Day Ten (Sunday) – Heading Home
Starting out at The Dalles, Oregon, we were staring at a 1600-mile drive home. While I’m crazy, I’m not dumb; there was no way I could handle that in one swoop; or, should I say, my wife made that decision for me! I was hoping we could make it to somewhere between Butte and Billings – a nice halfway point.
We left around 8:30am, and after stopping at Kennewick, WA for brunch, we made it through the rest of Washington (the desert part) and Idaho, crossing over into Montana at around 3:00pm. We knew from previous road trips that Denny’s Restaurant has HotelCoupons books in their entryways, and headed to the nearest Denny’s – Missoula, MT.
After reviewing the coupons, we found very few affordable options for hotels between Butte and Billings; those areas are near Yellowstone National Park and this time of year is their high season. Since we knew that Billings was too far to go, we decided to concentrate on Butte. Fortunately, we found several options, and got real lucky when we got the last room! We checked in at around 8:00pm and knew we needed a good night’s sleep – we needed to leave no later than 5:00am to make it home before 9:00pm.
We did have time to take another picture of Ava in front of the Idaho sign:
Read on to Day 11: Heading Home, Plus Our Trip Cost & Budget
