Well we finally made it to Las Vegas and are starting to get settled in. I should have been adding to this in many, many short bursts instead of spewing out one long blurb. I will end up missing a lot of the details this way which will be my own loss in the end.
The drive west was your standard cross-country while pulling everything you own in a U-Haul type of venture. There were ups and downs. The drive up to Sault Ste Marie was awesome. The fall colours were peaking. We stayed at Flash's that night in his trailer just outside of Sudbury. It was heated and everything! It might have been the most comfortable bed of the whole trip now that I think about it.
The border crossing at SSM was a pretty thorough examination. It was expected since we showed up with just about everything we own. They put the squeeze on us and then allowed us to proceed thankfully. It was my first time on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It's a beautiful and wild place with a bunch of friendly people. I mean, if you're going to lose an alternator this is the place to do it. Providing that it's not in the middle of nowhere. What you want is to lose all power as you're coasting into the parking lot of a 5 room motel just east of Rapid River, MI. Then you want to meet the owners who take cash only, give you their last room, call some friends who are handy with this sort of thing, drive you 20 miles into town to purchase the part before the store closes at 9pm and then have said friends install the item. The alternator that is.
So I got a new alternator.
Day 2 we crossed northern Wisconsin as it poured down rain. It was beautiful though. All forest. No interstate travel at all. I highly recommend this. Best way to see the country. Once we hit Minnesota we decided to dip down through St Paul-Minneapolis to check out their rush hour. Brilliant move that was. Like a junkie coming back for another hit. Two days in beautiful nature and open roads was just too much. How could we get bumper to bumper again? While pulling a trailer I might add. We did cross the Mississippi though. Fairly close to it's point of origin. And we did drive by the Mall of America and the airport too. The Blue Jays were in town that night but I was just looking to put in the miles. Fuck them anyway. I'm on board with the 51's now.
Big mistake. We ended up in this shithole in the middle of some cornfield town in Minnesota. Actually it was Redwood Falls, MN. For the record I didn't notice that monthly rates were available until I took the picture. You gotta believe me. I was quite happy to see the big water tower in the morning. Didn't know that was there either. I think it really adds something to the picture.
The next morning we hit up a grocery store that was in a barn. This was just outside of a town called Marshall, MN where we stopped in to grab a morning coffee. I had mapped our way across town and then on into South Dakota although I did not take into account the parade that was about to take place. I got rerouted and this threw everything off except that when I got spit out of town going the wrong way we turned into the above mentioned grocery store/barn parking lot to do the U-turn. So we went it and it was awesome. Cheap. Fresh. We got cheese and fresh buns and sandwich meats and fruit. Did I mention the Amish shop there? We got new directions which was easy since we didn't have many set destinations. We were just heading west. I drove and Azure put together the snacks.
Now we did hit the Interstate once we got to South Dakota. It was going to be long and straight and kinda boring for the first little while. Actually about the first 3/4 of the state. (FYI - I'm off metric). I will say that SD was definitely the highlight of our trip. The number of pictures will attest to that. This is where it started to feel West, and if you've been west you know what I mean. Open country, big space, frontierish, Freedom.
At our first stop for gas I walked in to pay. There was an old school diner with stools at the counter and people smoking. Time travel! What strange land is this? I wander the convenience store side of the operation and what do I see but a big can of Budweiser & Clamato....pre-mixed. I enjoy this drink, but have never seen the PreB&C. I bought 2. Some may frown while others may ask why a roadside gas station sells singles. I'm in the latte group. Besides, it's the same as stopping for one. Plus the road is wide open. The whole fucking state is wide open.
We made it all the way to Kadoka, SD which turned out to be just perfect for us. There was a junior rodeo going on but it had just wrapped up for the day. We found a great little motel and an even better restaurant/steakhouse right across the street. It was full of cowboys, cowgirls and cowkids from the rodeo. They were sold out of Prime Rib by the time we entered. No matter...we just took it all in as we drank some beer. I had a steak and ate a lot of olives from the salad bar. I've been on a real olive kick since June. They had a little casino room with about 6 slot machines in it. I gave Azure $5 and she made enough to cover out tip playing video blackjack. I think our 6 beers cost us $13.50 and that included a few from the top shelf.
The next morning we got up early. This was going to be one of our big tourist days and it was more about seeing some sights than laying down miles. Our first stop or rather drive-thru was Badlands National Park.
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| The Entrance |
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| Inside Badlands |
The Badlands National Park was unlike anything I have ever seen on this planet. And I like to think I've seen my fair share. Just completely unexpected being that it is surrounded by plains. I think they came up with a fitting name for the place. It was an incredible drive except that we were pulling too much.
The road through The Badlands deposited us in Wall, SD. We had been seeing signs for "Wall Drug" ever since we entered South Dakota and it was getting to the point where the signs were becoming annoying and kind of a blight on the landscape. We ended up stopping there so I guess they worked. Thankfully it wasn't tourist season because it was already too busy for my liking. It was a tourist trap. A bunch of overpriced shit. We bought postcards there. Never mailed them though. Sorry to those who didn't get any.
From there we headed to Mt Rushmore in the South Dakota Black Hills. I was really looking forward to this part of the drive. As we got closer to Mount Rushmore the road was getting steeper and steeper and the Jimmy was jumping gears more often. I think I did something to my 2-Low gear in the Badlands because I was getting almost no torque from it. We barely made it to the top and up to the entrance when the overheating light came on. Apparently a lot of folks overheat getting to the top as the ticket-taker told it. I was concerned and it really took away from my experience at Mt Rushmore which was too bad because it was a perfect day. These were basically the first hills we had encountered and I knew that we were going to be doing mountain travel from this point until Vegas. I wasn't really sure we could make it.
