Trip to Missoula

Mom invited us to go with her for Melanie's graduation from University of Montana. Since the rest of the kids are still in school and we knew we'd be gone for a while, Hubby stayed home with the four oldest and I took Rosalind with me. On Wednesday night we took Amtrak and met Neenaw at the depot, which is always fun and interesting. Rozzie is a good little traveler if you keep her busy and away from the people who are trying to sleep - that little voice just carries. We usually spend most of the train ride in the lounge car, eating Amtrak's little tray of cheese and crackers.

After spending the night at Neenaw's, Mom picked us all up and we headed for Missoula. Things were going along swimmingly until we passed Connell and were met with this lovely traffic jam on the freeway:

We were stuck here for probably 30 minutes, which gave us time to bond with some of the other drivers. The guy in the white car was nice. He was brave enough to ask the state patrol what was going on up ahead - apparently a semi-truck had overturned on the side of the freeway and they were waiting for a tow truck. We all thought, "A tow truck for a semi?" but it worked - just goes to show what we civilians know about trucking.

The guy on the extreme right was in some kind of service truck. He was quite chatty and we spent some quality time discussing kids, hockey, job, his much-older girlfriend...

After a while we had quite the backup. A couple of people tried to do some creative "parking" and "bobbing and weaving" - one guy got in trouble for backing up and repositioning. I couldn't blame him - the whole place was a parking lot, so why not?

Eventually we were back on the road and discovered that the overturned semi had spilled its load of charcoal briquets, of all things. I hope they were cleaned up before someone decided to throw a lit cigarette out the window... I like these clouds that look like they're sitting on top of something. Some of these are through Mom's car windows - sorry.

The lovely city of Spokane, where great-great grandmother Hattie is buried (off to the left). Just squint real hard and you'll see her headstone. Yeah, it's just right off to the left. You can't see it?

Rosalind eating her McDonald's Happy Meal in the Subway across the street.

Mom (in blue) and Neenaw (in white) ordering. I could not believe the line at this restaurant... when we got there, it was all the way out the door and was still that way when we were done eating.

I made a mental note to never eat here again during lunch hour. Yikes.

All the other places we could have gone instead... I must be a "line snob" because I refuse to stand in that long of a line for substandard sandwiches. (OK, I'm a sandwich snob too. There you go.)

And oh yeah, there was snow in the mountains. :)

It was a beautiful day for this trip - not too cold either. We saw clouds in the mountains and wondered if we'd drive through any snow, and it did snow on us for a little bit at the summit of Lolo Pass, but other than that, it was perfect.

Sorry again about the window thing.