I am writing this from the comfort of my notably soft and luxurious bed, whilst Ryan, Malkie and Maisy guide us though the north-west corner of Montana up front. Although perhaps not the safest travelling arrangement, it is in fact legal to cruise at your functional leisure without a seatbelt in a motorhome within America, provided no seatbelt is available. And no, we haven’t picked up a travelling minstrel already; Maisy is our in-house talking computer, who dishes out predicaments and dilemmas like Smarties througout the day. In the early days, the sound of her dulcet tones would send us rushing around the van searching for the rogue open compartment or leaky pipe, or, the latest tiding of doom: ‘low vehicle battery charge’. Soon enough, we realised that either Maisy is just in very negative frame of mind following the long delay in letting her stretch her cables on the open road, or there’s a loose connection somewhere, because she is still delivering the same searing criticisms with steely certainty and it’s getting a bit wearing. So now we simply flip the mute switch and continue sipping our gin whilst marvelling at the fact that an RV built in 1994 can have an on-board ice maker.
The boys are becoming quietly confident behind the wheel of our rig (with the odd yahoo! and manly backslap when a cornering challenge goes well), and I am slowly but surely re-arranging every compartment (I think there are about 45 in here), and finding things to bleach. I haven’t been in the driving seat yet and will wait till more open plains present themselves before giving it a go. Today we have done a fair bit of climbing into the Rockies in Idaho. Sailing up to 4600ft on Interstate-90 was no trouble at all for the wagon, which is encouraging as we will be heading into Yellowstone National Park shortly and may find a few larger inclines than that before long. Although we were trudging in snow earlier today, the ski season now has finished, though only yesterday. We could see some great looking powder just above our heads as we lunched at Lookout Pass. I-90 took us into Montana where the road follows scenic wooded slopes, winding rivers, and valleys with stunning snow-capped mountain views.
Having now found our feet with the business of RV motoring, we have endeavoured to take more pictures today. Here’s a few…
1. Ryan in his tullyroan slippers in the Rockies
2. Bertha cruising at altitude (4710ft)
3. Bill and Ted on their excellent adventure
4. Bertha meets some friends
5. Blue skies. (The black material appendage at the front, to protect her from chips, is called ‘a bra’ in RV-speak)
6. The open road, Montana
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