The choice of Walmart camping was a good one. It was very quiet as we had parked in the north end of the lot with several trucks nearby and a few unfortunate individuals sleeping in their vehicles.
This was a great test of my new batteries. The temperature dropped to minus 5 overnight, and our furnace ran for much of the night. My concern was that I hadn't "insulated" the drain lines under the trailer again. If they were frozen and cracked then likely we would lose our fresh water reservoir, or worse yet, we would be unable to pressurize the lines via pump or external supply if the drain lines froze and broke.
Fingers crossed, I hoped that enough warm air was trapped under the trailer to prevent broken drains. We waited for the sun to come up and the temperature started to rise. Luckily everything looked good, so we headed off, hoping to reach Helena, Montana.
The day started out amazingly. Not a breath of wind! The truck settled in to a comfortable speed, I set the cruise control and away we went. North from Sheridan, and into Billings, Montana.
Our original intent was to follow I-90 west to the small town of Whitehall, MT so that we could follow a familiar route north to Boulder. This would allow us to bypass the mountain passes just north of Butte. However, we noticed a shorter route on highway 287 north of Three Forks. This was an unfamiliar route, and we were leery of taking an unknown road in southeast Montana. We decided to at least check out the road and see what it looked like. We could always turn back if it was too rough.
That was the best choice we could have made. It was a beautiful highway that took us directly to Helena and was much faster than our original planned route. As we traveled we noticed a next day forecast for rain and slush in the Helena area. We were making good time with no wind and the shortcut to Helena, so we decided to push for Great Falls.
We arrived in Great Falls at about 4:30 PM, thinking that we would setup camp nearby. Checking the forecast we saw that a northwest wind was expected overnight with rain and slush. Did we want to stay, and perhaps spend 2 nights waiting for the weather to pass? I didn't really want to drive in rain and slush (and perhaps some ice) on my summer tires. We made the great decision to carry on to Lethbridge.
We cleared customs without any problems. I guess we look boring. The customs agent asked "were you doing a little camping in Montana?" When we told him we were just returning from a long round trip across Canada and the US, he looked a little surprised and said "welcome home" and "carry on".
We arrived home at about 7:30 PM! What a trip but we were glad to be home!
Ending mileage on truck (km): 65782