1,100 miles today- road trip over

On the road this morning at 5 AM. We’ve turned over 1,100 miles today and are just about to finish in Livingston, MT.

The logo on the beer mobile reminds us of how far we’ve come.
My biggest challenge last night was escaping the locked bathroom in our room at the Econolodge, in La Cross, WI. It was 3AM when I groped my way in to pee, and closed the door so that I wouldn’t wake up Andy when I flushed the toilet. Then I couldn’t get out! The inside doorknob spun around, and no amount of pushing, pulling, and cursing got that door open. Earlier, I had woken up Andy once already when I grabbed the wrong card off my nightstand last night, thinking it was my room key/card in a trip out to the truck. I thought to myself, what if I were alone in this room? I had no shoes on, so I would cut up my foot on the luan paneling of the door if I kicked my way out, and there was nothing in the room but a toilet and a tub, so I couldn’t pry the lock open. Ten minutes of my rattling and increasingly loud knocking got a pissed Andy out of bed.
“Now what, ” Andy grumbled when he released me from my toilet captivity. He tried from behind the closed door, and couldn’t get out either.
It was still dark out when we hit the drive-thru at McDonald’s. I gave Andy his first lesson on how to order from a drive-in window.

After reaching the border, Wisconsin was easy.
But, South Dakota ground us down. Andy was in the driver’s seat and clicking the cruise control to 75 failed to remedy the mind- numbing highway hypnosis of I-90’s straight track west across brown and green farmlands that stretched to the horizon on either side.
Andy told me, “At home, I fuel up this truck once every two weeks. I will fuel up five times today . ”
At 4:45 PM we crested an uphill in Wyoming at 5,340 feet elevation and had our first view of the Absaroka Range, with some peaks above 13,000 feet . We were silent, undoubtably feeling both majesty and fear as we took in the snow covered crests.
We can’t go over them, so I-90 veers right, heading north into our last and final state today, Montana.
We started riding at 5 AM and should end by 10 pm, soon. 17 hours on the road. Andy might have to do that some day soon, and more than once, on a bicycle!

44 degrees and raining in Montana