I suspect that at least some of you are wondering if we ever made it home. Well, we did and as the late Paul Harvey use to say, " and now for the rest of the story."
May 30, 2016 (Mon) Indianapolis, IN to Westerville, OH (185/7032 miles 27.8mpg) ??/??° - We got up and took off early never thinking to look at the temperature. Nor did we when we arrived in Westerville thus the question marks for the temperature range for the day. It was clear though. We did notice that, and the relatively short trip was uneventful.
Almost 60 years ago Mark arrived, excited and a bit scared, at Bartlett Hall, a men's dorm on the Alfred University campus, to begin a new phase in his life as a college undergrad. Upon climbing the 4 flights of stairs to the only room on the 4th floor he was warmly greeted by Marvin, his new roommate. The elderly Marvin - he was 6 years older and a newly released Air Force vet - helped him with the transition to life on his own (more or less). Several years later he and Anne (his wife and a classmate of Joy's) happened to be living in East Liverpool, Ohio when Mark was released from the Army and took his first job there. Anne and Marvin not only helped our transition to civilian life but opened their home to us when our newly rented house wasn't quite ready for us to move into. And they later babysat our 2 year old son when our daughter was born. We lost contact with them after we moved from Ohio but when Marvin died a few years ago we got in touch with Anne and today we saw her again after 50 some years.
It was great to see her and to catch up on her (and Marvin's) doings over the years. She too is a quilter so there was plenty about that to talk about - as if there might be a lack of subject matter. Mark, their son whom we last saw as a toddler, and his wife graciously provided a delicious Memorial Day meal and their guest room for the night. Thank you Mark and family.
C010456 Triguba home, Westerville, OH
May 31, 2016 (Tue) Westerville, OH to Home (552/7584 miles 34.5mpg) 80/??° - We said good-bye to Anne last night so that we could make an early start this morning. We had over 500 miles to go with the worst coming at the end (NY City area traffic) when we'd be the most tired. Nonetheless, Mark was up and had fixed coffee for our trip!
Our bed time last night was late, as you might imagine, making staying awake as we drove east on I-70 and I-76 (the Pennsylvania Turnpike) a challenge. But frequent change of driver kept us from serious incident. The drive itself was uneventful until we reached New Jersey. Almost as soon as we started up the Garden State Parkway we hit stop and go traffic. We should have expected it but we didn't. Fortunately, we didn't have all that far to go. We got home about 6:00 exhausted and glad to be safely back.
The question was asked of us whether we preferred traveling by car (with motel accommodations) or motor home. It's hard to say. Each has its advantages. We'll have to take another trip and do more research.
C011008 Home
June 4, 2016 (Sat) - While not part of our trip west our sojourn to Suffern, NY and back today turned out to be worth mentioning. It was the occasion of Joy's 60th high school reunion. Since Suffern is less than 100 miles away, we debated whether to go up and back in one day or secure a motel room for the night - we've become quite experienced at that! We chose the one day option.
The reunion itself was great fun, Joy got to see some former classmates she hadn't seen for quite some time as well as some she sees on a fairly regular basis. The trip back that night was another story. We hadn't expected rain, there was no mention of it in the forecasts, but rain it did - and so heavy at times that our windshield wipers couldn't keep up. To make matters worse, the heaviest came as we negotiated the construction zone on the Garden State Parkway. The traffic was so heavy and exits so disrupted, to say nothing of an absence of shoulders, that pulling off the highway and waiting for the storm to pass was not an option. We had no choice but to keep going. Because of the construction the lane marking had not been renewed so were all but invisible. The only way to know our position on the road was to watch the cars on either side of us and the ones ahead. Verbal updates from the co-pilot were also a great help. Thankfully the speed was slow.
As the rain began to let up two cars roared past us going considerably faster then traffic and conditions would dictate, changing back and forth across the three south bound lanes and seemingly having a great old time making their way past the slower cars. Some time later we came upon an area where the three lanes diverged to allow for some construction. Some of the cones set up to direct traffic had been disturbed and the large electronic warning sign had been overturned. Police had just arrived to do their thing. We speculated that one of the cowboys had decided to whip across lanes at the wrong time, hitting the cones and warning flasher and gone on. We hit a mutilated cone lying in the middle of the road about a mile further on.
We found that drive home far more stressful than driving 7500 miles across the country and back.
QC61-06 And Finally Home
QC61-05 Over the Rockies and eastward
May 22, 2016 (Sun) Montrose, CO to Pueblo, CO (255/5603 miles 35.4mpg) 60/86° - A quick word about this motel. It seems to be home for displaced (in some way) people. The rooms on each side of us seemed to be occupied by semi-permanent residents. This is not necessarily a bad thing except that the fellow in the closest room was a heavy smoker, as was his friend who spent several hours with him. Because the rooms are "smoke free", as are most motel rooms these days, they sat at a small table outside his door (and therefore ours). Going to and from our room was not the most pleasant of experiences.
