The Big Drive





Planning this road trip involved big, beautiful round numbers. COMO to TACOMA is right at 2,000 miles, or 30 hours of drive time, according to Google maps. You can take I-70 until it runs out, or go a little more north and take I-80, or even more and take I-90. We opted for the northern route, taking advantage of the late-season heat wave.

Directions were easy. I-70 to KC, then 29 north to I-90 and I-90 west all the way to and through Washington.

I was able to work on the drive. Our truck is a hybrid and generates power, so the laptop stayed fully charged and surprisingly well connected to the internet via the hotspot on my phone, usually not losing signal for more than a few minutes, mostly in the mountains.

Aside from the working part, it felt like we were leaving for a vacation, although not nearly as well planned. I usually do the trip planning, mapping out routes, booking accommodations, and even scouting restaurants online. With this adventure, I didn’t know when we would be leaving, so I couldn’t make reservations. We just did it on the fly, staying in dog-friendly motels we found along the way.

Our first night was in Mitchell, South Dakota. We visited the outside of the corn palace, after it was closed. The second night was in Bozeman, Montana. Ann noticed how Western-stylish the people in the coffee shop were. I thought the difference between my boots and the boots on the guy in the coffee shop had less to do with our sense of style and more to do with the several-hundred-dollar price difference between them. The third night was in Spokane, Washington. We initially stopped at a very inexpensive Motel 6, but all of the people who were living there seemed to wonder what we were doing there, and then we started wondering the same. We relocated to a historic hotel downtown, not expensive and surprisingly dog-friendly. We walked about Spokane with the dog until we wore her out that night, and were duly impressed with the downtown and how well they make use of the riverfront.

The next day we were in Tacoma. 






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