![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2009/IAMT1.jpg)
After consulting my road atlas, I came to the same realization I came to last year . . . It is a long way to Missoula:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2009/IAMT10.jpg)
A new opportunity to get rained on became apparent in the western sky:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2009/IAMT7.jpg)
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2009/IAMT11.jpg)
It rained and rained through South Dakota. But I was hell bent for leather to get to Mitchell, "home of the Corn Palace" and more importantly, I had to get a shot I missed last year. Do you know why I missed it last year? Because I realized a little too late that it was a long way from Des Moines to Missoula, so I rushed through beautiful beautiful country. This year, the lighting was nowhere as perfect (late evening sun hitting radiant grass), but I GOT THE SHOT!
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2009/IAMT4.jpg)
. . . and even knowing that I had 1,100 miles to go, I stood around at an entrance ramp trying to catch an actual lightening strike with my "I'll Decide When To Snap The Picture" camera:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2009/IAMT12.jpg)
I missed the shortcut of US 212 to catch up with 90 further westbound because the sign said there was construction and possible delays on 212, so I did the big 90 dip and passed a 1971 white Westfalia and blew past . . . Missoula is a long way away. Someone had way over adjusted her rear suspension
These are the flags flying over the port-of-entry station outside of Spearfish Wyoming :
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2009/IAMT13.jpg)
I had left Mitchell SD at 9:00AM with the intention to drive straight through to Missoula by midnight. I missed that estimate by dallying at a Starbucks (the better which to keep an eye on all of you here). At 7:00PM I left Gillette Wyoming with a mileage estimate of 575 miles to go. Hey, no problem. Yeah right. My eyes and my back are at full protest. Drove straight into some more rain and a big bug storm and hit the eastern border of Montana just past sunset. Mileage marker said 514. Drove past the exit where I had come down the hill from my Glasseye recommended Yellowstone/Red Lodge Bearcreek tour of two years ago. Tried to call whc03grady to warn him that I was failing here. No phone service. So, I thought, I have got to try to get as close as I can. By midnight, I am promising myself that I get to take a nap IF and only if I get to mileage marker 350. Then I figured I'd get up at 6:30AM and finish off the last couple of hundred miles just before the 9:00AM start of our ten-hour Itinerant Air-Cooled day. But, I started hallucinating strange objects and animals in the roadway so I pulled off to do a quick power nap at 3:00AM in a McDonald's parking lot outside of Butte MT. That was 75 mph for 17 hours through innumerable downpours, I needed a nap.
Woke up with a start. Ayeee, overslept. It is 6:00AM. Mileage marker said 256 or something. Cell phone was no service (ATT does not offer service in Montana I was told), so I called whc03grady on a payphone to warn him that I was running late late late.
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2009/IAMT14.jpg)
. . . but it shore is a "pretty late":
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2009/IAMT16.jpg)
Finally finally pulled into Missoula at 10:00AM, and I am telling you. . . I was beat, my eyes were wobbling around like underinflated soccer balls, my back was so seized up that a sneeze felt like lifting a pallet of concrete, and my poor poor bus, the brake pedal was soggy, the engine was getting irritable at idle, and the bugs were thickly splatted all over the front. So I asked whc03grady to capture the moment:
![Image](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x133/73VW1800/IAC%2009/IAMT18.jpg)
It was sunny! It was warm!
Colin