For those of you who wondered if we got back from Portland, here's the rest
of the storey. (There I go again. Now I'm Plagerizing Paul Harvey)
Day 13 - 15
These next three days are the grueling, tedious drive home. Not much
happened but here are the highlights:
Friday, while driving Highway 2 across eastern Montana I spy, out of the
corner of my eye, a chocolate-over-cream little four-seater saloon car in
the rest stop. I screech to a halt, turn around and lo-and-behold it is
the Best Of Show winner. We have a nice 15 minute break form driving and
visit with Ralph Zerbe and discuss what we did in the intervening days and
it looks like we both visited Glacier park (at different times.) Then it
was back to driving.
We cross into North Dakota at just after noon (Montana is a BIG state.
When you see a mile marker that says "634" you know it is a long way
across.) And we follow the Lewis and Clark trail - highway 1804 - which
offers many glimpses of the Missouri River and the terrain in markedly
different from the flat plains that is more typical of this region. Just
outside of Bismarck we stop by Ft. Mandan - a recreation of the Lewis and
Clark winter camp of 1804 - 1805. We have now visited both winter camps of
the Corp. of Discovery. (Since we live in the area of the embarkation
point we have the route covered).
As we continue south we realize that we are back in the Midwest because the
insects are greeting us by hurtling their little insect bodies at our
windshield in their usual welcoming ceremony. That and a couple of deer
crossings and near misses convince us to stop for the night at the first
hotel we find in South Dakota.
Saturday
Another clue that we are back in the Midwest is that the humidity festival
is in full swing. The weather continues to get warmer as we navigate the
back roads of South Dakota. We hop on I 90 east but the glut of RV's and
motorcycles (from Sturgis) convince us to hop right back off. We snake our
way diagonally across South Dakota and Nebraska and end up in Lincoln at
about 5:00 PM. The Banks say 103 degrees! (Who needs air conditioning, I
said…) Since we were in Lincoln we pay a surprise visit to Brad.
Surprise! The Mayflower is running. Not well but considering that the
gasoline is 5 years old … The reworked head is all it needed. Now it is
time for the rest of the restoration.
Sunday,
The drive home was uneventful. The grass was about a foot tall and the
bugs on the car were about an inch thick. Cut the grass, wash the car,
count the rock chips - Nah, that can wait. In total, we drove 6200 miles
(+/-) and burned about 290 gallons of Gasoline and ½ qt of oil. Lost about
2 gallons of coolant - but none since the repairs to the cooling system in
Portland. Except for the heat it was a most enjoyable trip.
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