I woke at 5:30 PST when Chris pulled off to rest 60 miles west of Missoula. The sleeping arrangements were all wonky and I ended up sharing a fold out couch with Alice and Chris. I say couch. It's more like a love seat.
At 6 I got up and got my snacks and drinks in order and prepared to drive. I fed Alice - this, her first birthday, laid her to snuggle next to Chris and I climbed forward into the cockpit.
Chris told me to drive slow- no faster than 50 since the roads were snowy.
I had my earphones in and just clicked into my iPod music and shifted into drive. Most of my musical file stuff is floating in some cloud somewhere but what I did have on my device was an interesting and eclectic mix.
Jason Mraz, Al Green, dispicable me, nick cannon'a "can I live?", Scythian's latest album, they might be giants, Brett dennon, josh bell plays Vivaldi, audio pool, the Juno soundtrack, Napoleon dynamite soundtrack, and best of bobby mcferrin. Everything but country.
About 10 miles east of Missoula I saw a billboard advertising for the testicle festival. Yep. You read correctly- but Go back just to make sure.
There was fog in some places.
I wouldn't say the sun rose. It was more like the whole landscape began to glow a bit.
I like driving the sun up in a new landscape. It was like unwrapping a present slowly. Snowy hills and fields. Farmhouses blanketed in white with little black posts jutting up in equal measures holding up wire fencing to separate one land from another. Black cows huddled by semi frozen ponds.
I stopped to fill up an hour after sun up a little west of Butte. The kids got out in their boots and played in the snow.
Stopped in billings to refill and get mustard and mayonnaise.
Chris says we are getting 7 mpg. And gas is averaging out to be $2.80/gal. And the distance between Bellevue and Huntsville is 2570. So if you plug in those numbers, we will need 367 gallons of fuel. One way will cost us approximately $1028 . Still cheaper than plane tickets for ten. I think Chris and Henry's round trip tickets are about that much.
4PM Mountain Time and we've driven 900 miles. Chris says if the weather was better we'd have 1100 miles under our belts.
More snowy landscape dotted with black bovine shapes standing stoicly on the shoulders of hunched hills. Stubborn and tall, pale yellow prairie grasses stab through the few inches of powder and give shape to the land amidst all the white. White on white. Visibility is such that making out the horizon is a lesson in squinting and blinking and straining.
Little birthday girl is doing swimmingly. I took her out of her car seat for a reclined nursing session in the back. Afterwards she sat up and smiled absentmindedly as she lifted her shirt and dug into her belly button. She is back in her car seat and watching Sinbad with the big kids. I am back up front with Chris, my socks on the dash trying to dry off. I keep stepping in melted snow as I walk through the camper.
It's dinner time and I'm feeling like we need to stop soon. 6:20 and Gillette is 45 minutes away. Chris is a machine but I will likely take the wheel after dinner.
The road is so clean and dry now! Stars in the sky! So nice to see stars!!! That doesn't happen in pacNW very often in the winter.
I took over the wheel and finished the day with about 6 hours worth of driving. I drove out of Wyoming and into the black hills. There were lots of signs warning of black ice and there was a lot of fog so I took it down to 40 for a good stretch. Chris took over with about 2 1/2 hours to go.
I went to the back and crashed. I had a dream wherein I had swirls curving and weaving out of my mouth. I woke to a freezing RV. It was so cold and dark I thought if I could see anything it would be my breath.
What happened to make the RV an icebox---
1) we were out of liquid propane. And the heater runs off the liquid propane. Something new is learned everyday right?
2) the two side windows behind the cab are sliding windows. They rattle and jiggle and make all kinds of noise as we drive but they were rattling with intense velocity. I pulled open the drapes and felt gushing cold air. Some rain earlier in the trip and slipped along the window and wrapped it's frozen self around the back edge of the window- pulling it open and leaving a gap.
We were driving in an RV that had no heat on a night where the temps were close to zero.
We pulled into Alexandria at about 5. Everyone piled into the apartment and slept on beds or on the ground and was thankful.
At 5:30 I set my alarm for 7 and nursed Alice to sleep, then soon followed her.
*Bellevue > Spokane 3:51 273 miles
*Spokane > Missoula 3:09198 miles
*Missoula > Bozeman 3:16 202 miles
*Bozeman> billings 2:17 141 miles
*Billings > Gillette 3:42 231 miles
*Gillette > rapid city 2:16 142 miles
*Rapidcity >Alexandria 4:25 289miles
(These aren't the exact times or distances we drove- though they differed only a very little bit)
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