Four states in one day

Monday, June 15th, was going to be a long day of driving - we knew that already. Google Maps said that it would take 11 hours to get from Portland to Bozeman, MT but considering that there are several mountain ranges in between, we thought it might take even longer. We got an early start and left Portland on 84 going east, thankfully against the flow of morning rush hour traffic. 84 goes along the Columbia River and the first hour or so was a pleasant combination of wide river, low clouds, and enormous evergreen trees. All that ended fairly soon as we made the transition to eastern Oregon: the river narrowed and the trees practically vanished, to be replaced by rolling brown hills. We left 84 and angled up into Washington state, crossing the river and heading for Spokane. This are is known as the Palouse - we didn't stop to take photographs but I would like to bring these photos to your attention if you want to know what it looks like. Gorgeous stuff...much better than anything we could have produced! We stopped at a rest area to eat lunch and neglected to weigh down the cover to the container of curry that we had brought with us, the result being that it flew through the air directly at me and I ended up with bits of curry all over my shirt. 

Forging ahead bravely, we made it through Spokane and into Idaho where the scenery changed again and we spent a good bit of time going straight up and down mountains and past large lakes. Just after entering Montana, we changed drivers (I had been insisting on driving in all four states and had just about had enough at that point) and headed straight down the east side of the Bitterroot Mountains. There are large signs everywhere warning truckers to take care on the steep grade and this proved to be important information, because about 2 miles into Montana we came around a corner and slammed on the brakes...cars and trucks were lined up as far ahead as we could see and they were NOT moving at all. We were surrounded by 18-wheelers and as it became apparent that we weren't going anywhere for a while, the truckers started getting out of their cabs to walk around a bit and check on their rigs. The man next to us (on the right, we were in the left lane) got out just as I was rolling down my window and I asked him if he knew what was going on. He said, "There's a parking lot on fire up ahead, we're not going anywhere soon". Well, this sounded serious...

So we settled in. The trucker ahead of us had noticed something on the rear of his truck and went back to ask the man behind us to come up and take a look at it. A man on a bicycle rode by, presumably gathering information to bring back to people farther back in the line. People walked around, cars and trucks whizzed past going west on the other side of the divider. William got out with the camera and recorder, evidence of which you can see/hear elsewhere on this blog. The trucker on the right came back - he seemed to be a bit of a gloomy sort, as he was climbing back into his cab, he said "Hope nobody crashes into the back of this line". He had his windows down and we could hear his CB radio now and then: they seemed to be talking about a car hauler that was having problems, which was puzzling until a glimmer of an idea crossed my mind which I later confirmed online. Briefly, 'parking lot' is trucker slang for a multi-car carrier, which was still a problem if it was on fire, but it wasn't nearly the scope of problem that I was expecting. Eventually the CB reported that the fire was out, that the firemen were hosing off the road, and that they were ready to open up the left lane. This was confirmed by other truckers getting back in and starting up the engines (deafening...) and we got ready to set off carefully. Our gloomy friend leaned out the window just before the person in front of us started moving and warned us to be careful in case there were people still walking around on the road. 

We started off slowly and in about a mile we saw the truck on the side of the road. I believe I remember hearing over the CB that the brakes had caught fire, and what we saw was the cab and the front half of the carrier (which was fine, so the driver was okay) a few feet in front of the back half of the carrier, which had about 3 badly charred cars and was covered in foam. In a very short time we had moved beyond the traffic and gotten back to full speed...but it was about 6 by now...and we were now in the Mountain time zone so it was actually 7...and it was still a LONG way to Bozeman. We had hotel reservations, thankfully, and I phoned up and made sure they knew we would be late. The rest of the day was a combination of desperately wanting to be done with the drive and going into raptures over the scenery and the mountains and, eventually, the sunset. We regretfully bypassed Missoula, got snarled in road construction in Butte, crossed the Continental Divide, and glided gracefully into Bozeman while there was still a bit of light in the sky. Which isn't saying much: it was 10:30 pm. We are sincerely hoping that there won't be any more long days like that but crossing the Divide at sunset almost made up for it - ALMOST.