After much anticipation, I now present the second installment of the big move...
After a good night's sleep in Spokane, James woke up ready to go. After he took his socks off, that is. Grandpa watched him while Matthew & I grabbed a quick breakfast at the Holiday Inn Express, then we hit the road. He rolled over when Grandpa turned his back for 5 seconds. Little stinker.
It wasn't long before we crossed into Idaho.
We drove past beautiful Couer D'Alene, shown below. The picture taken from the moving car definitely does not do it justice!
James occupied his time by reading his book.
And then trying to eat it.
It wasn't long before we made it through Idaho, and entered into Montana. James gets his love of state sign pictures from his grandma. Luckily Jim was quick with a camera, and captured this shot:
Because my photo turned out like this:
James helped Matthew navigate through Montana with a little help from his new friend Mr. Rand McNally. He is looking east which was the correct direction, it turned out. Cousin Doug said he was pointing to Louisville (someday soon we hope)! He did not try to eat the atlas.
After serving as navigator, James needed something else to occupy his time. He decided to blow bubbles, look at me cross-eyed, and then blow raspberries and drool a bit. Fun times.
The silhouette of our vehicle passing through the rolling hills of the Big Sky country. Montana is beautiful. We highly recommend you drive across it someday, just make sure you plan your stops in advance, more on that later.
We happened upon the town of Hardin in Montana. Apparently James Hardin is a pretty big deal there.
More Montana. James was on the lookout for Grizzlies, but unfortunately did not see one.
Picture of the Continental Divide, courtesy of Jason & Jim:
After driving for about 685 miles, we were about ready to call it a day. We tried to find lodging in Miles City, MT, but to our great suprise, all of the hotels were booked. So we called ahead to the next city, Glendive, which was 80 miles away. No vacancies. So we called the next city, Dickinson, North Dakota, which was 100 miles past Glendive. No vacancies. Uh oh.
By about 1 am, the drivers were getting pretty tired, and Mr. James was getting pretty cranky, so we stopped at the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora, North Dakota for the night and slept in our vehicles.
The cats went a little crazy when we let them out of their cages (Wrigley managed to turn on our headlights around 3AM), but James did really well once he was out of his
We hadn't planned on it, but we ended up driving 823 miles on day # 2 (thanks for the exact mileage, Jim!), and drove across both Idaho and Montana. I completely missed the North Dakota sign, but Jim was on top of things and took this amazing photo when we crossed the state line around midnight:
If you close one eye and squint, you can see the sign. Clear as day. Stay tuned for day #3!
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