We hit the road at 8:30 Thursday morning, as soon as Lily was done eating and ready to go. By the time we got on I-84 she was taking a nice nap that ended about 170 miles and many wind turbines later when we stopped to get gas. We thought there was a good chance we'd have to pull over within Portland city limits to deal with a wailing Lily, but all was good. We pulled into Coeur d'Alene a bit after 3PM, way before we thought we would.
Coeur d'Alene was beautiful, a nice resort town on the edge of a big lake surrounded by rolling hills covered in evergreens. We had a nice dinner featuring local Huckleberries at the resort on the lake and called it a good first day.
We rolled through wet weather, mountain passes and found that famed Big Sky on Friday, with Lily again taking long naps and being very agreeable. We hit Helena in plenty of time to relax before the Hawaiian-themed rehearsal dinner. We had a great visit with Sara and got to meet some of the friends we'd heard about and see some people we hadn't seen in a while, including Tavia's parents who were incredibly friendly and welcoming.
We wandered the streets of Helena Saturday before the wedding, and decided it was like Hood River minus the river. We stumbled into a quaint farmers market and crashed wedding pictures at the 8th-largest cathedral in the US.
The main event was fantastic, the setting was beautiful and the bride outshone everything around. Stetson, her dog, was even the ring bearer, running down the aisle when he was called for an on-time delivery. We had a nice visit over dinner with Shana and Stefan, and convinced ourselves that a return trip to Montana is in order sooner or later. I had hoped to be able to squeeze in a visit to Glacier National Park during this trip, but it would have taken an extra day and about 10 extra car hours, so we saved it for next time.
Sunday we joined up with the wedding folks again for breakfast at Sara's Dad's house, enjoying the beautiful views and hearing the tales of the post-wedding carousing before resuming our journey. This pic is where we stopped Sunday afternoon for Lily's lunch.
The biggest (mis)adventure of the trip happened about thirty miles from the Idaho border, in a construction zone with one lane in each direction. We blew a tire. I yanked everything out of the trunk and put on the spare (a donut) and hoped we could find somewhere with at least a full sized spare to continue the journey. But of course this was Sunday late afternoon, and there aren't much of any population centers in Western Montana or the panhandle of Idaho. So we plodded along at 50 miles an hour with our caution lights, not able to enjoy the 75 MPH speed limit... all the way to Coeur d'Alene. Ugh. At least there were sunny skies so we got to fully appreciate the wonderful landscape. It made me want to live there until I thought of why I like living in the city.
Monday morning I was near first in line at Les Schwab (alas, no free beef) and we were on the road again by 9:30 with a new set of tires. Let's just say it wasn't debris that caused our flat. Our final driving day was again pretty smooth with lots of long naps from Lily and nice scenery. We passed quite a few flatbed semis hauling massive parts for wind turbine construction.
We made it home in one piece, and overall I'd say it was definitely a fun time. The only downer was spending such a long time in the car without much talking, since Nicole was sitting in back and with the road noise we almost had to yell to hear each other. Not conducive to a sleeping baby. But I guess the upside to that is, as Nicole said, she could sit and think for once. Unfortunately this was in comparison to today, when Lily was back to half-hour naps and crying to get to sleep. Back to the grind I guess.
We'll post more pics from the trip in Picassa over the next day or so... link in the upper right of this page as usual.
No comments:
Post a Comment