A Dry Run to Billings

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.