So glad this day is almost over!

It started off all right--we got up at 5 am, drank some coffee and ate a granola bar.

We went outside to hook up the trailer in order to leave, and had to scrape a layer of ice off the windshield of the truck. The thermometer in the truck registered 31 degrees.

As we were leaving Henry's Lake, we had to go through several miles of thick fog--the water temperature was warmer than the air temperature. We headed north up the 87 and then the 287 and stopped about 60 miles up the road in Ennis for breakfast.




I'd done some searching on the Internet, and this place was highly recommended. It's called Yesterday's Soda Fountain and Restaurant, and it's inside the Ennis Pharmacy.

There are about 10 nice booths, and 5-6 smaller tables. I had to take a photo of what they did to the legs of the chairs to keep them from scratching the wooden floor:



Every "foot" had a baby sock on it!

The breakfast was great--Don enjoyed his sausage and eggs, and I had bacon and eggs. But I also enjoyed their specialty, which they called fry bread. It was like a a big sopaipilla--a piece of fried dough coated with cinnamon and sugar, and served with a dollop of honey butter. I'm glad I ordered the small piece. If I'd gotten the big one, I'd have eaten it all!

We then continued north on the 287, crossed a heavily swollen Jefferson River, then passed over Interstate 90. We then hit a series of sections of road construction, and when we finished with the road construction, we hit winds. It was rough going all the way into Helena. But along the way, we passed a small herd of elk and dozens and dozens of pronghorns.

At Helena, we gassed up and got on I-15 to Great Falls. We found the Malmstrom Air Force Base FamCamp, and selected a nice pull-through full hookup site for $19. We set up, and I headed off to the BX and Commissary.

Here's where I had the BAD part of my day: I keep my commissary list on my iPhone. When I got into the commissary, I realized I'd left it in the truck. I went out to get it, and then did my commissary shopping. As I was going back to the truck, I couldn't locate my keys. I have a purse with lots of pockets, and searched frantically for those keys, but couldn't find them.

The commissary staff had a mixed reaction to my plight. One gal went and searched all the carts, and checked with the cashiers to see if the keys had been turned in. But all the rest couldn't get away from me quickly enough. I knew that Don had his truck keys back at the campground, less than a mile away, but no one knew how I could get them. No one volunteered to give me a lift--less than a mile; no one offered to call me a cab; they just wanted me to take my groceries off their hands so they could have the cart back.

I should point out that Don has a cell phone, but decided not to bring it on this trip. He seldom answers it anyway--one of my pet peeves.

Well, I did have my iPhone, so I looked for taxi companies in Great Falls. The first one I called was out of business, but the second one said they'd send a driver to the commissary. He showed up a half hour later; we put all the groceries in his trunk and he took me to the campground. Don sure was surprised to see me show up in a taxi! We unloaded the groceries, he gave me his keys, and the taxi driver took me back to the truck. There I found my keys--on the passenger seat underneath my flannel shirt. I must have set them there when I went back to get the iPhone.

By this time, it's 3:30, and I'm shaking from having no food since 8 am.
So dinner was the tuna salad I was going to eat for lunch tomorrow, and now, finally, I'm a little calmer.

We're going to watch a little TV, do a little reading, and try to get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow's a short day, though--about 3 1/2 hours.

But I don't want to go through this again!


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