It's All Relative

I know I talked about Montana's Mountains . . . well, the further west one goes, the BIGGER everything gets -- mountains, for sure, rivers, trees and so on. What an absolutely magnificent part of the world I live in. I guess it takes going away to fully appreciate what surrounds me every day. I loved visiting other places -- all of which have a beauty of their own -- but, believe me, here is where I want to live.

I have been away for 42 days and have driven 15,889 km. It's good to be home after another 15 hour drive. I think I'll stick around here for a while. Thanks for traveling with me on the blog.

--till next trip.

Magnificent Massive Mountains of Montana

Contrary to what you may think, the last 3 or 4 hours of my 15 hour drive were exhilarating rather than tiring. I am back in the mountains, and it lifts my spirits and my interest. The mountains between Billings and Butte are big and round and rocky, but sparsely treed. It was fun to drive the hills and dales and curves.

In stark contrast, the road between Mitchell and Billings was long and tedious at best. I had SO MUCH trouble staying alert. I had to keep stopping and walking around the car, or filling up with gas, or getting something from MacDonalds or just stopping at a picnic place and closing my eyes for 10 minutes. I ate and drank coffee and listened to the radio, but I just had to stop so frequently. That, of course, made the trip even longer. When I got to Billings, I parked beside a Super 8, hooked up to their WiFi and made reservations for a motel in Butte. I actually had come to a bit by then, so I was pretty sure that the worst of the drive was over. I was right. If it had not been going to be dark soon, I wouldn't have minded tackling the next set of mountains. I'll save that for tomorrow. I have no intention of leaving while it's still dark, however, because I want to be able to see the scenery. I think I can make it home tomorrow, but if not, I'll just stop and finish the trip the next day -- whatever day that is (I'm a bit lost with respect to days and dates!)



I took a slightly different route from Rapid City to Billings. I went up through Belle Fourche. It's actually a bit shorter, but about the same time because it's only a two lane road. It wasn't busy, but at least it was a slight change of scenery. That highway runs through several Indian Reservations and consists of some foothill kind of territory. It was cold through that area. The daytime temperature today between Mitchell, SD and here in Butte ranged from 3 degrees C (That's about 37F) to 16 C (I think maybe 60F). I thought if it got much colder, the rain and fog that occurred would be snow. It stayed rainy for most of the trip.

One thing I noticed in that foothill country is that the sparse smattering of trees which were found along strips where there must be water were mostly pine trees, but nestled in among the dark green were those beautiful aspens which by now are already a gorgeous light, bright yellow. They stood out agains the other trees as well as the sage-mustard colour of the prairie. Nice.

So, I don't actually know what time it is right now either. I moved my watch back one hour, but I'm sure Butte must be in mountain time, so I'm probably still an hour ahead. I'll use up that hour in the morning I guess. I'm going to sleep in a bit as well.

One more entry tomorrow in this, the last chapter of my Summer Suzuki Saga. (Bigtime trouble getting this blog edited and published -- really bad WiFi here!)

Whew!

Thirteen hours on the road today. I'm in Mitchell, South Dakota. It looks a bit like this: (BTW I took these pictures sight unseen from the car -- the ultimate point and click!)


After driving 13,400 km on this trip, I have a driving tip to share. STAY AWAY FROM ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI!
I went to bed really early last night, got up a bit after 4:00 am and was on the road by 5:00. Mt. Vernon is about 60 miles east of St. Louis. It was dark, and early, but there were tons of trucks on the road. I decided to just stay on I-70 rather than trying to negotiate the ring road (it's darn hard to find and follow because it changes along the way). Just as I remember, the lanes shift with some going off to the right and some to the left. If I stayed in what I thought was the centre lane, I soon found that the centre lane became the right hand lane and it had the yellow "Exit Only" sign. The signage was confusing, even though I knew I just had to follow the signs to Kansas City and follow the GPS. On top of all that, I ran into a big construction project that had us lined up and stopped for several minutes as three lanes had to merge into one. The reason for that construction was a huge new bridge being built -- beautiful and striking. It may well be a partner to the big steel arch that is so recognizable. It took me two hours to get out of the heavy traffic -- just in time to enter the Kansas City traffic. By now, of course, it was morning rush hour so I joined many others in heading up I-29 which goes right by the KC International Airport.

After that little adventure, the drive was just long and pretty much uninteresting. About one-half or one-third of the route was also under construction and the four lane freeway became a two lane road with speed restrictions. I just kept going, stopping only for gas. I ate the left-over pizza from Pine Knot and drank coke as I drove.

One very good thing about Iowa rest stops is that they all have free WiFi. When I realized that I would be able to make it to Mitchell, I just stopped at a rest stop, hauled out the laptop, and reseved a room online. Great.

