Whirlwind Tourists #3

This post follows up on a previous one.

Travel to Great Falls

From Lethbridge, we went to Great Falls. No, we didn't do much of anything in Lethbridge before going. Just visited Tim Horton's, which we'd learned to enjoy two years ago. It's made the leap to the US over in New England, and even as far south as West Virginia, but not very far west.

Customs was slow because of the cars in front of us. We managed to pick the slow line, but at least we weren't in the truck line, which was backed up half a mile. From there, it was just travel. We made sure to stop at a place with a pool that night, the only time this trip. Turns out Liam still loves the water, even when he's strapped into a life jacket that forces him to float on his back.

Travel Home

Saturday was not supposed to be travel home. First, we went to Helena to have lunch with Jennifer's aunt, and shop at her favorite candy shop. From there, we headed for Virginia City. The plan was to camp near there. However, weather intervened.

It was quite the weather, too. First, it was visible to the south of us long before we reached it. We went through a little shower, turned east, and were out of it -- with a big cloud hanging out to the south. Then the wind kicked up.

At this point, we were travelling among cottonwoods. When the wind hit, there was so much cotton flying that it looked like a snowstorm. When we got through the cottonwoods, we were in a little dust storm. The rain caught up with us about the time we reached Virginia City. I figure about an inch of rain fell in the first 20 minutes, after which it slowed down considerably. We waited out the worst of it, and got out when it lightened up. Besides walking around a bit, we took the boys to the candy store there (geared more for children than the one in Helena), and went to have supper. Jennifer has been talking about the pizza at this one place there for six years, since the last time we were there, so we found it again and had the same -- pepperoni, tomatoes, and garlic. Very thin crust, very hot oven.

When we pulled up in Virginia City, one of the idiot lights on the dash lit up to tell us a tire had lost pressure. Walking around the car in the rain, I couldn't see an obvious problem. When we left, we started looking for a campground, debating about whether we wanted to set up a tent in the dim and the wet left by the storm. When we reached Ennis, we decided to check on the tires again. There was a gas station where we could pump up the tire, but the nearest places we knew we could get the tire worked on were 40 miles in the wrong direction or 90 miles towards home. The next day being Sunday, we weren't thrilled about the chances of finding something close to any place we might stay. One of the tires was visibly low on pressure, so we pumped it up and decided to see how far we could get given that the tire was leaking and the boys might object to riding. . . Well, the boys went to sleep, and the tire held up for several hours, so we ended up pulling in at home after 10:00 that night.

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