Before heading out, we established some guidelines:
- Travel on a budget. We have about $1,600 to cover the cost of lodging, food, hotel, and entertainment for 9 days; this comes to $175 a day. We're not including the cost of driving a car or our plane flights or airport related expenses.
- Act like a local. Read local papers, listen to local radio, talk to local people. (We'll be referring to the GetLostMT.com website with over 800 stories about places to eat, stay, and play in Montana, written by the ultimate experts: local Montanans and others who have been there.)
- Avoid franchised restaurants. Eat where the locals eat. Go to farmers' markets. Picnic.
- Travel off the beaten path. Stay off the interstate whenever possible and take the scenic route.
- Appreciate our surroundings. Learn all that we can about Montana by stopping at museums, reading interpretive signs, talking with experts.
- Keep the kids entertained--without the help of a DVD player. Sing songs, play games, look out the window, and bond as a family. We've downloaded dozens of Books on Tape onto the iPhone—thanks to the San Francisco Public Library.
- Stop every two hours. We've designed an itinerary with short driving days. Some days we're only driving an hour. But on those longer hauls, we promise to pull over and let the kids run around.
- Eat all the huckleberry shakes we possibly can. The weather is supposed to be hot and we plan to cool off with berry shakes.
- Swim. We're staying at Best Westerns along the way and they all have swimming pools. We also hope to splash around in a mountain lake and get our toes in rushing river.
- Have fun. Relax. Move slowly. Stop to smell the roses.
*To read the complete Montana road trip series, click here. To join conversations about the road trip, check out the On the Go with Amy Facebook page. If you want up-to-the-minute updates, follow @onthegowithamy on Twitter.
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