As I drove further north, the scenery became more interesting. There are huge corn fields -- all looking bronze and yellow with no green at all. It must be the kind of corn that is harvested as a whole rather than just the ears. At first, I wasn't sure if it were some other kind of golden grain ready for harvesting, but when I could see fields that were growing closer to the highway, I could see that it was, indeed, corn. Along the side of the highway, there was also some kind of shrub that was covered with light yellow flowers interspersed with brighter yellow brown-eyed susans. It was really very attractive.

Once I made the turn west on I-90, it was all prairie. It looks so open and clean -- very pretty. When Lila and I drove this way, we ran into a huge rainstorm with rainbows and all. It was sunny with a bright blue sky today.

I'm still operating on Eastern time. This is well into the Central Time Zone, but I'm saving the change till I need the boost of "gaining" an hour. There's nothing else to do tonight and I'm tired, so I think I'll just go to bed early and get going first thing tomorrow. It's easy driving -- straight, light traffic (after all, where is there to go?). I'm hoping to get to Billings at least, but will make that decision along the way. If I find that I'm having accumulated fatigue, I'll stop earlier or maybe stop in the middle of the day and stay somewhere before Billings. Once I get a good look at where the motels are along the way, I'll head to bed.

I also finally got my Satellite Radio working, so I' ve thoroughly enjoyed lots of good programming. I also bought a novel from I-Tunes, so I'll get it on the iPod -- lots of things to do tomorrow!

The First Leg

The solo flight has begun. I waited till afternoon to leave Pine Knot and headed for Mount Vernon, Illinois -- just west of St. Louis. By leaving late, I was able to plan an early morning attack on the hated St. Louis - Kansas City route and hopefully avoid some of the worst of that traffic and poor roads. Of course, it has been a few years since I last drove these roads, so maybe they are all fixed by now.

Mary Ann and I poked around this morning. I got the oil changed in the car and we picked up a few goodies for me to munch on during the drive. Then we met Dee for lunch. I wish I had more time to be with this part of the family -- I love them.

I smugly thought that I would avoid the high gas prices in Pine Knot and fill up the tank in Somerset where prices would surely be lower. They weren't, so I carried on. I smartly waited till Bowling Green where the gas was a good ten cents MORE expensive than in Pine Knot. By then, I had no choice. I just now filled up here in Mount Vernon where the price is pretty much what it was before I began this trip today!

Kentucky is rife with "parkways". I travelled on the Cumberland Parkway, the William Natcher Parkway, and the Audubon Parkway.

When we got up this morning, there was a different "feel" to the air. It tempted us with a cool, fresh feeling and seemed to carry the promise of a lovely autumn day. By the time I left, it was beastly hot again, but I think the season is turning. On the drive up to Somerset, there was just a hint of colour among the trees -- again, the promise of the gorgeous fall colour that can be seen everywhere a bit later in the year. Interestingly, by the time I was on the William Natcher Parkway (just past Bowling Green in Western Kentucky) there were definite colours in the heavily treed sides of the highway -- delicate yellow -- not yet bright, and a bit of darker bronze on some of the trees. It will be stunningly beautiful in a few weeks -- I'm sorry to be missing that.

I noticed another remarkable feature of Kentucky country -- at least until you get to Western Kentucky. Most of the major roads seem to run along the ridges of the hill country. Little rural roads wind down into the valleys, or "hollers" and up again on the opposite side. However, the highways often have bridges across these little valleys or rivers, and these bridges are SO HIGH. If any of you know that high bridge on the Blueberry Paulsen route between Christina Lake and Rossland, you would have a picture of what these bridges often look like. (Well, maybe not quite THAT high.) Similarly, sometimes the overpasses on the parkways are very high as well since they span from one ridge to the other.

So much for all that. When one drives along, there is a lot of time to look at things and think about them because there's no one to talk to! I miss my driving parter. I'm about to tuck in now and get up about 4:00 so I can beat the St. Louis curse. I'm hoping to make it to Sioux Falls, South Dakota tomorrow. That's a pretty long drive, and I'd just as soon get there before dark, so I'm leaving early.

Pine Knot Arrival

Back safe and sound in Pine Knot. It was an uneventful drive back from Calhoun, although the traffic and congestion around Knoxville was the worst we experienced throughout the entire trip. We stopped, hoping to see Jordan, but since he wasn't at work until later, we left him some Rogers Golden Syrup and a couple of cards and headed for home.
The washing machine is going. The car is almost re-packed, and we've had pizza with Dee. She'll be back after her DUI class -- that is, after she finishes teaching her DUI class!

