Hooray for Hotels.com!

It takes a village to put on a huge road trip like this - and I've added hotels.com to my Support Staff list! (They don't technically know this, but....it still counts!) As I realized how late I would be arriving in Bismark tonight, I decided to bail on my camping plans (with a small sob of regret, naturally!), and grabbed my Hotels.com app. I found a very nice place, and it was on sale through the app! So now I'm living in comparative luxury - which was great all on its own. But it has just started raining and HAILING outside! Which I completely did not expect. I still would have been fine in my tent, of course - but it is pretty nice to be inside and getting ready to collapse into a comfy bed instead of wondering whether the tent would hold up or not. (It's new - so, untested in a storm.)

Having a good team of people to help me on this trip is the secret to making all of this happen. I know how very lucky I am to have this great opportunity to do this trip - and it is all the people who are making it so wonderful!

Less wonderful: mosquitoes. They are EVERYWHERE this year! I was only out of the car for a few minutes today - and got two more bites. After driving 300 miles this evening, between gas stations, I had to stop to clean the windshield - the wipers just couldn't clean off enough bugs to let me see! I was expecting this year, with the very cold winter, to have a light mosquito season; but I was clearly wrong about that! Fortunately, I'm loaded down with DEET bottles to dowse myself, but that doesn't keep the windshield clean. Oh well; soon enough it will be cold again, and this will be over!