A Workday in Billings, Then Sheridan

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:00:00 -0600

My first night on the road turned out to be a pretty good argument for free parking. I spent it in the Bass Pro/Cabela’s and Sam’s Club lot in Billings. There was a little highway noise, but nothing that caused a problem. I pulled out at 8:15 in the morning, with sunshine and an actual workday ahead of me.

Riverfront Park was the destination for the morning, which is a considerably better answer to “where’s the office today?” than most Mondays offer. I stayed there until late afternoon, then started looking at how much ground I could reasonably cover after work. I’m trying to get to Alabama by way of South Dakota and the Ozarks, and I’d like to actually spend some time in the Ozarks rather than simply drive through them.

Of course, I was also still thinking about water. The 23U’s plumbing is winterized, and the overnight temperatures have been making the decision to turn it back on unnecessarily interesting. Rapid City and Sioux Falls looked promising, but the stretch through Wyoming was another matter. I considered putting water in the fresh tank without running the pump. That might be less risky than filling the entire plumbing system, but it still left me weighing the convenience of running water against the possibility of dealing with frozen plumbing. For now, the question is still following me east.

I looked at a few routes out of Billings. The US-212 shortcut was tempting on paper, and there was a longer southern option, but the route through Sheridan and Gillette on I-90 looked like the sensible one for the motorhome after dark. I left Riverfront Park, stopped for gas, and headed toward Sheridan.

The fuel stop had its own little technical mystery. At the Holiday station on South Billings Boulevard, the pump hit its $175 transaction limit, so I had to start another purchase. Then it kept shutting off while I tried to finish filling. Between the two transactions, I put in 42.864 gallons for $188.56. That’s a fairly substantial drink, although I still wasn’t completely sure the tank was full. I reset the trip odometer and moved on. At least I’ll have a better baseline for fuel economy going forward.

I made it to Sheridan, stopped at Walmart for a few things, and started thinking about dinner. Also, whether to call it a night. Pushing farther would mean more miles behind me, but it would also mean turning a perfectly reasonable travel day into a late one. I checked what staying in Sheridan would do to the Ozarks portion of the trip. It doesn’t necessarily cost me that time, as long as I keep making steady progress over the next several days.

So I’m leaning toward dinner and a night in Sheridan. There’s still plenty of road between here and Alabama, but I don’t think every evening needs to be an endurance test.

A Dry Run to Billings

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 -0600

October 25, 2026

The 23U finally got to do the thing it was ostensibly purchased for: go somewhere. I’ve spent enough time working on its electrical system and figuring out where everything belongs that driving it toward Alabama felt like a change of department.

I left Helena in the evening, aiming for Billings. That’s not a heroic first-day distance, but I also need to work Monday, and getting a useful chunk of Montana behind me seemed better than trying to make a point with mileage. The larger route is east through South Dakota, down through the Ozarks, and eventually Daphne, Alabama.

There was one small logistical issue. The plumbing is still winterized, and Billings was looking cold enough overnight that filling the fresh tank suddenly seemed less like a convenience and more like an experiment. I spent an unreasonable amount of time considering whether I could put water in the tank without running the pump. For now, the sensible plan is to keep the plumbing dry, use bottled water, and wait until I’m farther east and the overnight lows are reliably above freezing. I also considered the Utah route to escape the cold. That seemed like a fairly elaborate way to avoid one problem by introducing a lot more driving.

Around 6:11, a photo from near Helena caught the last of the daylight through the windshield. There are fences and a pale sunset in the background, and a little pink smiling cup-shaped thing with legs sitting on the dashboard in the foreground. Apparently I’ve acquired a passenger with an unusually consistent attitude.

I was also thinking about the mountain passes, mostly whether making it to Billings would mean the worst of that part was behind me. That question is a lot more interesting in a motorhome than in a car.

And because I apparently can’t travel without creating another technical project, I spent some time thinking about monitoring the WattCycle batteries or Victron SmartShunt from my Mac, then feeding state-of-charge data into a dashboard on the iPad. Home Assistant and Tailscale are already in the picture. This is still a prototype idea, not a finished system, but it would be nice to see what the house batteries are doing without manually checking everything.

I got to Billings after midnight. At 12:20 a.m., I parked at Bass Pro Shops and did the informal overnight-parking reconnaissance. No prohibiting signs that I could see, one trailer that looked like somebody might be living in it, and a few cars with fogged-up windows. Not exactly a reservation confirmation, but enough to give it a try.

The plan for Monday is to work from Billings and get back on the road afterward. For now, the first leg is done. The plumbing can wait.

RV Journal

A Workday in Billings, Then Sheridan

A Dry Run to Billings