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November 18th, I think Bellingham, WA

I can’t believe I haven’t been able to write on the blog for so many days.  Its been a hectic, sometimes stressful, sometimes wonderful time.

We continued west on I-90 until the turn off to the South Dakota Badlands National Park.  Jack knows its one of my favourite places in the world.  So he gave me the gift of meandering the 37 miles through some of the most spectacular landscape you will see anywhere.  We’ve been seeing quite a bit of wildlife, mostly deer and what we call prong horns - not totally sure whether they are deer.  Anyway there was a herd of deer hanging about at the Visitor Centre when we got there.  Other than the folks we chatted with there we pretty well had the park to ourselves for our drive so it was wonderful.  Even the sky cooperated, the clouds opening up to give us the occasional blue vista.  Stopped in Wall for a 5 cent coffee, and a bit of Christmas shopping then got back on the road.  Stayed in Sheridan that night, in Wyoming, close to the Montana border.  Opting for a motel seems best right now so we stayed at the worst place of our trip that night.  Wasn’t really bad, but we’ve been spoiled so far.  We offset the cost of motels by having their continental breakfast and then having our supper from the motorhome.  This time of year rates are down so its been a good option as it saves us having to worry about dumping tanks, buying propane, battery charging and stuff.  We found almost no campgrounds open and with the weather and our vow not to drive after dark, truck stops make for a long evening.

To this point its been grasslands, rolling hills, badland type vistas.  But when you get to Wyoming you start going through and over mountain ranges.  There are 6 or 7 of them all together.  We lost the glorious sun and started facing storms, often running between them.  There would be huge rolling black clouds on either side of us, but we managed to get though to Billings. Montana where we stopped for coffee at one of diners you read about.

As we left Billings for Butte we got into high, high winds.  Really hard driving those passes, and even the flat area because of side winds gusting up to 60 miles per hour.  They seemed to lurk around corners and blast us as we drove by.  Some light snow before Butte but not bad.  

The challenges started the next day.  We left Butte with more high winds, but now had to cope with snow in the passes.  At one point in Lookout Pass near the border to Idaho we had poor visibility it was snowing so hard, slush and ice.  A big truck was labouring up and down the steep grades and around the curves like a snail.  So Jack tucked in behind him for the worst of that pass.  For most of that pass our average speed was 23-25 miles and hour.  Traffic would whiz by us at times but we just stayed with him until we came out of the pass to a lower altitude and the slush disappeared.  Our rig doesn’t like that.  She spun a few times, but Jack is a great driver and took it slow and cool.  I was so thankful he was driving.  It was tense, but not scary.

The highway through Idaho is stunning in the beauty of the mountains, but hard to drive in these conditions.  We did another bad pass there, but got through and stopped for the night in Spokan Washington.  Felt pretty good about thing when we stopped not realizing there was another storm and the hardest pass still to come.

For the record the only wildlife we saw in Montana and Idaho was a couple of flocks of wild turkeys.  

At this point I must quit writng.  We are in Bellingham, Washington, Just a few miles from the border.  Will be in our Fort Langley campground this afternoon - if I get going and pack up, shower etc.  So.  More next time.

Keep up the good spirits folks.  Remember to get hold of us you have to email julie@seacroftpei.com