And we're off (well, close to it)! We're aiming for a 5:00 am departure, and as I write this (at 4:20 am) it looks like we'll easily make that. Our first stop is at the Tesla Supercharger at Idaho Falls, Idaho – we should get there around 7:30 am. There's a nice little coffee shop there where we'll get some caffeine and eats, then we'll hit the road again. Then we hop to the next supercharger, at Lima, Montana – another hour and a half up the road. After that, we head to the supercharger at Butte, Montana, about 2 hours away. The last supercharger we'll hit is in Missoula, Montana, another two hours up the road. Then we've got the last push to Whitefish, Montana (where we're staying), right near Kalispell – that's about two and a half hours. If you add it all up, we've got about ten and a half hours of driving, and probably an hour and a half of charging – so with any luck at all, we should pull into Whitefish around 5 pm. We'll check into our lodging and then head for a dinner at a restaurant we know there: the Tupelo Grille, where we've had several outstanding meals.
If you're wondering about how our animals (14 cats and 5 dogs) are cared for while we're gone, we've got the most wonderful setup here you can imagine. Our good friend Michelle H. takes care of them when we're on a trip. Our animals already know her well – many of our cats like her better than they like me! :) She lives 3 minutes from our house, and she (or one of her very responsible children) will come over at least three times a day to care for everybody. Michelle is very experienced in animal care, having quite the menagerie at her own house. Our vets (3 minutes from our house in the other direction) know us and our animals very well, and they've go no problem accepting Michelle's intervention as needed, and then letting us pay for it on our return. This is so much nicer that the arrangements we had available to us in California. Even if Michelle couldn't help us on some particular occasions, we've got several other friends in the area who could pinch hit. Care of our animals while we're on a trip was a concern of ours before we moved here; like so many other things, we're now wondering how on earth we ever put up with the miserable equivalent in California...
