Red Lodge MT to Chamberlain SD

5538 total trip miles at end of today when we reach Chamberlain, South Dakota east of the Badlands. Our AAA routing showed our planned route as 9548 miles total. We've figured all along it'll exceed 10,000 miles since we make some deviations and we've added distance a few places along the way.

As I type this we are savoring a gorgeous sunset behind us as we travel due east on I-90. Julie is driving and I'm typing on the laptop connected through my Blackberry, hoping that there's wireless service at the moment that I press POST. (There wasn't. This is being posted at the hotel.) This sunset doesn't quite match last night's at Beartooth Pass outside Yellowstone. We watched the sunset at 10,974 feet . Mark stood in a snow field in his Teva sandals and experienced cold toes as we both began shivering because the air was so cool. We looked down on Frozen Lake, which was, well, frozen! That climb out of Yellowstone was fantabulous. We just kept oohing and aahing at the beauty of it. I guess we'd have to say that is the likely highpoint of the trip.....

The entire day at Yellowstone was wonderful. On this trip, we constantly are making tough decisions about time and where to spend it. We chose to take in lots of Yellowstone, including the Old Faithful show for which we had to wait 60 minutes. Obviously we advanced fewer forward miles for the day, but we invested in Yellowstone and have no regrets for having done so. Yet, today we've pushed through to cover 715 miles to "make up for yesterday." We're planning to arrive at the shore of Lake Michigan at Milwaukee Tuesday evening and take the ferry across to Muskegon, Michigan on Wednesday morning. That little boat ride will advance us 89 miles with the Benz getting a little break. She hasn't been on a long boat trip since she immigrated to the USA in 1967.

Benz says: Yes, I am looking forward to another long boat ride. That'll be sweet. But do you know what? I still haven't gotten a bath! Though they keep the windshield clean, my front end is really starting to bug me. C'mon you two! Oh, and yes that climb up Beartooth Pass was incredible, not to mention the descent through hairpins after dark. And despite those bugs in my teeth, I'm having a great time and especially love those curvy mountain roads.

We're on day 14 (Happy Bastille Day!) and well over half way by every way we calculate. We are loving this journey and seeing so much. We remarked earlier today that we've seen rain only once, but right now we're seeing rain ahead of us as we head into nighttime. Maybe a few bugs will get washed off.

For those of you paying close attention to our reported distances..... well, our replacement speedometer continues to work fine but the odometer functions have malfunctioned and stopped completely. Thus, we now are depending on the GPS for all distances, along with map distances if we need backup. Since we knew that the car's original odometer overreported distances by around 10%, this means that we have to adjust our perspective on items like mpg. From now on, all daily miles are being added to the accumulated odometer miles prior to our malfunctions. It's all part of the fun! and adventure. And anyway, it's not numbers that are important to us even though we are intrigued with the distances and choose to keep track of things. We also need to pay attention for planning purposes and to decide how long we can stay any particular place.

As we descended Beartooth Mountain, Julie said she really wanted to camp in Montana. We stopped at the very next National Forest Campground, Rattin. That was just outside Red Lodge, MT. We heard a roaring creek nearby. We had no attention by raccoons or bears, which was fine with us. It was incredible to ascend to 10,974 feet, then descend to 7000 feet to camp. We stopped in town at Red Lodge in the morning to have breakfast in a cafe and connect to the Internet. Through the day today we've dropped to below 3000 feet. It was above 90 degrees today, and we still need to pay attention to the engine temp needle but that aspect has been manageable by altering speed to keep the temp in a comfortable range.

Night has fallen and it's time to help Julie watch for deer.