We awoke to a beautiful day in southeast Washington. The car ran well. The weather unfortunately did not. I drove from Walla Walla to Lewiston, Idaho. We stopped for gas and Mark took over driving. I really wanted him to experience driving the car on the wonderfully twisty and enjoyable US 12 through Idaho’s Lochsa Valley.
At one point before we got to the Lochsa section I was composing an email on my phone when suddenly the car was in a full-on braking skid. I looked up and a guy in a pickup truck was making a left turn right in front of us. Mark found out how well the brakes worked, and how controllable the car was in a panic stop. For some odd reason I remained perfectly calm throughout the whole event. The guy aborted his turn and thankfully the vehicles never made impact. I went back to my email and Mark just kept on driving!
Mark enjoyed the run, and I actually fell asleep(!) I guess I’ve driven this road too many times. I did wake up though when the temp dropped. The sun vanished and the clouds came out. Mark had never removed his coat from this morning, but here I was in a light shirt and shorts… getting quite cold. I asked him to stop and put on my coat… and fell asleep again. I woke up sometime later getting rained upon. From 15 miles shy of Montana, pretty much all the way to Bozeman it rained. Heavy at first, but then lighter as we went east. Yuck. We finally gave up on the downside of Lolo Pass and put the top up. I took over driving. We grabbed a late lunch in Missoula (losing an hour going to Mountain Time always screws me up!) and hit the Autobahn for Bozeman. I managed to put it quite a bit of time at 90+ MPH. I even rolled past a Gallatin County Sheriff at 85. Have I ever mentioned how much I love Montana?
The JagCam got soaked. The wide-angle adapter is filled with water. I’ll have to get it some sunshine or dismantle it to address this. Oh well. It will ride inside the car tomorrow!
We arrived in Bozeman about 6:15 and checked into the rally (a bit late) and rolled into downtown Bozeman for dinner.
We’re back at the hotel now and the top is up and properly rain sealed, with Rain-X applied to the glass. Tomorrow we drive north to Great Falls for lunch, then south to Helena to stay the night.
I’ll upload today’s JagCam movie as soon as it is done.
Video is done, but getting horrific upload bandwidth here at the Hilton in Bozeman. >:-o