We left our motel later in the morning, after sleeping off the physical and food based excesses of the previous day. We walk around the corner from the hotel to a very cool looking diner - a single storey block made from polished stainless steel and glass - to have some brunch, my first Philly Cheesesteak of the trip. It’s a beautifully crisp morning, so we have a short walk around Moscow to see it in the daylight before getting back in the car.
We start on the road north into Montana, which becomes more and more vertical as we start the long climb into the northern Rocky Mountains. The temperature drops significantly as well, with the car’s thermometer registering -9degC as we weave our way through the peaks. As we push onwards and arrive in a long slow descent, we notice the increasing quantity of red brake lights on the road with the traffic eventually coming to a full standstill on the highway. Nothing’s moving, and some of the other travellers are leaving their cars and wandering down the road to see what’s causing the hold up - it turns out that a large artic lorry, from Amazon no less, has jack-knifed on the road and wedged itself across both lanes. A returning driver tells us that the police have advised of a wait of three and a half hours at least, as they try and get a tow truck up from a nearby town to clear the lorry.
With nothing else to do, we try and nap before eventually starting to watch TV programmes and movies on our iPad - we get a good way through Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel - when somebody asks us to move far over to the right of the road so they can get another large vehicle past. This slowly makes its way through the traffic, in a considerable feat of vehicular logistics, and once it has disappeared around the bend we eventually start moving again. It’s a very surreal experience, especially having no control over your own progress, but something that feels unique to have been a part of on a journey like this.
It’s late now, and in another bout of car-related drama we almost hit a deer on the road - so we stop at little less further on than we’d hoped in a very small town called Plains - it sits on the edge of the entrance to the Glacier National Park. We manage to find a small motel, run by an exceptionally nice family who gift me a coaster, called the Dew Duck Inn. We take a short walk to a huge petrol station store (somewhat wonderfully called The Town Pump) to get some food, seeing deer just stood on the side of the road, before retiring for the night in our cosy room. Quite the day…