Some of the motels we have stayed at recently have been electrical socket challenged. Which means plugging in the computer requires unplugging a motel appliance or working someplace other than the desk, usually both. An extension cord went on our shopping list several days ago. So our stop at Walmart this morning will, hopefully rectify the situation - and several food related situations.
So much for that. The reason we are here is to see the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in the National Park of the same name. It was well worth the visit. It is not as popular as some of the other parks out here so we had it pretty much to ourselves. We were able to stop at the overlooks and hike down the short trails to the edge of the sheer cliffs - nearly 2000 feet high is some cases. looking down to the Gunnison River below was scary even with heavy railings to keep us from falling over and the views were awesome (to use a currently over used word).
We set a record today! An altitude record. We took US-50 from Montrose to Pueblo crossing the Rocky Mountains via Monarch Pass - 11,312 feet at the summit. There was still plenty of snow up there. We stopped to take pictures, of course, but it was cold (53°) and very windy so we didn't hang around. A couple of young fellows driving a sporty little red car didn't seem to care. They were actually having a snowball fight.
Cigggy crossing the Continental Divide at 11,312 feet.
We ate a sandwich lunch (late) in/near a BLM campground with a magnificent view of the mountains now to the west.
C007045 EconoLodge, Pueblo, CO (el64)
May 23, 2016 (Mon) Pueblo, CO to Limon (203/5807 miles 30.3mpg) 66/75° - Broke another altitude record today. That's two days in a row. Maybe tomorrow will be a third - or maybe not. Several years ago, 40 or so, we were out here with our kids and tried to find the road up Pikes Peak, got lost and ended up in Cripple Creek. We thought we'd try again. We found it this time. There were not any warnings about motor homes, etc. at the gate but there is a height warning which would probably restrict most motor homes, 5th wheels and trucks. The road up is very steep in places and some switchback turns were so sharp that even Cigggy would have been better off articulated. As we went up, ears popping, the temperature dropping (to 25), the snow along the road increasing (to 10 feet or more), the trees becoming smaller and smaller and finally disappearing all together and breathing becoming more and more labored for us of the elderly persuasion, even just riding in the car, we witnessed some most amazing views - except at the summit (14,093 feet) because it was in the clouds. The drive back down was as exciting as going up. The lack of guardrails wasn't as obvious on the way up. They would have lent a degree of comfort on the way down.
We had debated swinging by the Air Force Academy but found we had plenty of time to do it so off we went when we safely reached the bottom of Pikes Peak. We drove around the loop enclosing the school proper, dutifully stopped at some of the overlooks and perused the visitor's center where we watched a 20 minute video of cadet life. It was a very moving film.
C007045 Comfort Inn, Limon, CO (ex109)
May 24, 2016 (Tue) Limon, CO to Hays, KS (213/6065 miles 30.6mpg) 51/80° - There was a Flying J truck stop station just across I-70 from the motel so we thought we may as well top off before getting on the road. Bad decision. In Kansas gas could have gotten it for 10 cents a gallon less! Oh well. The weather forecast for the I-70 corridor across Kansas (our intended route for the day) was for storms, but the skies were clear at 7:15 as we hit the road. They were still clear when we stopped at rest stop a rest area a couple of hours later but the NOAA station broadcasting there was still indicating problems ahead. None developed.
In Hays, Hildene dinged to tell us we were about to pass a quilt shop. We stopped in, of course, but not before looking for a car wash (Cigggy was in dire need of one after all the dirt roads we'd been on). Hildene said there was one 1.6 miles south. The next closest being 38 miles north. The close one turned out to be an empty dirt lot. We chose not to try for the other one. Cigggy is still covered with dust from Capitol Reef, Arches and Pikes Peak, but Joy has some new fabric to fondle.
C009488 Sleep Inn, Hays, KS (H109)
May 25, 2016 (Wed) Hays, KS to Columbia. MO (394/6495 miles 36.2mpg) 62/83° - After I put the computer away last night we got a tornado warning. First the front desk called and said that if the siren sounded to come down to the first floor where the windows are double. We didn't know exactly what she meant by siren but assumed she meant the internal building alarm so when the city siren went off we stayed in our room and waited. Our phones sounded a warning adding to the excitement. The sky got very dark and a thunder storm of major proportion passed over but no tornado touched down that we know of in our vicinity. At one point during a lull in the storm the setting sun came out and presented us with a wonderful full arc rainbow. Then the storm continued until after we went to sleep.
