Taken with my phone, this was our first view of how things survived the trip.

Behind Sarah and my brother, Steve, is 26 feet more of the same. Gary and Amy, Casey (their daughter), Steve and I worked nonstop for 7 hours to unload the truck, not counting the 1/2 hour break for sandwiches from Jimmy Johns.  U-Haul provided carts which we loaded to the max, ferried to the freight elevator, up four floors, then through a maze of hallways to two storage units.  Miraculously, it all fit into them, with a little extra space left.  As far as I'm concerned, the adventure is over.  I get to leave and never see that storage unit or move any of that stuff again.  For Sarah, another begins, finding a new house and then moving all that stuff into it.  Good luck, Sarah.  I'm going to go home and start cleaning out my closets!

Throughout the final miles of Minnesota, we racked our brains and texted and phoned all the people we could think of who weren't too old or decrepit to help us unload the truck at the storage unit.  We actually found a few who were both available and willing to help and we will be forever in their debt.  Or Sarah will.  That took a load off our minds and we were fairly free to enjoy the autumn colors and decent roads that took us to the border.  We actually crossed the Mississippi about 4:00 and proceeded without incident to Madison.  'Without incident' does not imply it was a comfortable trip.  The road between LaCrosse and Madison is surely the worst in the state.  The truck bucked  almost the whole way, giving us both stiff necks and shoulders.  The Mammoth is not a luxury vehicle.  So when it came time to find the hotel, we did it with alacrity, if not accuracy.  Turning from the freeway, we were blinded by the setting sun and so missed the hotel completely.  Realizing that we were both lost and running low on gas, we pulled into a gas station and remedied one problem.  A few bits of logic helped us realized we needed to make a u-turn to get to the hotel.  A mile down a frontage road we were finally able to turn the Mammoth around and headed in the right direction.  Unfortunately, the boulevard segued smoothly into a highway with few exits.  Several miles on we finally found one that allowed us to turn around and get back to the hotel.  With Sarah running ahead to make sure we weren't driving into a dead end (this actually happened frequently during the trip - one of us running scout), we got to a fine parking space and checked in.

  In our euphoria at finally being in Wisconsin last night, we totally forgot to blog. We did laundry, found directions to the storage unit, and e-mailed the real estate agent Sarah wants to work with, and dropped into bed.  She's ba-a-a-a-a-ck.

Miracles do happen:  Sarah got up at 6:00 a.m. 

A mere two hours later, we were on our way.  Sarah drove the first half of the day.  There's nothing like straight, flat roads with good surfaces to make a day's driving . . . well, if not pleasant, at least not so painful.  Good weather accompanied us again.  One of our first rest/gas stops was at the Badlands Store. 

Prairie Dogs

Badlands Store - closed for season

South Dakota does great rest stops

We were surprised to find the store closed, but luckily, they were still selling gas.  Heard a couple of women wailing that they had to go to the bathroom.  Bummer.  There was a prairie dog town next to it, too.  

Picnic spot

We changed drivers at the Missouri River.  We found a most excellent rest stop atop a bluff overlooking the river from the east side and had a lovely hour of lunch, dog walking and no vibrations.  We arrived in Worthington, Minnesota at our Super 8 motel in time to check in before all the truck drivers. 

Missouri River from the bluff trail

Four days and four states down.  We're in Rapid City.  There wasn't anything significant today and I didn't even take any pictures.  Just mind-numbing driving in a big truck.  How do the long-haulers do it??  Yeah, we saw deer and antelope.  So what.  The weather was good.  The plains are plain.  Maybe I'm getting tired.  Or maybe it's the two martinis I had with dinner.  The dogs have recovered already; Ginger is tirelessly retrieving her toy; Woody is laying on MY bed.  Reality has set in.  We have two days (and 3 states)  to get to Milwaukee.  Sarah swears she'll be up by 6 am.  I'm laughing as I type that.  I still have a sense of humor.  But maybe we'll get out even one hour earlier.  It could happen.  We've set an ambitious schedule for tomorrow and hope to be in Madison Friday night.   We'll see how this plays out  . . .





Descending the Continental Divide



Day three is complete.  It was a much better day in spite of the fact that it didn't start any earlier than any other.  We had a little panic getting out of Missoula when it turned out we couldn't turn onto the freeway from the gas station and had to find some place to turn the Mammoth/Escort around. But we managed that without damage to either our vehicles or each other, and got on the road.  Sarah, who has overcome her anxiety-driven illness, drove the whole day.  

At a rest stop with the big dogs

We took a few extra rest stops, and the dogs look much better for it.  There were a few mountain passes, but for the most part, people give us a lot of leeway.  Wonder why?  We had great roads, beautiful scenery, and great weather.  

Mariah loaned us her TomTom GPS and it's been fun and interesting using it.  On arrival in Missoula tonight, we went right to our exit, followed the directions explicitly and arrived at the Detention Facility without a hitch.  Huh.  Seems I put an "E" in the address instead of a "W"  Panic began to rear its ugly head as we were obviously in the middle of nowhere and didn't know if we'd be able to find a place to turn the Mammoth around.  I placed a call to the hotel we were supposed to be at and found that, not only were we in the wrong place, but the hotel we picked from the "Traveling With Your Pets" book didn't take pets!  Sarah did breathing exercises as I quickly scanned the book again, made another call and we soon found ourselves at the Comfort Inn.   Fortuituously, they are within walking distance of several fine dining establishments, the least of which is Denny's (where we did not go) and are comfortably situated after dinner at the Outback Steakhouse.  Wine in the lobby while we blog with the dogs watching is the final activity of the day.  'Night all.

We got a good start today, in spite of staying up until almost 2 am last night.  Got up at 7:30.  Everything went pretty much downhill from there.   Sarah was feeling nauseous and unwilling to get too far from a bathroom.  She decided to lay down for a while so I walked 6 blocks (one way) to find a bottle of water.  [There are a lot of vacant buildings in that little town.]  Packing up to leave happened in fits and starts and took about 10 trips to the car.

We were finally ready to leave around 11:00 when Sarah got a phone call from the title company.  They wanted to e-mail some documents so we could print them, Sarah could sign them and we could fax them back.  Is that enough technology for one transaction?  Thanks to the wonderful young woman at the front desk of the EconoLodge in CleElum, it was all done on her computer, printer and fax machine. 

Near noon now, we finally got back on the road.  I drove to mid-Idaho and Sarah got us to Missoula.  There were several areas of construction, but only two serious slowdowns.  Spokane during rush hour was interesting.  Othere than that, it was a beautiful day and there was some awesome fall scenery.  We're in a teeny room at a LaQuinta, but the beds are great and that's about all that matters right now.

We spent 4 days loading the truck.  Yes, that's what I said.  1/2 Thursday, all Friday, all Saturday, 3/4 Sunday.  26 feet of 8 foot high storage on wheels.  7 feet wide.  Then we took off, just because we had to get started.  It was a about 5:30 when we finally got out of the U-Haul place with the car on the tow dolly.  We were supposed to be in Wyoming by now!  Anyway, we're in Cle Elum, Washington on our first night because we got held up at Snoqualmie Pass by road construction (at 8 pm on a SUNDAY!!) for an hour.   The adventure continues tomorrow, after we sober up . . .