You know it’s going to be “a day” when you wake up to a refrigerator with Cheyne-Stokes breathing.  (For those of you not familiar, Cheyne-Stokes is a common breathing pattern in the dying).  After a couple unsuccessful resuscitation attempts and life-support measures, we pronounced it dead somewhere around Bozeman, MT.

We left Ashton, ID on US20 to West Yellowstone and joined US191 around the top of Yellowstone.  We warped into Wyoming, then Montana (and I’m not sure we weren’t back and forth into WY and MT again) and joined I90 to Columbus MT.  Tonight we are living between I90 and a field of cattle and a railroad.

Our drive was uneventful – I found some neat flowers at one pull-off in ID when we were checking on the fridge:

At the same place, there was this pile of potatoes – looked like maybe someone lost part of their load.  While we were parked there, a couple pulled in behind us.  They both jumped out of their car with cameras at the ready.  I kid you not – they ran over to the potatoes.  They looked at me, really excited – “Look!  Are these potatoes?  Real potatoes?  Idaho potatoes?”  I just looked at them – thinking “of course they are potatoes” – and decided they were joking around.  Instead, they stood there poking and prodding them (like they expected them to scurry away).  Then they started taking pictures.  I think they even took a couple with them.  It was kind of obvious by the appearance of some of the potatoes – and the smell – that they had been there a while.  More like roadkill.  Anyway – they were just delighted to have discovered wild Idaho potatoes at the roadside pull-off.  I wonder if they knew that the potatoes really grow in fields, under the dirt, with greenery on top?  And that they are usually not found hiding out in roadside pull-offs?  Anyway – I took a photo for y’all – I wouldn’t want you to miss the opportunity to see wild Idaho potatoes!

We drove through a spectacular thunderstorm just before we got home for the night.  It did clear up enough that I could get in a 3 mile walk (in circles around the campground!).  We are down around 3600 ft elevation, I am disappointed that I get short of breath so easy still.  I guess I expected it to go away once we were out of the 7000 ft range.

Here is a picture of the view from our campsite tonight:

And here is a picture of our new refrigerator/freezer:

Miles traveled today:  255 (pretty amazing considering the frequent stops to check our patient) – total miles for the trip:  3595.