Being now a decent bit less than 400 miles from our final destination we decided to stop a little early for the night. A little after 3 UTC we were in our room in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. We went out and bought some supplies we needed.

Now we are at dinner. And we’re now caught up again to real time on these blog posts. Woo!

Still catching up here from when the Treo couldn’t get Internet. On the 18th around 4 UTC we were going through Billings, Montana and decided it was time to stop for the night. But every place we stopped at was sold out. Mostly by firefighters fighting forest fires in the area and maybe a convention or two as well. So even though we were tired we kept going West.

We stopped again in Laurel, Montana a few miles down the road. They were full too but the lady called around for us and found us a place 40 miles further West in Reedpoint, Montana.

Reedpoint is a no stoplight four block town with less than 100 people. Our hotel for the night was the Hotel Montana, a five room hotel completely furnished with 1800s era old west antiques and with a saloon on the first floor… It was very cool. Brandy took a bunch of pictures with the real camera but the one above will have to do for now.

Amy fell asleep instantly, but as we were unloading a white dog with a black circle around one eye ran up to me, dug a little bit in the gravel road, picked up a rock and dropped it on my foot. I had no idea what was going on, but Brandy determined the dog wanted to play fetch with the rock. So I spent 10 minutes playing fetch with the dog and his chosen rock before we finished taking in our stuff.

Between 6 and 7 UTC we were finally settled in for the night in Reedpoint.

…you are driving down the Interstate with duct tape and plastic sheeting covering one of your car windows.

We had traveled about half an hour on the donut to the town of Gillette, Wyoming where the AAA guy had told us there was a tire place where we could replace oyr blown tire.

But we had a second problem. When the tire blew and we vibrated to a stop the back left window fell off its track and would no longer stay up.

The tire place only did tires, and by the time the tire was going to be done places we called would only say they MIGHT be able to look at it the next day. Brandy did NOT want to spend a couple days in Gillette waiting for the car like we had spent a couple days in Clarksville. So that was eliminated as an option.

Instead Brandy found a K-Mart, bought the needed supplies and bandaged up the window. By about 00:20 UTC on the 18th we were back on the road.

There was no Internet coverage but on the 17th at about 20:25 we entered Wyoming.