After we left the dealership, we raced back to my mom's for a quick dinner and then hit the road. 
Our first leg of the trip took us up to MN where Summer and Reid very graciously put us up for the night and even stayed up until our 1:30am arrival!! I can't believe I got to see Summer TWICE in one week! Yay!! The drive up was fairly uneventful - just snowy and slushly. Altho, there were two noteworthy items:
1) B decided he wanted to nap without worrying about me ditching the car (as if!) so he proceeded to tell me that he noticed people seemed to slip off the road only as they drifted too close to the shoulder. This resulted in me white knuckling the steering wheel the entire time he was snoozing. Grr! 
2) Apparently, the favored pastime in Eau Claire (about 30-45 min from the MN border) is to go out, have a beer, and ditch your car into the center grass divider on the highway. The entire ride thru WI, we saw only a couple semi trucks and a few cars ditched. In Eau Claire? No less than 12 cars ditched in a 4-5 mile stretch. WEIRD. 
After a very short night's sleep, Summer, Reid, B and I went out to breakfast, and then we were back on the road again.
I napped thru most of of MN but managed to stay awake thru boring flat North Dakota. There was some pretty snow covered sites thru ND, but damn is that a flat state! Even the highway route is flat and straight. But one thing ND definitely had going for it was the night sky. Oh wow. I don't think I've ever seen so many stars in the sky in my life. Around 7pm, it was good and dark. We pulled off the side of the road to just star gaze for a few minutes. And because we're in North Dakota, DESPITE being on a MAJOR interstate highway (94), the entire time we were pulled over on the side of the road, ONE car passed us by in either direction. So strange!!!
A few more hours of driving finally got us into Billings MT (apparently the land of oil refineries). We had no problem finding a hotel to crash at, but DID manage to pick the one that had the fire alarm shriek at us at 5am. *SOB* All we wanted to do was sleep!!!! Fortunately after 10 min of ear-piercing alarm sounding (stupid idiot burned a waffle and the front desk couldn't figure out how to turn off the alarms) we were able to catch a couple more hours of Zzz's.
Driving thru the other half of Montana during the day on Sunday was so pretty! And man - that state has a ton of freight trains!!! Here's a couple of snaps taken from the car.
We got thru most of MT without any problems, and it wasn't until we hit the mountain passes close to Idaho that we started seeing some serious snow. Luckily the Subaru has all wheel drive and it handled the snow very well. Fortunately, we didn't get slowed down too much by the change in weather condidtions, and I was able to make my flight with time to spare.
Huh? What flight?
Now, you might be wondering why this post references planes. See, here's where I explain the other part of this crazy impromptu road trip. Because we cancelled the return flight from Chicago, I was going to fall short of renewing my Alaska MVP status by 300 measly miles!! And to get MVP status, you have to accrue actual flown miles. (And yes, MVP on Alaska really is worth having!) So, we planned to put me on a plane in Helena, MT and B and I would sort of "race" back to Seattle. But my departing in Helena, meant B would have to put in a good 10-12 hours of driving on his own and I wasn't too comfortable with that idea. I also would be missing out on checking off Idaho from my list of visited states. So instead, I changed my flight to depart from Spokane leaving B with only about 5 hours of driving on his own. There were several flights to pick from leaving about once an hour. Fortunately, I picked the right one! I even got a first class upgrade (see - MVP perks!). The flight that was an hour earlier wound up delayed by over 2 hours and the flight before that one had been cancelled! I got into Seattle around 9:30pm and picked up the Taurus from airport parking (another reason it wasn't too far off base for me to fly back). I got home to some very anxious kitties, and B pulled in the driveway only 45 min or so later.
All in all - this was a very fun and successful road trip!! I love that we are both open to these kinds of adventures and travel so well together. It'll probably be awhile before we have the freedom to do something crazy like that again! :D
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