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Big Storm Country


Sumiki

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-----From Spokane, it was all I-90 today. We crossed the state line, through the treacherously mountainous fifty-odd miles of the Idaho panhandle and then downhill on precipitous curves into Montana. We were hit with our first heat wave of the trip, as the high was 80º as we went through the mountain passes. After the Rocky Mountains conclude, it'll be some smooth sailing ... but getting through them proved more difficult than initially imagined.

 

-----The first city of much size in Montana along the eastbound I-90 corridor is Missoula. As we retraced our route from the first trip, it was surprising what we remembered of Missoula, although what's new is a road construction section along a roundabout in town that featured—of all things—loose gravel. We never saw loose gravel before this trip and, post-Alaska Highway, it's just following us for the express purpose of taunting us. If our driveway has mysteriously turned to gravel when we get back, I'll really know something's up.

 

-----We've had more than our fair share of heavy meals on this trip, and on the way back we have a great interest in eating light, so we had a Jimmy John's downtown. On the way back out, we got gas, and from our vantage point we caught a glimpse of a bearded man plucking away on a small bright red ukulele, and around him was a dog and a creature who appeared for all the world to be a bear. It had to have been a dog, but it looked exactly like a bear cub. Missoula's one of those weird and unusual places where you'd find stuff like that.

 

-----As we drove along, we recalled our adventures on the same road five years prior, when we'd been hit with a thunderstorm of epic proportions and had to duck into the very Bozeman hotel from which I am writing this to check the weather, being entirely free of smartphone tyranny at the time. This time, we were armed with the foreknowledge of the route ... and the fact that there was, once again, a storm on the horizon. My mom kept us updated from her backseat post as we inched further to the storm, and spotted a sole bald eagle out the window as we did.

 

-----Montana's roads are neither better nor worse than the roads of the states that surround it, but they effectively have no speed limit, because for most of the day, it was set at 80. Mountain roads, curves, and the occasional chipsealed section made for some hairy driving in spots. They do care about the speed limit in their unnecessarily long road construction sections, where—moments after a sign reaffirming 80—it drops to 35. What's worse is that they expect you to actually pull it off, which leads me to wonder how quickly dealership maintenance departments go through brakes. (You can't go 80 up the hills because it'd bust your engine, you can't go 80 down because you'd go straight off the cliff, and you can't go 80 around a curve because the guardrails would shred you up before you could say the words "antilock brake system.")

 

-----The rain dropped slowly, but the temperature plummeted quickly, going down to a low of 47º. The rain came down in torrential sheets, and lightning struck the mountaintops around. On several occasions, we were certain that a enormous thunderclap was imminent due to the apparent proximity of the strike, but there was barely a sound. It was in this rain that we went through Butte and went over the last section of treacherous mountainousness: the Continental Divide. We passed over as quickly as was safe because we didn't want to get toasted by an errant bolt from the gray, but all the same, there were small rivers that appeared to be flowing over the road. Hydroplaning never happened, but appeared imminent throughout.

 

-----Once past Butte and towards Bozeman, the temperature warmed again, reaching into the 50s, as the northbound storm broke up. Things still looked dark and dreary, so once we were safely at our hotel, we set out for dinner ... at a nearby Jimmy John's. I wouldn't be surprised if the steaks from the Rusty Moose in Spokane constitute our last heavier meal.

 

-----My dad then next wanted to modify tomorrow night's reservation in Gillette so as to get an entirely free room instead of a heavily discounted one. In order to do so, he had to create a second reservation and then cancel the first. When he went to cancel the first one, it was ever so slightly past the cancelation deadline. Usually this isn't a problem, as we've done it before with no issues at all, but to do so, he had to call the hotel ... which is where things got real fun.

 

-----The girl at the front desk immediately put us on hold, and then for five minutes flirted with another customer—as we could hear the whooooooole thing—and only picked up the phone when she remembered that she'd put it down. She said that, despite what the web site said, she had no authority to do cancelations, which had to be done through the main hotline. My dad got on the phone to the main hotline and was given the severest of run-arounds before getting to some guy who told him that there was no way the policy would allow a late cancelation unless we had the name of the girl in Gillette. My mom called the Gillette people on her phone, and—as my dad was conducting the other conversation from my phone, we stuck the two phones face-to-face so she could say "I give the approval for the cancelation," which was all that was necessary in the first place.

 

-----The Jimmy John's was not satisfying, so we went to the hotel restaurant for an appetizer, which were bacon gorgonzola fries. The sole waitress had no other patrons and we had a good time asking her random questions about Montana. Dessert was huckleberry ice cream, and it was extremely good, almost like a blueberry crossed with a strawberry.

 

-----On the way back to the room, we explained the Gillette run-around to the guy at the front desk, and he was flabbergasted that any hotel would have such unusual policies regarding cancelation, especially considering that we were still staying at the same property and effectively just altering the payment. Whoever was at the front desk in Gillette was clearly not following procedures, and heaven help her if there's the slightest of problems when we get there.

 

-----Tomorrow: Gillette.

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