* I snapped the whole trip, so excuse all the captions...
My brother had been in Indiana for 3 weeks for training so Friday morning, my dad and I flew to Indiana to meet him. Packing was a puzzle. Seattle was supposed to be pretty mild, but we were going to be driving through lots of snow, so I wanted to be warm. We also had to pack light since my brother had his entire life in his car and so space was limited. I decided to wear my bamboo shirt because a. it's super soft and b. when I bought it, I was told that I could wear it for 7 workouts without washing it. (I haven't tested that, but it held pretty well on the 3-day trip!)
We made it to Indianapolis around 10:45, but were about a 30-45 minutes away from my brother and he was still in training for another 2 hours or so. We decided to take an uber closer to him and then met him at Pei Wei for lunch. We ate lunch and then got on the road!
My brother started off driving. I was in the back. We drove through Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and into South Dakota. It was mostly corn- with a little bit of snow. We started to see more snow once we got to Minnesota.
We thought about continuing to drive through the night, but we wanted to visit Mount Rushmore and if we had kept driving, we would have gotten there at like 4am so we decided to stop. We stopped at about 12:30 or 1 and got a hotel for the night to rest.
We started day 2 a little later than we planned. We were tired! We got on the road about 8 Saturday morning. My dad drove. I had the front seat and my brother sat in the back because he was tired from training and driving and wanted to sleep some more.
Somewhere in South Dakota, my brother's car started acted funny. It felt like it was losing power on the hills. Luckily, there aren't many hills in South Dakota. But we decided to get it looked at anyway. Or plan was to go to Mount Rushmore and then take it to get looked at and get back on the road. We turned down the path to Mount Rushmore and saw a large hill. We discussed it and decided to change plans. Car first! Because we were near Mount Rushmore, we were in a large-ish town and there was a Toyota dealership one exit away. We go to the dealership and someone looks at it and says that one of the cylinders is misfiring. But... he only has 2 guys working and wouldn't be able to get to it that day. And it was Saturday. He sends us to a little mechanic shop about a mile away. The mechanic takes a look and says that he thinks it's 2 cylinders. He's ordering the parts and should have us back on the road in about an hour!
Except it wasn't that easy! After he gets in a little further, he thinks that it has effected the entire engine and is estimating that it would cost about 5K. Nope! New plan. We go back to the dealership to start looking for a new car. I told my brother not to stress about it- if he saw something that he liked to get it, but if not we could always just rent something and he could look when he got to Seattle and wasn't under so much pressure. He and my dad walked around for a little while, drove over to another dealership, and ended up finding a Subaru Tribeca. My brother had been thinking about Subarus anyway and it was the only one on the lot. So he got it!
Then we had the fun task of unloading his car and repacking the new one. It was quite the task, but just call me the Queen of Tetris! While we were doing it, my brother and I joked about playing Tetris on Playstation back in the day. Good times!
God's hand was in all of this 100%. If we had driven through the night, nothing would have been open. We were in an actually city in the middle of the day that had a dealership. It really was as seamless as it could have been!
After we left in his new ride, we headed to Mount Rushmore- much later than we planned. Thankfully, it was all lit up!
We thought about getting a hotel there, but I think we were all ready to be out of South Dakota so we kept going. Out of South Dakota, through Wyoming, and into Montana. Then we found a hotel for the night.
Day 3! My dad drove again. I offered to drive but he said that he was okay. He didn't drive a ton the day before since most of the day was spent in Rapid City, South Dakota. I took the front and my brother hung out in the back again. Montana just may be my favorite state. It is gorgeous! I took tons of scenery pictures!
There was a small hiccup, when an animal ran out in the road. My dad hit what we now think was a black weasel. There was a dragging noise afterwards and we thought it was somehow still connected to the car, so we pulled over to investigate. We were wrong. It was so big that it had hit the bumper and tore something off. We (my dad) tied it up with some twine so it wouldn't drag. I was still in awe of the scenery and made my brother take a picture with me and his selfie stick. He was bummed about his new car so not as excited as me about the picture.
* It was a minor issue. They got the new part when we got to Seattle and replaced it themselves.
We got back on the road again and I continued to admire the scenery!
I also helped my brother do some studying for work. Random quizing throughout the trip!
It started snowing towards the end of Montana and into Idaho. It was beautiful, but we were in a National Forrest so it was shaded and winding roads and started to get a little slick.
But we made it through and into Washington! And then into Seattle!
And that was the trip! 3 days. 9 states. 2,250 miles.
This was a really long post, but I wanted to get everything in so that I wouldn't forget anything. It was such a fun adventure and I'm glad I got to share it with my dad and brother!
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