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| Rushmore |
On Monday morning we had to make the 1st of 2 or 3 mountain passes as I judged it between there and Las Vegas. After the previous day's experience with the overheating, etc, I had decided to forgo some of the more scenic routes I had envisioned for the more direct, flatter and boring Interstates. It really killed me to do that, but sometimes practicality must prevail. The pass that we took went from Casper, WY down to Rawlins, WY through a place called Muddy Gap. This was the mountain pass. Never buy gas at Muddy Gap. It's about $1/Gal more expensive than anywhere else. Of course when you need gas, you need gas. The inside of the gas station has been signed by most if not all who've passed through. I'm back near the shitter. Hopefully they don't repaint.
We had finally made our way down to Interstate 80 and we would be on these four lane disasters the rest of the way. Interstate 80 is called the Loneliest Highway in America and with good reason. Large chunks of it run through a bunch of nothingness. No exits. No truck stops. No towns. No farms or even houses for that matter. When we missed a rather large service center because of the off-ramp being under construction it didn't seem like that big of deal at first. Even when we got down to a quarter of the tank it was easy to shrug off. It was when the "Low Fuel" light came on that things tensed up a bit.
There was an episode of Seinfeld where Kramer and a car salesman tested the limits of a car once it hit the Red Zone of the fuel meter. I know that seems 'gutsy' but consider that fact that they were surrounded by civilization with a gas station not too far away. We ended up playing this game in the middle of Red Desert Wyoming it what I believe is known as The Great Basin. We got deked out by a big sign that said GAS with what looked like a small town nearby. We exited only to find that the gas station was closed and the town was abandoned! Eerie is how I would describe it. There was a sign stating that no one was to proceed into the cluster of homes, their windows all smashed out black. I wondered if we were being watched. This was about 10 miles into our Low Fuel status. We got back on the Interstate. What else could we do? We came to a rest area that was in very bad shape. And no wonder! How does anyone make it out there to even maintain it? I asked a couple in an RV if they had any gas. Nope. They were very nice and tried to use their cellular GPS to figure out how far we had to go. Turns out cellular doesn't really work in these parts. They did however, offer to follow us until we either hit a gas station or ran out. We made it. I think we drove 40 miles with the Low Fuel light on, so that's good to know.
Monday night brought us to Park City, UT just outside of Salt Lake City. It's where they held the alpine events for the 2002 Winter Olympics. It's the most liberal part of Utah so it seemed like a good fit. Amazing scenery. The best part about the Internet is that you can find a hotel, log on to hotel websites in their parking lot and then go in and ask for that rate. They know you can just stand there in front of them and book it. They are more then happy to give it to you since it cuts out the middle man. We got pizza from Papa John's and brought it to our room. A hot breakfast buffet was included. I made a kick-ass waffle and had lots of bacon.
Tuesday morning we drove down into Salt Lake City and went to Temple Square. I have always had a theory that Utah as a state is pretty much a cult and everything I saw only helped to confirm this. This LDS stuff is big business. And they are always recruiting! Young ladies walked around in pairs and were very friendly and helpful. They always seem to be wanting to get folks to watch a LDS video with them. Maybe they work on commission. Anyway, they have invested the 10-15% of each member's salaries that they receive over the course of all of their lifetimes wisely it looks like. Who knows what they own in this world, but no expense was spared on the grounds.
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| The Temple |
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| Visitor's Center |
It poured rain pretty much the entire way through Utah. I mean poured. MY wipers don't work so hot on the really fast level. The driver's side one starts going a little too far to the left and then never fully recovers. I was actually scared it was going to go flying right off. I stopped to fix it and gas up. I also grabbed another one of those pre-mixed beer & Clamatos. I was a little disappointed that we had to take the Interstate (I-15) but it wasn't so bad missing the better scenery of the two-lane highways since it was raining so hard.
We decided to make a run for Vegas. When the storm cleared the sky was amazing. We had mountain scenery with the sun coming through different cloud formations and it was starting to set as well so multiple colours were involved. Our camera was dead at this point. Sorry.
There's a part of the I-15 that cuts through Arizona that is one of the most insane stretches of highway to drive. The Interstate winds down through sheer wall red rock canyons. It would have been better not driving it at dusk with a trailer and people flying by as I tried to hold my lane. The canyons create massive wind gusts which are mentioned quite frequently on all the warning signs. I remember driving this stretch of road in my Green Van and almost getting blown across two lanes into a truck.
There is always a glitter when you cross the state line into Nevada. They want you to know it's alright to throw down and slot machines and neon await. It was an awesome sight (not captured on camera) when we crested the hill coming into Las Vegas. It's just a huge sea of lights. And I'm not talking about The Strip. I could barely make out The Strip amongst it all. I think we were able to see the entire area at once from an elevated viewpoint and it was pretty awesome. I am going to make a point of going back up there some night to snap a few off.
We arrived at out house and emptied Runaway Jim. I was so zonked. We blew up the air mattress and crashed. Home sweet home!
Pictures from the trip...Dancin' Across the USA
1 comment:
Glad to hear you made it safe and sound!! Sounds like it was a bit of a stressful trip, but worth it in the end. I want Vegas pics!
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