Travel Home - Day 1

Monday was the first day of the offseason.

I had breakfast planned with the Baseball Chapel chaplain Bobby Watkins at 9:00. I figured 9 was good because it was early enough to get me going and late enough that I could sleep in a little bit. We ate at Perkins and had some good conversation. Bobby used to live in New Mexico so we had plenty to talk about. That lasted about an hour.

I headed to the ballpark next to finish up what I needed there. I finished mostly everything during the last homestand so all I really had to do was the final clean up and pack up all of my stuff. All in all, pretty easy. I finished there in about an hour as well.

Next, I headed home to finish packing up that stuff. Donna, our landlady, was kind enough to do all of my laundry for me so all I had left was to fold and pack. I had pretty much gathered everthing else together and put it over by the door so it was ready to go. I finished packing all of that stuff and then decided to take a nap. Sunday was a pretty long night so I was still tired. I woke up about 2:00-2:30 and figured since I was done I might as well hit the road. Breaking up Tuesday's 11 hour drive into 2 days seemed like a good idea. I packed up everything into the car, said my goodbyes and headed off.

Spokane is right on the eastern border of Washington, so I got to say adios to that state pretty quick. Next state....Idaho


The northern tip of Idaho is a relatively short drive that is mostly just mountains. The beginning part is Coeur D'Alene. Here is the only picture that came out decently that I took while trying to drive. The lake is huge and when you are coming in from the other direction, there is a really pretty view of it.


At one other point, the clouds were in the mountains and here is a nice picture of that.


Next state.....Montana. This sign was on an overpass so it was a little easier to get a picture of.


I stopped for gas and a bit to eat in Missoula, MT and decided to drive about another hour or so to Butte, MT for the night. I decided to take a page out of last year's book and stopped at a Pilot Travel Center and ate at Arby's. That was a standard stop with last year's team in Jacksonville. I was looking for something cheap and easy off the highway for the night so that I could head right out in the morning. The first exit past where I needed to head the next day had a Motel 6 right there. Perfect. Headed in and asked for the cheapest room for the night. Shock then hit me when she said it was $68 with tax. Maybe they shouldn't leave the lights on so much. Plus, this was as basic a room as you get. Tiny towels, no shampoo, tiny TV, no alarm clock. Sheesh.




That was it for Day 1. Next post...Day 2.

I took an extra long time to get home. Any other year day 1 would have been Spokane to Salt Lake City and day 2 would have been SLC to Albuquerque. This was a busy drive.

Until next time....