Tuesday - Day #2

The day started out sunny, but a bit chilly, so we switched to long pants before leaving Provo.  The hotel had breakfast included, so we went over to office to partake.  When I got there, I saw the porridge [oatmeal] and thought - HEY!, we stayed here both on the way south and on the trip home last year.  It seems they had the discount coupon in the travel book last year too.  Pretty funny.
  We got up discovering we had lost an hour, thinking it was 6 AM, it was 7 locally.  We were still on the road about 7:45, but our bodies were rebelling thinking 6:45.  Traffic started out pretty light leaving Provo, but got heavy quickly until it was 6 lanes of bumper to bumper, even stopped dead at times.  I made my way over to the HOV lane and quickly began leaving folks behind in the rush hour madness, as I was never under 50 mph which was pretty much flying past the jams.
  Once out of Salt Lake, traffic thinned out so we were able to get right up to the 80 mph limit and hold that.  When we got to the Y in the interstate where the left half is for northern Idaho and the right half north to Montana, there were even fewer vehicles.  At times we were the only vehicle in sight.  By noon we were in Idaho Falls and picked up some fuel and food to go and back on the road.  A few years back I left for the barren stretch from their up over the Monida pass and ended up buying some very expensive fuel in a place that had not seen anyone other than locals since it opened. 
  We stopped in Butte for another brief break and fuel [always try to run on the top half of the tank, old advice from my father] and made great time through the pass up to Helena, where we blew through there.  We were really lucky with highway construction as most of it was just getting set up, while other places were not too busy.  We came to one mountain pass where they had signs out that there could be blasting on the rock faces and to expect traffic stoppages.  Again we lucked out, when we got there about 10 guys were hanging on the cliff face by ropes using rock drills to make blasting holes.  I have a feeling that those who follow may not lead the good clean lifestyle I do and will not be so fortunate.  The other thing that was humorous was the number of times we passed vehicles that became very familiar to us, all heading for the border.  I spoke briefly with a younger guy from Saskatchewan in Idaho falls who asked about the number of Canadian license plates he was seeing.  I told him there were a million Canadians just in Arizona and he was witnessing the end of the snowbird migration back north.
  After buying our last cheap fuel in Shelby, Montana [never paid over $2 per gallon in Montana] we decided to make a strike for the border.  When we got there, again it was light traffic and the cars were moving thru the agent's check point quickly.  When we got there we learned why.  We had this well rehearsed story about why we were over in the amount of liquor we were returning with.  The agent asked a few perfunctory questions and said "have a nice day" right in the middle of my lengthy explanation.  Knowing a "start the car moment", I quickly departed while Marg gave me a high 5 and knuckle bump a few times.
  We made it to Lethbridge, where the winds were blowing hard enough to take the cap off my head several times.  Got a room at the Comfort inn where we have stayed several times in the past and treated ourselves to Tony Roma's ribs.  A nice end to a 12 hour day that saw us make 795 miles [1,280 km's].  Time to take a load off with a nice bottle of [now] duty free scotch.