Wednesday, 10/6/21 A Day of Farewells

I'm working on keeping it positive here (not covid positive!).  Today Bob and I, as well as other family members, are leaving Montana.  We even had to set an alarm to make sure we were up early enough to do the airport shuttle run for mom.  We seldom set an alarm anymore!  And that feels so good!

But, this morning we have some stuff to do!  First, the airport run and making sure mom could handle everything for her trip home.  She did have a box of stuff that made her suitcase heavy, so we will be taking that along with us.  She prefers to just take a carry on, having learned after years of international travel that it's best to keep your belongings close by.  If she has any trouble reaching to put her bag in the overhead bin, she plays the "little old lady" card and in a second she has someone lifting that bag for her!  I don't worry much about her getting around on her own!

We did some more running around, picking up and dropping off food, flowers, extra clothes, etc., between Brita and Dan's places.  I think we will be stocked for awhile from leftovers!  We had to say goodbyes to all of them and get back to our trailer to pack it up, too!  We were able to get on our way about 11:30.  It takes about 45 minutes or so to get everything ready to roll.  Bob takes care of electricity, water and sewer hook-ups, as well as anything else exterior.  I work on putting away everything inside so it doesn't roll around or break or spill.  Someday I should make a little video about our process, we have a good routine and maybe it would help someone else, sometime.

We headed south along the road less traveled on the east side of Flathead Lake.  The majority of the traffic uses the multilane highway on the west side of the lake.  We followed our own path along the scenic (and bumpy) 2 lane road.  Partway along the road, we got an alarm from our Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS), which has never happened before.  This is an electronic sensor system, attached to the valve stem of the trailer tires, to sense changes in pressure and/or temperature in the tire.  The numbers are communicated via bluetooth to a monitor in the truck cab.  So, finding a wide spot in the road, we pulled over to check.  Although the tire that alarmed looked pretty close to normal, when Bob checked with his trusty old-fashioned non-electric non-bluetooth silver wand, we did indeed have a low tire.  We have a little Viair portable air compressor, so Bob got that hooked up to add some air.  It runs on the trailer battery.  When we pumped up the air to a better level, we drove on ahead to a safer spot to take off the tire and put the spare on.  Just getting the spare out of it's storage place was good aerobic exercise!  Eventually, we moved along to the town of Polson and got the tire fixed, it was just a valve stem leak.

Now, we drove along highway 93 south through the beautiful Bitterroot valley to the little town of Darby and the Trapper Peak Winery for overnight.  This winery is part of the Harvest Hosts network, which has been a good option for us several times.  Take a look at their website to understand how it works.  Sadly, there was no wine available at the vineyard.  They are part of a family vineyard in California, and the grapes were ruined by smoke from wildfires this year.  We had a quiet spot to spend the night, and visited with the family of 4 that also stayed there.  Our supper tonight was chips and salsa, pie and champagne!  Wedding leftovers that must cover a couple food groups, don't you think?!

In knitting news, I cast on for a new stocking cap made with some lovely yarn from Polka Dot Sheep in Whitefish.  It's some especially nice yarn and maybe this hat will be for myself.  I've been knitting some stocking caps recently for Hats For Sailors.  I've been using more utilitarian yarn and a generic easy pattern for those.  For this new hat, I'm using a new pattern called Picture Chutes by Polka Dot Sheep.  When this is finished, I'll go back to hats for sailors!

Overnight stop at Trapper Peak Winery.

Just for fun, here are some more pictures from the wedding.  Still waiting for the professional pictures, so these are just our own snapshots.