Yesterday we drove home from Great Falls after a delightful Easter weekend involving all the standard holiday delights: eggs in abundance, Easter grass underfoot, children hopped up on sugar, and parents swiping the good peanut butter eggs. It was such a delightful weekend, in fact, that neither Chip nor I gave a second thought to filling the tank before we headed out with a quarter tank of gas. In a "normal" state, such an oversight would not have been a problem. In Montana, on Easter Sunday, it was a problem. We didn't discover our blunder until we were turning south to go over the Kings Hill Scenic Byway, which the Montana Tourist Board split-infinitively describes as "allowing travelers to leisurely savor the rugged beauty and fresh air that are part of the Montana experience."
"Stretching 71 miles along US Highway 89," the description continues, "the Byway winds its way along pristine mountain streams and is home to an abundant variety of wildlife." Perhaps not unexpectedly, the Visit Montana website fails to mention that there may not be a single open gas station on that 71-mile excursion, or indeed, more or less from Belt to White Sulphur Springs. It's true that "Stretching 71 miles along US Highway 89, the Byway will terrorize families who were stupid enough to leave civilization without a full tank of gas in the minivan" is probably not going to attract the same number of tourists. Nor would, I'm guessing, "The abundant variety of wildlife and pristine mountain springs may prove to be your only sources of food and water should you run out of gas atop the 7,393-foot Kings Hill Pass." Of course we would have survived on Easter candy, hard-boiled eggs, and a disturbing rabbit-shaped loaf of bread.
When we headed up the actual pass portion, our helpful onboard computer told us that we had 31 miles until we would run out of gas. The distance to White Sulphur Springs' Exxon oasis was 41 miles. Employing every trick we'd ever heard about fuel efficiency (slow to 55! turn off the fan! coast in neutral on the downhill!--OK, maybe not that last one), we crawled our way to the top of the hill. Chip had to turn off the onboard computer to keep me from hyperventilating when the computer said we had less than 20 miles left and we were still 30 miles away. We managed to make up some ground on the downhill section and thought we were sunk when we hit another hilly portion, but in the end we were coasting into the Exxon when the computer said we were at zero. We promptly put 17.882 gallons in our 18-gallon tank, said a little prayer of thanks, and went to have lunch at EAT, the only restaurant in White Sulphur, to celebrate.