Home At Last!

After 9 days, and nearly 4,000 miles, we arrived back in Spokane this evening. I must say that it is certainly good to be home again. We had a good trip, but the conversation of the day centered around the thought that maybe we are getting a little too old to make these types of journeys on a regular basis. With the two trips that we have made to Wisconsin and Minnesota, and back again since the first of May, the odometer on the Family Truckster has nearly 10,000 more miles on it than it did before. Give it a couple of months to see if our thinking...or lack thereof...changes.

Out there on the road today it seemed to take forever. Most of the day was spent in Montana. I mean no offense to "Big Sky Country", but if you can...I would advise you to avoid Montana if at all possible. Take another route! every time that we travel through Montana, which is usually twice each year, the same stretches of I-90 and I-94 are under construction. It has been that way for over 10 years! They never seem to get anything done. Not only that, but where other states slow you down to 55 or 60 in construction zones, in Montana the posted speed limit in such areas is 3 miles per hour, and invariably you will find yourself behind some guy who takes that number quite literally! Once we passed St. Regis, about 30 miles from the Idaho state line, I thought that we were in good shape as on the eastbound leg of the journey there were no construction areas beyond that milepost. A few miles up the road traffic came to a complete stop. We spent an hour sitting there wondering what was going on. Well...it turns out that a tractor trailer rig hauling huge bails of cardboard for recycling took a sharp mountain curve at a speed that was well above what was advised and dumped his load upon the road. As we finally passed I couldn't help but notice the Montana plate on both the trailer and the tractor. Who'd a thunk it?

Back here it home it is pretty chilly. Today's high in Spokane was only 68 degrees. Tomorrow looks nice with sunshine and 70s, but then on Sunday and Monday cooler air will be moving in again, so highs will be back into the 60s. It appears as if summer is pretty much over, and fall is settling in. I have a strong feeling that the upcoming winter is going to be a nasty one...cold and snowy! I'll have more to say about that in the coming days!