also her brother was in town (this will be explained later) so we made plans to meet up with him for lunch that day.

And pretty much that was it for the first three days.

Alot more happened afterwards, but I'll put them into another post soon.