Road trip ... again!

Last spring we drove the flatbed truck to Montana and swapped it for the GMC, Hurlee. The flatbed is great around the ranch, but has only one bench seat (which doesn't do the job when the family is visiting), so Lee kept his vehicular radar tuned and finally found a perfect solution: Surlee, a matching Yukon XL with three seats and lots of room. Thus, another road trip this spring to take Surlee home.

We left early Thursday morning, spent the night in Albuquerque, then made it to Salem early enough Friday evening to visit both cemeteries, spend an hour with Dad, and have an Artic Pup and fries at Glade's before arriving at Janice & Hal's for the night.

Surlee leaked all of the power steering fluid on Friday's drive, but luckily we were able to get a new steering gear put in first thing Saturday morning and were on our way again by noon. We made it to Sigh-Bar around midnight and were happy to turn up the heat and climb into bed. Tara finished up a dance-o-rama in Seattle and was able to fly over Sunday afternoon and join us for a few days. She and I had a great time hiking and exploring while Lee gave the horse a bath and worked on the barn. We enjoyed one of our favorite meals at the Bulldog Saloon, aka the "Fart & Slobber Inn," and homemade ice cream at Sweet Peaks.

Tara headed back to Miami on Wednesday afternoon, and I became Lee's "beck-and-call girl" for the rest of the week! He was able to get the rafters up on the second half of the barn, ready for roofing. He had a few boards leftover so he just couldn't resist putting the first few up connecting the two halves.

The train ride home turned into an another unexpected adventure again ... maybe we were naïve to think it couldn't happen twice?! It was so delayed arriving in Whitefish that we got into Spokane too late to make our flights, so this time we decided to just stay on the train all the way to Seattle. The upside of this wrinkle in our travel plans was that the train ride to Seattle, through the "apple capital of the world" and the Cascade Mountains, was spectacular! It did, however, result in taking the red eye flight home from Seattle to Houston. Whew - Lee made it to work and a meeting Monday morning! Even with a few bumps this trip, we had a wonderful time and are looking forward to returning in July -- with all who want to join us 'cause now there is a vehicle there big enough for all of us!