On the Road with the Redmonds (Part 1)
It's not every day that you get to hit the road with your best friend for two weeks, especially when you have 4 kids mixed in part of the time. However, this was the situation we found ourselves in, 6 months into a freshly minted marriage.
We had no plans except one single reservation at a restaurant in Bozeman, MT (1000 miles away)!
Just two weeks off the beaten path in a #Tesla visiting states on the West Coast while making sure to hit Oregon and Idaho which happen to be the last two states I needed to get to all 50 in my 50th year!
The journey started as expected until we hit the border of North Dakota and then we found ourselves driving into a 30-40 mph headwind. We also noticed that our front left tire had a slow leak about 100 miles out from Billings.
Wind, cold weather and speed happen to be 3 of the biggest foils to getting good range in an electric car so it cost us almost 50% of our expected run rate.
My wife slowed the car down to 55 mph (in an 80 zone) with hazards flashing as we hung on and arrived at the Supercharger with 2 miles to spare! All in all a very auspicious start.
Once I realized we were never going to make the reservation in Bozeman, I was able to relax and just enjoy the journey. The rest of the first day flew by and 16 hours after we turned out of our driveway in Northern MN we arrived in Bozeman.
We had a few ground rules for the trip as a whole. No plans including any reservations until the morning of that day, no telling the other person how to drive (so much harder than it sounds), no talking about exes, and no work.
I am one of those individuals that likes to check my email and respond to work issues immediately, so I was very worried about our last rule. (I think thats why I had an eye twitch the entire 14 days), but somehow I was able to make it through. In fact, the more time that passed, the easier it became to forget about work and just enjoy the journey.
And what an amazing journey it was! Each place seemed more magical and beautiful than the last. #Montana was filled with some of the nicest people we had ever met. As we swallowed up the miles we grew closer and the discussions bounced from one topic to the next, some intense and some just fun.
We worked our way through a book called 'You and Me' and filled our travel journal with notes about each of our days activities.
