road trip in a flash

[ty]

Just to give you an idea of how our drive from Winnipeg to Mission went, here is a time line. I kept all of the times in Winnipeg time, even though we gained 2 hours throughout our trip. Hudson was absolutely amazing the entire time. We were very proud of our little guy.

GEORGE: Was it a scratch or a pick?
JERRY: It was a scratch.
GEORGE: Hey... It's me.
JERRY: Don't you think I know the difference between a pick and a scratch?
GEORGE: Was there any nostril penetration?
JERRY: There may have been some incidental penetration. But from her angle she was in no position to make the call.
GEORGE: So let's say in her mind she witnessed a pick. Okay, so then what?
JERRY: Is that so unforgivable? Is that like breaking a commandment? Did God say to Moses thou shalt not pick?
GEORGE: I guarantee you that Moses was a picker. You wander through the desert for forty years with that dry air... you telling me you're not going to have occasion to clean house a little bit.
JERRY: Let me ask you something. If you were going out with somebody and if she did that what would you do? Would you continue going out with her?
GEORGE: No. That's disgusting!

Tuesday, August 4th

10:00 am - We stayed at my Parent's house for night so that we could leave from Rosenort instead of Winnipeg. Stefanie just finished feeding Hudson for the last time at around 9:45 and by 10:00 we were on our way.

10:40 am - We reached the U.S. border at Pembina and were faced with a very difficult (and ultimately crucial) decision. Which lane should we go into? Each lane had about 7 cars in them, so I randomly chose #2. This turned out to be one of the most devastating choices of the trip. Keeping an eye on the vehicle that we would have been in lane 1 (the one that pulled into there right after we pulled into 2), we watched in amazement as all 6 cars in front of it went through before we had even moved 1 spot. Finally one car from our lane moved through just as the car that we would have been passed through the border. It wasn't just a one car occurrence either... every single car in our lane took that long. Very frustrating to say the least. What should have been a 5 minute stop at the border took 25 instead.

11:05 am - We finally crossed into the U.S. and made our way through North Dakota. After driving for almost 2 more hours we were running low on fuel (we started out with 1/2 a tank in Rosenort and being a good Mennonite boy I figured we would wait until we were in the States to fill up at a reduced rate), and for some reason along this route there were MANY miles in between towns. The dashboard predicted we had 30 km left until we ran out of fuel, the GPS said the next gas station was 40 km away. We pulled into a very sketchy town that even the Garmin did not recognize and luckily found an even sketchier gas station that was more than happy to refuel our vehicle.

Nelson: So burn that flag if you must.  But before you do, you'd better burn a few other things.  You'd better burn your shirt and your pants.  Be sure to burn your TV and car.  Oh yeah, and don't forget to burn your house. Because none of those things would exist without six red stripes, seven red stripes, and a helluva lot of stars!

 1:00 pm - Filled up the gas tank and Stefanie fed Hudson for about 20 minutes. He did really well the whole trip with feeding pretty quickly, and then as soon as we started driving again he would either be contently awake and just looking around or fall back asleep.

[stef]
As I mentioned earlier, I had planned to pump pretty much the whole trip so that I could feed Hudson with a bottle in the back seat, and eliminate the need for stopping so much. This actually worked for the first couple feedings, when, much to my dismay, the handle on my pump decided to break. So, I resigned myself to hours and hours of roadside feedings, but was surprised when a 30-45 minute feeding was all little Hudson needed to be satisfied for the next few hours (he sometimes likes to take his sweet time - one to two hours - to get a good feeding in, especially when I'm pressuring him to eat quickly).


 4:45 pm - Making our way west through North Dakota and there were tons of bugs smattering against the windshield. It reminded me of Cruisin' USA on the Nintendo 64 when you were driving beside the corn fields of Iowa and you were constantly having to wipe bugs off of the screen. We stopped in Crosby, ND to grab a bite to eat at Red Rooster's Cafe (amazing deep fried jalapeno cheese curds).

[stef]
And I thought the stares outside Target in Grand Forks while nursing in public were awkward - try a local cafe in Smalltown, USA. I was more than eager to get on the road again after that little excursion - and especially after the waitress refused to serve me a chicken burger that was on the spicy side because I was breastfeeding.

9:30 pm - This marked the one and only time Hudson had us stop somewhere along the highway because he was too hungry to wait until the next time we filled up gas.

...some of us enjoyed the impromptu roadside photo shoot more than others.

Canyonero ad?

11:30 pm - At this point we were ready to stop for night as soon as we could find a hotel/motel that would have us. Unfortunately none would. I can't remember the name of the first town that we checked out but there were 2 options and both were full. I wasn't too discouraged as at this point it was still just 10:30 local time and I was ok with knocking off a few more miles for the trip before sleeping.


