Roadtrip Day 3: Montana & Idaho

We are making seriously good time on this roadtrip. I think we are a full day ahead of schedule! We have driven about 650 miles each day since Friday, and are now in Couer d’Alene, Idaho.

Today’s route:

90 from Sheridan, Wyoming straight on through to Couer d’Alene, Idaho. One road, 650 miles!

Montana is much more picturesque than Wyoming. It is named Big Sky Country for a good reason. It seems to be rather sparsely populated and everyone has a view of verdant hills teeming with evergreens or snow-capped mountains. The skies are enormous and blue and filled with puffy white and gray clouds.

Here is a photo of our hotel from last night, which used to be a flour mill:

I can’t believe I’ve been getting up at 5:45 every morning since Friday. It’s actually not as hard to do when you go to bed by 9:30 p.m.! First thing after waking up, I put on my shorts and hoodie and running shoes and take Tilly outside for a short jog. We’ve been going about a mile or so, which is not very far for someone who’s supposed to be training for a marathon, but I’m on limited time and I’ve got a dog who probably can’t go as far as I need to. Anyway, I think I’m doing good to be getting any exercise at ALL on a cross country roadtrip.

This morning I let Tilly off-leash in the hotel parking lot (it’s fenced on 3 sides from the street with a nice grassy area at the back), and ran her from one side to the other at top speed for a few minutes. She can outrun me, easily, even when I sprint. She has this awesome bounding run and she’ll cross diagonally in front of me as if to trip me up, and then she’ll stop at the end of the parking lot and look back at me like she’s laughing.

As we drove through these beautiful hills and valleys today, I wanted to stop on the roadside and let her out to just run up and down the hillsides. Too bad most of them had fences a few dozen yards back from the highway. I guess somebody owns every square inch of America.

We stopped to pee in a cute little town called Livingston, where I overheard the woman behind the store counter at the Exxon station tell a local customer “And she actually asked me, ‘How safe are your hotels?’ And I told her ‘Honey, I’m at work and my house is unlocked, that’s what kind of town this is!’ And she sniffed and walked out without a word!”

We ate lunch at a Quizno’s in Butte, where Tilly charmed everyone who walked past our patio table. And later in the afternoon we stopped for gas in Wallace, Idaho, a tiny town nestled along a river in a valley, that is very well kept up and apparently just held some sort of weekend festival. There were far more cars parked in the antiquey looking downtown area than could possibly belong to just the residents.

And now we’re at the La Quinta in Couer d’Alene. We got a bottle of wine and had cheese, fruit, snap peas and crackers in the room for dinner.

Tomorrow morning we are having breakfast with Doc’s mom, who is driving down from Sandpoint about 40 miles north of here. I’m looking forward to seeing her.