Another unseasonably rainy day here in Montana, a good opportunity to do some laundry & get a haircut while the car is being checked out – got to love those Check Engine lights. Apparently a Check “Check Engine Light” Light would have been redundant, as for some reason the engine is misfiring a little. No big deal, at least I hope so, & I suppose if the car had to be in the shop for a day it’s good that it happened here in Billings where we can get chores done.
I was surprised to see a oil refinery in the middle of fields beside I-90 last night, apparently Montana is one of the bigger oil producing states in the country. Also, we saw three big fuselages (I assume of 737s en route to/from Seattle) on railcars last night as we pulled in to town. That’s something I’ve never seen before.
So with the gloomy weather & uncertainty while waiting for the car verdict, I was pleased to see a very sweet post from Megan this morning. She even managed to get a nice picture of Finn & me the morning we left.
I think I’d be hassled if I didn’t also mention the amusing photo of me & her early one morning twenty-five odd years ago. But if you want to see that you’ll have to go to Megan’s page & read the entry – she takes better photos than me & writes a whole lot less wordily.
Update – after occupying ourselves in Billings all day, we got the car back. It was just a timing issue – so with new plugs & leads the engine is firing as it should. Also took the opportunity to patch a small hole in the exhaust & replace a CV boot – car is now much quieter. Nice to get all this out of the way on another very rainy day. JR’s was a great workshop, a self-proclaimed Subaru guru (that rhymes nicely) & JR did everything possible to get us back on the road that day & gave us tips as to where to stay next along the I-90.
The persistent rain continued as we travelled south-east towards Wyoming. Pleasingly, the battle site of Little Bighorn (somewhere I never thought I’d ever go) was a short hop from the interstate. We managed to get there just before the Visitor Center closed & had a look around before braving the wind & rain to look over the area of Custer’s Last Stand. I think that battle sites are best viewed when the weather is so bleak – it doesn’t come close to the horrors that must have happened there, but it does turn it in to something less than a walk in the park.
I was surprised to learn that the battle was in June 1876, for some reason I expected it to be earlier than that. The Lakota & Cheyenne managed to comprehensively win this famous battle, but lost the war. As we continued towards our overnight stop of Sheridan, the miles & miles of beautiful rolling countryside continued – we began to understand why the local tribes fought so hard to keep their nomadic way of life, it really is a spectacular area – even if it was raining a lot.
Already, this short distance in to Wyoming everything is much more western – the main street looks fantastic, we shall have to explore it in the morning before heading to South Dakota.