Wednesday, August 5th

12:00 am - At around midnight we rolled into the town of Havre, Montana. It was a town of reasonable size as well as a reasonable amount of lodging options. There were about 10 hotel or motel possibilities in the town, and it took us about 15 minutes to drive past all of them, making a game out of who could be the first to spot the "No Vacancy" sign (I think the score ended up something around Stef - 6, Ty - 4, Hudson - 0). It was in Havre that we were told that the reason why all of the hotels were booked solid was because of Sturgis starting up the following weekend. Everyone was slowly migrating towards South Dakota for the yearly motorcycle rally, festival, or whatever they call it.

 2:00 am - We ventured 2 or 3 miles off of our route in hopes that the lone hotel in Fort Benton, Montana would have a bed for us. The 2 or 3 miles back to the interstate felt incredibly long after enduring the harsh sting of rejection of yet another hotel. We actually parked in town for about 45 minutes as Stefanie fed Hudson deciding if we should just park somewhere dark and try to get a few hours of sleep in the car or not. I checked the GPS to find that the booming metropolis of Great Falls was about 40 minutes down the road and the list of hotel options were endless (about 20-25). We figured that there is no way that they would all be booked as well, and worst case scenario the 40 minutes that we drive are 40 less minutes that we need to drive the next day. Stefanie was kind enough to drive while I caught a quick nap before arriving in Great Falls.

[stef]
This was the worst leg of driving for me, as I was SO tired, and had to navigate the twisty roads in the dark, and apparently no one in the oncoming lane was courteous enough to turn off their brights when passing. It got to the point where I was resting one eye at a time until I got to the (thankfully) brightly lit outskirts of Great Falls.

4:30 am - We tried 7 or 8 of the 25 hotels in Great Falls and all of them said the same thing: no room in the inn, and they were not aware of a single hotel in the city that was not booked solid. The closest thing I came to finding a place to stay was a guy at the front desk of a Super 8 offering me "a room that I could let you into manually but you guys could not leave or enter the room at all during the night and it would cost you roughly $140." I told him that as touched as I was to receive such a generous offer, I didn't think $140 was a fair price to spend sleeping the 4 hours before morning in a mystery room that may or may not be the broom closet.


 5:51 am - After driving around for a while trying to find even an empty school parking lot to park in, we finally settled amongst two idling semi trucks in the dark parking lot of the Holiday Village Mall. We tried our best to find a half-comfortable sleeping position, and dozed for a good solid 3 hours before waking up to the sound of eager shoppers clambering out of their vehicles.

[stef]
Correction: YOU dozed for a good solid three hours. I fed the child all smushed up in the back seat in the pitch black for close to an hour. I was actually starting to make plans to haul out the stroller to walk around the parking lot until morning, when all of a sudden Hudson decided to have mercy on his tired mommy and fell asleep. I put him in his carseat and thankfully got about 1 1/2 hours of dozing with my hood over my face before he started flailing and whimpering, and the changing/feeding/burping cycle commenced once more.




9:30 am - We gassed up, grabbed some McDonald's breakfast and were on our way (so long, stink town). The second day of driving was actually completely uneventful. All I had sketched into my notepad time line was places that we stopped to fill up with gas, and stats that I was compiling for Grandpa as he was very curious about his CRV's (or VCR as Grandma refers to it) current fuel mileage.

[stef]

Yes, the drive was uneventful (and yes, Hudson was a wonder baby), but it was so amazingly beautiful! We went from flat land to rolling hills to desert, and almost every kind of mountain (rocky ones, spiky ones, tree-y ones, snowy ones...and it went on!). Both of us love road trips, and this one definitely makes it to the top of the list.

2:00 am - The lone highlight came when we were just minutes away from the Washington/British Columbia border and were pulled over by a state trooper for allegedly going 47 miles per hour in a 35 zone (oops). The guy was very nice and told me almost immediately that he was not going to give me a ticket, but just wanted to punch it in to his computer. It was after this stop and the upcoming border crossing that I realized how easy a life of 'borrowing' vehicles for sale would be, as the State Trooper did not even question the fact that my last name was not the same as the registered owner of the vehicle nor did my home city even match the place where the vehicle was insured. Added to this was the response I got from both the U.S. and Canadian border patrol when I handed them the note from my Grandpa allowing us the use of his vehicle for our trip. The Canadian officer just furrowed his brow and basically threw the note back into my window in disgust, while the U.S. officer read the note back to me aloud in a painfully mocking tone of voice.

 2:20 am - We reached our destination in Mission, B.C. at just after midnight local time. Like I said earlier, Hudson was just amazing this trip. We originally planned to do the drive in 3 days, but rather it took us only 2. I figured that the fact that he was along with us only really cost us an extra 2 or 3 hours in total. Those hours are such a small price to pay for having such an awesome and cute little travel buddy in the back seat for the long trip.