Washington, DC To Missoula, MT

Rachel and Will drove us to Virginia to pick up the new truck on Sunday, October 5th, and we drove it gingerly, on secondary roads even, back to their house for packing and an afternoon departure. Destination: our old home town of Missoula, Montana, where our stuff is, and where a Bigfoot camper awaits mounting on the new truck. The highlights of the trip actually were visits with Sandy and Rhett in Frederick, MD, and, the next night, with Joey, Jodi, and Joseph, in Indianapolis. So much good food, drink, and conversation that I forgot to take any pix. Oh well. Our third night was in Charles City, IA, and our fourth was in Spearfish, SD. Over the years, I've traveled between Missoula and DC probably 30-40 times, entirely by air, except for 2003, when we moved Rachel to The Hill. As is our habit, we drove almost always by daylight and rarely approached the posted speed limits. Result: no incidents and 19.3 mpg for our new lightly-laden 6.4L/one-ton truck.

Not the Delaware Water Gap 

Passing through our old home town of Columbus, Ohio; in
the center is the State Office Tower, where I worked my first
permanent, full-time job, at the Ohio Board of Regents

Across the wide Mississippi, we entered Iowa and visited the
world's largest truck stop, on I-80

It was indeed large; this is just a portion of the retail showroom

Ditto

Ditto again; obviously, we were pretty impressed

Anemic blood moon over Charles City, IA

Pretty pedestrian mall in Mason City, IA; moving cash around
for our two big purchases this week required a stop in Mason
City, the last Bank of America branch on our route; little did
we know, but we now do, that Mason City is really River City,
of Music Man fame; Meredith Wilson was born and grew
up in Mason City, and many of the famous musical's characters
were drawn from his life here

Marian the Librarian poses in the city's central park; "Trouble,
right here in River City," is one of her favorite expressions

Driving past someone's sculpture garden astride I-90 in SD;
slightly reminiscent of Spain...

Outside an utterly classic Montana general store in Broadus

Only in Montana...

A double rainbow welcomes us back to western Montana

Drive time, the old-fashioned way

The aspens and cottonwoods were at their autumn peak in the
valleys; later I'll post a pic of the golden larches higher up
around Missoula

 

19.3 mpg over 2,400 highway miles (and mostly gaining
altitude and mostly with a head-wind); we were impressed with
the Ram's 6.4L gas engine, more than twice the displacement
of any engine we've had before, plenty of power yet surprisingly 
good fuel efficiency