We’re currently sitting on highway 12 in Montana waiting for a pilot car to lead us through a construction zone. Ah, here it comes.

On Friday, I didn’t set my alarm, but we woke up at 7:38 anyway, two minutes before my alarm normally would have gone off. Still, even though we’d packed our bags the night before, it took us nearly two hours to gather everything and pack it into the car, including the snow shoes, which are surprisingly bulky for essentially being very flat devices. We decided not to camp on this trip because we expected it to be too cold once we got to Canada and because so many campgrounds are closed this time of year anyway. As it turned out, it was a beautiful day, and the only clouds in the sky were contrails. By the time we got to Denver, it was actually hot, and we had to run the air conditioner…on the third day of spring. We ended up running it all day.

We’re finally through the construction, which lasted for miles. It appears they’re widening the road, but there really isn’t very much traffic on it at all.

We stopped at Johnson’s Corner Truck Stop for the first time for breakfast. Fortunately, they serve breakfast all day, since it was already 11:30. Berck got the breakfast burrito, of course, and I got the chicken fried steak (of course) which was really good. It felt so nice to be playing hooky from work on my birthday.

Today, on the other hand, is completely grey. In fact, we just drove through some fog, though, fortunately, it was just high enough that we could see the road but couldn’t see the blades of the turbines of the wind farm we drove through.

We apparently had a tail wind through most of Wyoming, because we had gone 200 miles and the gas gague read half full. We did some calculations and decided we could make it to Casper but if need be there was a town on the way we could stop and get gas. Unfortunately, the two was a mile off the highway, and when we got there, the only gas station we could find was now an antique store. So we drove back to the interstate. I looked at the gas gauge and decided we could easily make it the 22 miles to Casper, but it turned out all we needed was 15 miles before we got to a truck stop. We filled the tank and found we still had at least a quarter gallon. We’d been getting 32 MPG with the AC on and going 85 MPH.

Eastern Wyoming is still full of dusky green rolling hills, and it seems like each one of them had a herd of a dozen antelope on it. I amused myself by trying to take pictures of them. The wind started blowing from the west, and Berck said he wished he had steering wheel trim. I like that the entire state of Wyoming has a population less than that of Colorado Springs where we live.

We passed into Montana, and the scenery became a bit more varied. I decided to stay in Billings for the night, and Berck suggested I Priceline a hotel room. We had just enough internet connectivity through the Android for me to get a $52 a night room at a Super 8. We could have driven further, but hotel rooms aren’t just anywhere in Montana.

Unfortunately, when we got to the Super 8, the lady behind the front desk said that they were full and that she didn’t know why Priceline kept making reservations there. She unsympathetically told us we’d have to call Priceline about that. Fortunately, the Super 8 had wifi in the lobby (though I’d saved the confirmation page from Priceline, so we didn’t really need it). Berck called Priceline and told them that he wanted another hotel room in Billings for the same price. We waited on hold while the customer service representative called the lady at the front desk standing 15 feet from us. Then he read Berck a lengthy piece of legalese, to which Berck answered that he still wanted a room in Billings for the same price. He got us a room at an Econolodge not very far away. It definitely seemed like a step down but was supposedly also a 2 star motel. When Berck was checking in, the person at the front desk was telling people that they were already full, so it sounds like we might have gotten the last room. It was clean at least, so we unpacked and then drove downtown to the Montana Brewing Company, which I’d found while Berck was on the phone with Priceline.

The brewery had some of the best microbrews I’ve ever had. We tried their Amber (which they billed as a English mild style) nut brown, hefeweizen, Happy Hour (which was an English bitter ale), chocolate oatmeal stout, and Baltic porter, which we had with a giant cookie topped with ice cream. They had good cheese fries and decent pizza. They were very noisy, though, so loud that when the newborn at the table next to us started bawling, we couldn’t hear it at all.

Berck decided it was time to get up at 7:39 this morning. It’s been grey all day, so different from yesterday. We’re currently driving though fairly thick fog that keeps us from speeding. The ground is now pretty well covered with snow. When we drove through Montana during our spring break in 1998, all of Montana was snow covered, though the roads were mostly clear. The creeks and lakes are all swollen now.

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We’re now at the Black Diamond Hotel outside Calgary. I’ll write about today’s adventures tomorrow.