I plan to leave after lunch tomorrow. That will get me pretty close to Mt. Vernon, Illinois. If I get an early start, I can get around St. Louis before the traffic gets heavy I hope. I hate that part of the trip, but it's better to do it in the morning than at night or at 5:00.

It's been a great trip and I was just wishing so much that I lived closer to this family. I hate leaving, but I am so looking forward to seeing my family at home.

Almost Back to Kentucky

We got up so early this morning -- 4:oo am. We wanted to get on the road right away so we could be through Atlanta before rush hour. This was our third trip along the Florida Turnpike and it doesn't get any more scenic or interesting. It was dark, of course, and we had coffee, but I found myself getting very weary only a couple of hours into what was going to be about a 12 or 14 hour day. We stopped at a service plaza and I put my head back for a few minutes and then got up and walked around. Magically, I was "back" and felt fine for the rest of the day.

It seemed to take forever to get even as far north as we were on our trip to Destin earlier -- boring and boring. Then it took forever to get to the north border of Florida (what a HUGE state). What was in front of us next? -- Well, it was the HUGE state of Georgia! In truth, it was an easy drive and Mary Ann and I solved most of the world's problems along the way. We ate hamburgers for lunch as we drove and other than that, stopped only at a Pecan place for a few minutes. Once we got past Atlanta -- HOV lane is great -- easy drive -- we stopped for gas and ran into a BrandSmart Store where we wasted about 30 minutes looking at all kinds of things. BrandSmart is a huge store that sells electronics, appliances - large and small, dishes, pots and pans, decorative things, cameras and on and on. It's a great place to waste time.

We decided to carry on past our original destination so we ended up here in Calhoun, Georgia -- only about 5 hours from Mary Ann's. There is an Outlet Mall here, and, as if we weren't tired enough, we poked around there for a while. We're about shopped out, let me tell you, and the car is really in need of a good reorganization. It's amazing how messy it gets in spite of the fact that we seem to reorganize all the time. When we got home, we'll take everything out, sort out what belongs to MA and what belongs to me before getting ready for my solo jaunt home.

I forgot to mention something from last week. I had been complaining about having not seen one citrus tree in Florida, even though we passed through an area called Indian River -- that's supposed to be grapefruit country I thought. Well, we abandoned the freeway when we drove from Orlando to Fort Lauderdale, and did we ever see lots of orange, grapefruit, lemon or ?? groves. They covered acres and acres. It's unfortunate that we were there at this time. Apparently it's the only month in which there is NOTHING ripe, so we didn't get to eat oranges fresh off the tree. Along that central Florida strip we also saw acres and acres of sugar cane. It is the home of Domino Sugar apparently. It would have been fun to have found a piece of sugar cane to chew on, but that didn't seem in the offing, so we went to Wal-Mart instead and bought buns and ham for lunch that day. :)

We have no intention of getting up at 4:00 am tomorrow. I think we'll make a later start. We do plan to stop in Knoxville to try to see Jordan on the way, and then it will be home to Pine Knot.

Sunday

We headed out with Susan GPS for Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church this morning. We arrived in good time, although we really had no idea where we were going -- just followed Susan's directions. This church is pastored by Billy Graham's grandson. He was there, but they had a guest speaker from a huge church in Franklin, Tennessee. It was a pretty interesting service -- huge, beautiful church with pipe organ and good sized orchestra. There was a great mix of contemporary and traditional music -- there is surely something about a pipe organ blasting out the chords! It was a long sermon -- the service lasted over an hour and a half.

We went to Boston Market for lunch and then headed out to a local shopping centre (again by way of Susan GPS). We poked around before heading back to the hotel, stopping only for an ice cream sundae from McDonalds.

We'll pack up in the morning and head north. We will have to stop somewhere on the way home, but plan to drive directly up I-75 -- a direct, if boring route. I would not like to live in the oppressive heat around here, but there is much to recommend the area in terms of a certain kind of beauty. It rains almost every day -- POURS down in buckets -- and then all of a sudden, it's sunny again. The rain doesn't cool things down at all. In fact, it makes the air seem even muggier. I can't imagine how people handle this weather without air conditioning. It's not as if there is an ocean breeze such as we had in Nevis. People tend to move more slowly as well. I am amazed at the amount of Spanish spoken. I would say that in our travels here, there is more Spanish than English, and the English that is spoken tends to be adorned with a clear Spanish accent.

So, this is it for tonight. No pictures. I haven't taken any -- too busy looking at time shares and shopping! I'll try to check in tomorrow night -- probably somewhere in Georgia. I'm not sure we'll get to Tennessee -- we'll see how the time goes.