2 Rv's to Junction City OR, delivered

... spending the night at Butte MT ...

We just "Cut off the nose to spite the face."

Just before we stopped, BB was checking motels after we passed Butte and found that motels in Bozeman were over $100. So we turned around and back tracked to Butte. Once checked into the motel, we realize by not making it to Bozeman ... we are now going to have an extra nights motel. Which will cost us more than the difference between the Butte and Bozemans motels. :(

Today - Tuesday morning. We had checked off what we wanted for breakfast on a sheet last night, so when we came down this AM we gave the staff our room number and they gave us our breakfast.

Real scrambled eggs, sausage, yogurt, juice. Plus I got PopTarts but those are for the road, add to our stash.

Once checked out, I drive over to the Columbia Mall. Their website is wrong. They only have two anchors. Macy's and JC Penny's and if Penny's is closing that leaves 1 of 4. Not so good. I drove around the mall until I got a feel for how it laid out with just the two original anchors. :)

Then I followed my nose ... and realized I was going in the opposite direct of what I wanted. I saw a sign that said I-82 and I was looking for I-182. BB looked at the computer and I had taken a right out of the mall lot instead of a left. Once we were back to that point I knew my way for the next 1,000+ miles.

This 'mall' is what ended up costing us enough time that we couldn't / didn't want to, drive past Bozeman tonight.

Traveling up US-395 I could pick out a known potato cellar and phone tower at Connell, but we don't stop.

1st road stop is at the rest area in Sprague instead of the Loves in Ritzville, thinking it would take less time. A couple of days ago, Loves was really congested. We walk for a couple of minutes before getting back into the car.

2nd stop is for fuel at the Flying J in Post Falls. BB uses the restroom, I do not. It's less than an hour but the fuel is cheap and will get us to WY where the fuel is even cheaper.

Somewhere in ID there is part of a truck load that is sitting on the cement median divider. The truck is gone, but it looks like the load came off the down hill lane coming around a corner (too fast.) Two very large tanks that are anchored together.

3rd stop is in St Regis for food. It would have been nice to get to Missoula for some 4B's soup, but not this trip. We ordered to go at Jaspers, BB had a club and I had a patty melt and a huckelberry shake. Another good meal and no supper needed. There were benches under their overhang so we sat on one and ate our lunch before leaving.

The last couple of days it seems like 75%+ are wearing masks but haven't heard anyone making a big deal out of it.

Not sure what the % is, but people out here carry. Open carry.

WA the speed limit is up to 70, ID up to 75, MT up to 80 mph. Doesn't help much until there are not 45 mph curves every mile. Mileage yesterday on the car had been up to 33.5 mpg in OR, but today is back down to 28.5 after running 80 mph.

4th stop is Deer Lodge at the gas station for restroom and juice. I thought this place had been a Town Pump, but it is not now and maybe never was. Clean place, has Champs Chicken, but I am not hungry. Did get some kind of lemonade, turns out to be diet. This place had three kinds of 'Simply' juice, but not lemonade.

Already covered how we ended up in Butte. Now if we don't get home on Thursday, I can't get my DOT done on Friday. Big OPPS, not looking at the big picture.

5th and final stop is at the Comfort Inn in Butte, same one we were at a couple of nights ago. No supper, 2nd night in a row.

Today we saw one Amazon Prime van, one plain white van and two tree trucks for blowing tree chips into. That was all we noticed with placards. Did see lots of Greyhound sized RV's.

2 RV's to North Las Vegas are the most likely runs we would look at.

We will see how tomorrow goes. Plan was to call for my DOT appointment tomorrow AM, knowing that we would be able to be home Thursday night. It is still doable, but originally we would only have six hours to drive on Thursday, now we are up to 8-9-??

Load board numbers

US - 227

IA - 108

MN - 6

WI - 4