Montana Here We Come - Eventually

There's nothing quite like a blizzard for starting off a skiing trip. Guy and Donna have flown in especially so we're hoping we can even make it to the Amtrak station. 16 inches of snow today so we've had to clear the driveway 3 times as we're getting a couple of inches an hour. Even Minneapolis airport is shut today so we're grateful we're going by train rather than trying to fly.


Experience has taught us to take a shovel in the car when the snow is bad - this came in very useful as the only free car-parking space needed me to shovel it out before we could park
The train was a couple of hours late leaving but we finally got settled in our very snug bedroom.
After a pretty uneventful night's sleep the train had to stop as ahead of us a freight train had derailed so we had to get off the train.


After a long wait it was announced that we would be taking a coach around the derailed train. That didn't sound so bad except that the bus route was - oh go on have a guess as to how many miles the bus ride would be around the train.

Nope, a bit further than that. Let's imagine you're starting from Brighton, would it be all the way to London? No, further still, how about Cambridge? Er, Birmingham? Um, Manchester?, How about Newcastle?

OK, it was the same as Brighton to Glasgow!! So our 'diversion' was for further than England is long! As you can tell Andy was ecstatic about the idea, and about swapping our proper meal for a Subway and some Doritos.

Also as it was President's Day all of the coach drivers able to understand the basic functions of a coach were busy shuttling tourists around and so we got saddled with a driver who couldn't understand why we didn't need the heating on at full blast no matter how many times and how many people told him. Eventually however we made it to Whitefish by 2:30am, just 5 and half hours after we were supposed to be there.