Christmas in Des Moines, Almost Home

$571.00! Add that to our total for the trip. That's what it cost today to replace six spark plugs and the plug wires.

The good news is that they finished early and the car ran great. We got on the road about 10:30 and made it as far as Bozeman. 

We got to the Firestone right after 7 and were their first customer. They got it into the garage and on the computer. After a spell, the guy came out and gave us the bad news. The number two cylinder was misfiring and they suspected the plugs. I told them I can't remember the last time I had it tuned. He also suggested we replace a cable because they were notorious for going bad. The main problem was that it involved 3 hours of work to replace the plugs because they had to remove so much stuff just to get to the plugs.

We went to a nice place down the street for breakfast and read the paper and wasted as much time as we could.

We drove for seven hours and seventeen minutes and covered 520 miles. That means we traveled at 71.72 miles per hour over the whole trip. We decided that since we weren't going to make Spokane today, it didn't really matter if we drove 3, 4 or 6 hours tomorrow.

We might as well enjoy the trip and drive while the sun is out and party in a nice town while the dark is out. We lost the light today about 5 and drove the last hour and a half in the dark.

That kind of precipitated the decision to spend the night in the Boze.

9:45PM: We have returned from a night on the town. We had a fabulous dinner at Ferraro's, a great little Italian restaurant we discovered several years ago when we passed through the Boze. 

And now...to bed!