What might be making you a tad apprehensive, but might not, as it's too soon to tell

[Clodfobble]

You know, I'm starting to think there just might be something to this whole ingenuity and determination stuff.

[Griff]

will monitor

[glatt]

We're filling in details now. We have Saturday nights on the road in Montana. Pretty much all campgrounds are full already. Don't want to risk sleeping on no reservations accepted BLM land. Nothing would be worse than to roll up and find no availale sites after driving 8 hours. So we're staying in the Billings KOA one night.

Gotta find another place the following Saturday. It's a balance finding a good place without driving too far out of the way. Things out West are so far apart.

I'm not worried. Only have a few details to finalize. And there is still some time.

Today I have to go shopping for work and buy samples of infringing items in a lawsuit. It's part of the new job I now have. Shopping is fun, and I'll get paid for it. I had never bothered to join Costco before, but the firm will pay my membership fee to pick up a couple things there. So that's a bonus too.

[monster]

Originally Posted by glatt

We're filling in details now. We have Saturday nights on the road in Montana. Pretty much all campgrounds are full already. Don't want to risk sleeping on no reservations accepted BLM land. Nothing would be worse than to roll up and find no availale sites after driving 8 hours. So we're staying in the Billings KOA one night.

Gotta find another place the following Saturday. It's a balance finding a good place without driving too far out of the way. Things out West are so far apart.

I'm not worried. Only have a few details to finalize. And there is still some time.

Today I have to go shopping for work and buy samples of infringing items in a lawsuit. It's part of the new job I now have. Shopping is fun, and I'll get paid for it. I had never bothered to join Costco before, but the firm will pay my membership fee to pick up a couple things there. So that's a bonus too.

There is a branch of my store in Billings. Lucky's Market is into non-profit and community support. They might help with a food donation if you explain how come you got stuck there, how awesome you are, even though you aren't technically local.... (either pre-prepared --like pizza and fruit trays-- or for you to cook) LMK if you need further info/would like me to try and help.

https://www.luckysmarket.com/billings-montana/

[glatt]

Thanks Monster!

I was a little concerned initially that the price of this trip was going to shoot through the roof as we had to come up with a Plan B, but I did a huge spreadsheet with everything on it, and it looks like we are going to break even. A year ago when we started the planning, everyone understood that we would be adding 2 rental cars and 2 hotel nights to the total for about $200 additional per person.

My spreadsheet says we know of $238 more in expenses per person, so that's actually really close. I'm a little impressed with us, pulling this together.

We're not hurting financially as a crew.

There still might be extras that we add on at the last minute, but that would have happened anyway.

Will we go to Terry's Bison Ranch when we are in Cheyenne and spend $14 per person to take a train to see Terry's bison? Who knows? Those sorts of extras will happen every once in a while.

One big expense is now going to be gasoline. I fed our itinerary into google maps, and our total road trip will be 2,494 miles! That's like driving across the country. It's mostly broken up into. A day of driving, four days off, two days of driving, 7 days off, two days of driving, hop on a plane.

Still, I figured a minivan from Enterprise will get 22 MPG. Two of them will be a total of 5,000 miles at 22 MPG is 227 gallons of gas to buy. I figured gas in Montana will be $3 a gallon when we are there. So $681 for gas, or around $60 per person.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by glatt

One big expense is now going to be gasoline. I fed our itinerary into google maps, and our total road trip will be 2,494 miles! That's like driving across the country. It's mostly broken up into. A day of driving, four days off, two days of driving, 7 days off, two days of driving, hop on a plane.

Still, I figured a minivan from Enterprise will get 22 MPG. Two of them will be a total of 5,000 miles at 22 MPG is 227 gallons of gas to buy. I figured gas in Montana will be $3 a gallon when we are there. So $681 for gas, or around $60 per person.

This might help.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by glatt

We're filling in details now.
...snip...

Things out West are so far apart.

I'm not worried. Only have a few details to finalize. And there is still some time.

Orange things are messing up our trip.

First it was the wildfire.

Now it's the orange man here in DC.

One of the dads on the trip is a lawyer, and his biggest client just got slammed by these moronic tariffs. They have been forced to lay off something like 80% of their workforce because their only product is wire and they depend on steel imports. Virtually all their orders for wire have been canceled in the last week. Anyway, this lawyer dad has spent the past week lobbying folks on the Hill, and has to travel with a congressman to Missouri to give a tour of one of the plants the orange man shut down. This is right in the middle of our trip that he has to be babysitting a congressman. He would love to skip it but can't afford to abandon this client that is fighting for its existence.

So it turns out our van reservations were in this guys name, and with all the driving we are doing, we were really counting on having three drivers to take shifts. I think we can still pull this off with only two adults, but it's going to be much more brutal, and we may have to pay more to make new van reservations.

Fuck.