Friday
Getting to Great Falls on Friday was an ordeal and a half. Nikki went to school in the morning. I had to work all night Friday night so I took a nap when she got home. We finally got out the door at about 2:30 only to realize that the car was extremely low on fuel. As soon as Nikki started down the Dupuyer-Conrad cut-across, the fuel light came on. The cut-across is about 3o miles so we weren't taking any chances. It was 12 below after all. I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this but the nearest gas station to us is Nikki's cousin's store in Valier. It's 14 miles away. That means that if you get 28 miles to the gallon, you use a whole gallon just getting gas. Anywhere that's where we headed.
Our car also had low air in the tires so I went down to the service station to fill them. Holding an air hose in that weather and filling the tires is probably the coldest-feeling thing I have ever done in my life. The air coming out has a little moisture content and was freezing on my hands on contact. And that's while I'm gripping cold metal.
At the gas station, we ordered an entire pizza and ate the whole thing there. It felt so good to get some hot food in us. So now it's been over an hour and we are 14 miles from home. Off to a bad start.
Let me just stop here to explain the reason we were going to Great Falls. The rental car that Nikki has been provided with this whole time as part of her grant was due Saturday morning. Which means that, for a change, we were in two vehicles with Georgie in the back all by her lonesome. She hates that.
Soon after we got on the road to the interstate it was dark out. The road wasn't bad though and the interstate was even better. Still we wound up getting to Great Falls after 7 -- 5 hours after we left.
Saturday
Saturday I slept in, as I had worked till 5 the night before. Georgie and Nikki played in the hotel and had the complementary breakfast. I got up at 10:30 and we headed to the airport to turn the car in. The roads in Great Falls were terrible. I don't think we ever saw a road crew the whole 3 days. And it wasn't even snowing any more. There was really no excuse for the condition they were in. We headed back to town to do some shopping but by this point we freezing and hungry and miserable. So went where you go under such conditions: Chili's.
Normally I try to make it a point not to go to any restaurant where I am greeted by someone wearing a headset. Once your restaurant is so big that you start to employ Lean Six Sigma, its food is never good anymore. (Alamo Cafe in SA seems to be the exception to that.) But it was bone-chillingly cold and nothing sounded better than food served on a sizzling platter. So I got chicken and shrimp fajitas and Nikki got the nueva cocina classic Buffalo Chicken Fajitas. She's committed to cross-culturalism, clearly.
So now we are stuffed, tired, and the weather sucks. I went right back to the hotel and asked if I could get my gov't rate another night. I could and so our vacation continued. We did a good bit of shopping after that. Nikki dropped G and I off at the mall and went to a fabric store to get supplies for making Georgie's stocking. Georgie and I took in the mall, which was packed for Great Falls.
We did a little more shopping after that but Georgie was getting tired of it and, as it turned out, getting a cold, so we headed back to our hotel. We stayed in and had a pretty low-key night, though I did have to make an emergency run to the supermarket to get lotion because we were all painfully wind-chapped.
Sunday
This morning we were all business, hitting three groceries stores for gingerbread house and tamale supplies. We got back early this afternoon and found that not only were our four animals alive, but a fifth had joined the mix. A stray cat, with no apparent aversion to goats, had taken up residence by the front door. I took pity on him in the cold, so he got to try lobster for likely the first time in his life (in the form of chicken-lobster cat food). At one point he was insistently sniffing Penny's nose. She didn't know what to make of it so she head-butted him. Makes me wonder what our own cats would think about the goats if they met.
So we are back now and the propane has held out and we are looking forward to a week of getting packed up and moved out. And of course in a few short days we'll see Darla and Steve and Frank and Katie and Samantha and MeiAiLi and we are extremely excited about that.
Georgie loves hotels because of the full-length mirrors.
Georgie at Chili's
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