Big push to Great Falls

 The Little America Resort did not offer a b’fast, so we were up and outa there with the room coffee to go.  It had snowed a skiff over night and was quite cold.  Road conditions were not great with packed snow in the passing lane but clear and essentially dry in the right lane.  Warnings about black ice had Karen at her wits end, but we made it to Casper without trouble after which the roads improve markedly.  I had meant to fuel up in Casper, but neglected to do so which resulted in some anxiety as the barrens of Wyoming were in front of me.  Made it to Kaycee (barely) which had a single gas station open.  There was a fierce head wind which wreaked havoc on gas mileage and any sense for how far a tank of gas would get us.  We stopped in Billings with hopes of finding the Burger Dive, which we missed on the way down.  Located it and shared a great burger that lived up to the reputation, served by the current generation of ownership.  The reputation derives from this nondescript burger joint in downtown Billings MT having won a $10,000 prize in the 2016 World Burger Championship.  Back on the road, the wind picked up and contributed to ground blizzards and icy conditions.  Those issues along with a poor decision to pass a semi left my nerves frayed and patience thin when we arrived in Great Falls with two options for COVID testing.  The first involved stopping at the CVS to see if they had any Ellume home test kits, which provide for a “Professionally Observed” test protocol.  The kits were in stock, so we set about downloading the requisite apps (two of them) in the store and then registering accounts in order to make consecutive appointments for virtual invigilation.  All this with the said frayed nerves and short temper - well, I’ll leave that to the imagination.  But it got done, so with early next day appointments and kits in hand, we continued on to the historic Avron Hotel in downtown Great Falls to see what I’d gotten us into. The neighborhood looked quite sketchy, but the hotel room turned out to be spacious and very comfortable (great bed!).  Also, the hotel had a VERY large secure garage adjacent so no worries about parking overnight.  We weren’t too keen after a long anxious day on the road and worry about COVID-19 testing, so we just made do with a pseudo-charcuterie board and a bottle of cheap wine before bedding down with hopes that our Professionally Observed COVID test will prove successful in the morning.