Our 2010 Auto Trip; Part I, Days 1, 2 & 3

Across the USA (or at least part-way!); 26 June 2010 –

Day One: Starting out early on Wednesday morning, our first pleasant surprise was meeting our Un-Blief-able bicycling Grandson at the first major intersection. He had to stop for the red light that allowed our left-turning traffic to cross in front of him. Grumpy spotted him in time to honk the car horn and wave – and Blief waved back. Of course, this “Kodak” moment was lost to posterity because Grumpy was ill-prepared, having the camera stowed in the “boot” (trunk).

After a diversion (about 40 miles added to the previously-planned route on I-90) through Wenatchee, where treats were purchased for some of the people we would be visiting over the next weekend and early next week, and a total of about 9 hours of fairly steady driving at the Grand Mother’s proscribed 65 mile-per-hour cruise speed, we arrived at our destination for the first day: Ekstrom’s Stage Station.


Ekstrom’s is a rustic site with multiple campsites for tents, trailers and motorhomes. It also included two log cabins available for rent by the night or by the week. We got the larger cabin. It comprised two rooms, the main room encompassing the log building, had two convertible couches which could have slept two adults, and the large, attached bedroom that contained a monster bed made of pine logs, but with a very comfortable mattress.


The cabin was rustic and romantic, but luxurious it was not! There was a newly-installed lavatory sink – but no water plumbed in. This was fortunate because the drain from the sink as also not installed! A rough plank had been laid across the sink to discourage someone from carrying some water in and washing up, then pulling the sink plug – the waste water would have immediately appeared on the floor at the feet of the surprised guest!

Day Two: Again starting out early (five o’clock in the morning is not considered “early” now that we are in Mountain Daylight Time zone!), we drove steadily at our ponderous pace all the way the Miles City. In one full day of driving we still had not made it all the way across Montana! And we started the day about 120 miles into the western edge!

Our accommodations here were nothing special; a Super 8, but very convenient to a good restaurant for supper (and breakfast) and two or three choices of gas stations all selling regular for $2.659.

Day Three: This “early morning” stuff was getting “tire-some” to the old Codger doing the driving, so we did not break any records getting up and dressed to begin another long day driving the remaining 100 miles of Montana plus the ~400 miles across North Dakota to Moorhead MN where we would stop for our third night on the road.

Early in the way across North Dakota, we encountered the southern portion of the North Dakota Badlands (Theodore Roosevelt National Monument). “Beware of Buffalo”, read the signs beside the viewpoints overlooking the Little Missouri valley. Grumpy and the Grand Mother laughingly reminisced about their experience three years before when they became “trapped” behind a slowly moving herd of 100-plus buffalo who insisted in using the scenic highway right-of-way as their personal walk-way rather than taking the bee-line route to their pasture of choice. Especially comical was the footrace participated by the desperate occupants of the 20 or 30 cars, who were backed up behind us and buffalo herd, and all tried to be the first ones into the restrooms at the visitor center when we finally were able to pass the buffalo (after two hours!) and reach what became a small emergency.

Our accommodations in Moorhead were by far the most dismal of our trip so far. Another Super 8, our bed was smallish and very firm; the “Handicap Capable” room, which Grumpy had reserved, was so poorly designed that a contortionist was required to access the toilet paper while seated on the “throne”, and the grab bar to supposedly help the disabled to stand, was positioned such that it was useful only if the handicapped person was using it to push back from the “throne” after having lowered his face into it to dispose of a rejected meal or too many stout drinks (i.e., calling salmon and such)!

Despite some INconveniences at the first stop (Ekstrom’s) and poor accommodations at this final stop before our destination, Grumpy and the Grand Mother chalked these first three days of our Summer 2010 Auto Trip as “Just another chapter in our 62-year journey through life together; never a dull moment! Another day, another surprise that we should have seen coming – or maybe not!”