Big Grace in Big Sky Country

Busy day today. Lots of traveling and clicking off miles on the map. Moved from ND to MT today. Hopefully we will conquer ID and WA tomorrow. Heard from Paul today. Guess he called around lunch time, but missed the call. Will have to send an e-mail tonight.

It was good to leave ND. Though I must confess that Western ND was actually quite beautiful. We ran into the Painted Canyon. Gorgeous. Plateaus, hills, colors--wow. Celebration at the MT state line!! Woohoo! Then the funny exit names started. I left the list in the car, but the ones I can remember are Cracker Box Rd., Whoopup Cr. Road and Camel Hump Lake. Then there was the "No Meth. Not even once." signs and the "Smile." sign. Finally the road started to turn more and get into the hills. And in the distance--the mountains. Glorious sight they were. My soul was refreshed and renewed by seeing their shadowy outline far off. We saw the burned out areas where the fires had gone through near I-90. Once we finally made it into the mountains, I heard a thunk under the car. I figured it was just some gravel coming loose. We had driven through some tar and chip earlier. The car seemed a bit wobbly, but it was also really windy, so I couldn't quite tell what the deal was. I kept going down the road, but it just didn't feel right. I called my parents, who were traveling near by on the road. They decided to stop at an exit and check out the car.

As my dad circled the wagon (ha ha), sure enough the rear driver's side tire was leaking air. I knew we didn't have much time, so we pulled down from the interstate and onto a dead end gravel road. After surveying the damage, we decided that to change the tire for the spare we would have to unpack part of the back of my car. So unpack we did. After much hard work, we had the tire released. A call to AAA let us know that there was some civilization up ahead. Shortly there after the tires were swapped and we were on the road toward the nearest Wal-Mart. There were only open for the next 1/2 hr., so we had to get a move on. Not too much is around and/or open in this part of MT. There we inflated the tire and headed off for another hour's drive down the road.

At our final destination, we rolled into the hotel parking lot and scanned the horizon for dinner. All in all, things went fairly well considering what happened. Fortunately we ended up at an exit with no traffic and a quiet place to literally unpack the car and plenty of space to change the tire. Also fortunate, no free range cows checking us out while we were working on the car. And it's Monday, so Headlines are on for Leno. Score!

Here's to a beautiful MT landscape, fun times in the car, good music ;), good conversation, enough energy to keep on driving and an amazing sunset in the Rocky Mountains.