Montana...Historic?

We got woken up this morning by the fire alarm. At least I thought it was the fire alarm when I first awoke, turns out it was just the alarm. I have never heard an alarm that loud and obnoxious. I am thinking about getting Miles one so he doesn’t sleep through his law school classes.
We checked out, got gas and ice, and were off in an hour (9am). We had about 60 miles in Idaho, most of which was going up a mountain side at 40mph despite the sign telling us that the speed limit was 75mph. I think they make the speed limit higher just to piss us off because the truck is the capable of goes that fast up an incline. I don’t think we had ever seen a speed limit sign with that high of a limit and now the only time we would be legally aloud to drive 75mph we can’t. Bummer.

Speed limit sign that was laughing at us.

About 30 miles into Idaho portion of the drive I realized that we left our pillow at the hotel. I don’t sleep that well at hotels, and I hate their pillows, so I took one of ours into the room and I actually slept better than I usually do in a hotel. Turns out it was Miles’ pillow that I left. Add one to the list of screw ups for this trip.
We make it to Montana just fine (other than the pillow problem). We passed on interesting things such as a city sign that said “no services.” Now I am not completely sure about this but as far as I am concerned you can’t be a city/town if you don’t have a gas station, place to eat, or lodging. I think you have to have at least one of these three commodities to get a sign on the side of the road with your city/town name on it. We also saw Manhattan. Manhattan, Montana that is. (see picture). We also saw suburban Montana…there were about ten houses in a cul-de-sac that were all identical. Across the highway was a gravel pit. I really wish I had a picture of this.

Manhattan, Montana (notice the background. Montana is boring)

Another thing that I noticed along our drive is that everything in Montana is historic. There is historic I-90, historic towns, historic forts, historic buildings, historic everything. Now we were traveling on the non-historic I-90 and from what I could see there were more log cabins than modern homes, run down farms, towns without “services”, and barren land. I am not really sure what is not historic about Montana. It all seemed pretty run down and old to me. I can only imagine what the actually “Historic” places must be like.

508 miles later we arrived in Billings. This is where we were planning to stay but the Days Inn that we found online for cheap did not have a parking lot that we could pull all the way though and as we cannot go in reverse we had to nix that plan. So, we went down the block and stopped at the Super 8 only to find out they were full. No problem. A little frustrating but there were a few other hotels down the street. So we pull up to the Comfort Inn. After waiting 10 min for the receptionist to return from fixing a broken toilet we find out that they have a room but we can’t park. Their lot dead ends. This would have been nice to know before we pulled in as it appeared to go all the way around the building. So after trying to back out (turns out you can go in reverse a few feet but it puts a lot of stress on the car trailer and should not be done) Miles figures out how to get out of the lot. We decide not to stay there because parking is too difficult. So again we go down the block to the Extended Stay American and we can’t tell if the parking lot goes all the way around but there is a huge parking lot across the street for the state troopers. We pull in their so I can run across the street and find out if they have openings and parking that can accommodate us. Miles works on turning around while I get information. This place too has no vacancies. As I am walking out I get a phone call from Miles. He is stuck.

It turns out that the parking lot is broken up by medians and we cannot turn around to get out. After trying to back out for about ten minutes Miles is completely frustrated and he starts unhooking the car to take it off the trailer. We get the car off (after I have to push it forward enough to loosen the chains so Miles can unhook it) and the truck turned around. We even got the car back on the trailer but we encounter some problems winching the ropes tight around the tire leaving Miles with a bleeding finger and both of us completely covered in black car dirt and grease. This fiasco lasts about a half hour.

We drive across the street to the Hampton Inns which we can clearly see has a parking lot we can get out of. I run in and find out they are all booked. But, the very nice ladies their called the Best Western (100 yards away) to see if they have any rooms. They do. So we drive there and finally get a room.

While I regale the employees with our traveling tale Miles parks the truck. We aren’t sure if we will be able to get out tomorrow because we might get blocked in but we get parked anyway. After cleaning our hands and arms we get dinner at Subway and return to the room to eat. Not five minutes later Miles has dumped marinara and meatballs from his sub all down his shorts. It is on that note that our night ends.

The beauty of this story is that we get to do it all over again tomorrow.