Having survived the night, we got off this morning at about 7:00. Last night's storm had passed but the skies were still heavily overcast and very dark to the west and north. It looked like more was coming. It didn't, not for us at least. It stayed behind us as we traveled east. Flat Kansas landscape was our scenery for the day so the heavy traffic in the cities of Topeka, Kansas City and finally Columbia, Missouri were a welcome diversion in a way. We got in at about 2:30 and are enjoying and afternoon of relaxation.
C009882 Wingate by Wyndham, Columbia, MO (Ex109)
May 26, 2016 (Thur) Columbia, MO to Indianapolis, IN (364/6823 miles 35.1mpg) 66/?° - We were going to get gas before we got on the road this morning. Forgot! So we ended up not having a choice but to pay to pay 20 cents a gallon more than we needed to. At least we weren't filling a motor home tank.
Again we traveled east with storms in our rear view mirror, but today we could also see storms ahead. They must have been slow moving because we caught up and plunged into heavy rain around 9:00. But it was about over by the time we crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois at 9:20. The rest of the trip through Illinois and Indiana was overcast but there was no rain to speak of the rest of the trip.
We wanted to have a full tank of gas to start our final leg home on Monday so we pulled off the interstate in Indianapolis and made our way to the Flying J station we've used before. It turned out to be nothing but a pile of twisted burned steel beams. It had completely burned down (a couple of years ago it turned out).
After traveling across the country and back, booking and staying in many motels along the way, we think we have learned how to take advantage of the available deals and discounts to save the most money. Unfortunately we didn't learn what plans to join and their hidden caveats until too late to take advantage of many, if any. Oh well, next time.
C010246 Johnson home, Indianapolis, IN (x4)
QC61-04 More National Parks
May 20, 2016 (Fri) Panguitch,UT to Salina, UT (289/4986 miles/35.6mpg) 51/73° - Well here we are again back in Salina, Utah after a couple of exciting days with canyons. Yesterday from the bottom looking up (Capitol Reef), today on top looking down (Bryce Canyon). We started the day looking for a place that served breakfast. There was nothing in the 25 miles between Panguitch and Bryce Canyon except Ruby's - an over-priced tourist trap at the park entrance, and an equally pricey "diner" nearby where hamburgers were more in vogue than sausage and eggs. We chose Ruby's, even though a tour bus had just disgorged a full load of tourists, because they offered a breakfast buffet. It turned out that the buffet did not include coffee or juice though the price would indicate that it should. We'd have been better off ordering from the menu.
When we spent a week at Bryce Canyon back in 2010 we would start our tour of the park at the furthest point and work our way back to the campground. That way we'd miss most of the crowd going the other way. We did the same today but the crowds were out full force. And today was very windy and a bit too chilly to spend much time at the overlooks. The canyon was still beautiful though and worth going back to see in spite of the negatives. Since our visit there was a bit shorter than we'd planned, we thought we'd visit Cedar Breaks National Monument on our way back to Salina and I-70. When we got to the road in, though, we saw a sign saying it was closed 30 miles ahead. So much for that! We backtracked and went over the mountain a different way. This road took us to well over 9000 feet with views to match, but no turn-outs to view them. Snow, while not on the roads was in evidence all through the Dixie National Forest.
C008410 Scenic Hills Super 8, Salina, UT (pl83)
May 21, 2016 (Sat) Salina, UT to Montrose, CO (362/5349 miles/33.1mpg) 49/83° - Got off at about 7:20 with what has become the standard motel breakfast - at least one was included - and headed for Arches National Park. The Visitors Center just inside the gate is at the bottom of an almost sheer cliff probably over a thousand feet high. The road into the park is cut into this wall of rock. Looking up we could see motor homes, buses, cars and motor cycles zig-zagging up the incline in a long line, like a trail of ants returning home from a feast of spilt sugar. The entry road to the gate told why. It was packed solid with vehicles inching their in. The line moved slowly but as old folks we moved faster. Our golden age pass got us out of the long line and into a much shorter one. Since we'd been here before, we didn't stop to gawk or take pictures - the turnouts were mostly full anyway. At the end of the road, 18 miles out, we turned into the campground - as former campers we gave ourselves permission - and took a break from the hordes. As far as we could tell, the rocks and arches hadn't changed a bit since 2010, still awesome and beautiful, so we went on.
Utah route 128 out of Moab goes along the Colorado River canyon and is one of the most spectacular drives in the west, we think, and conveniently led us back to I-70, the second most spectacular drive. Wanting to make a pit stop before heading down US-50 to Montrose, we followed signs to the Colorado Welcome Center in Fruita onto a traffic nightmare. We entered a maze of several "rotaries", a series of traffic circles laid out like the gears of a Swiss watch. With Joy reading signs and supplementing Hildene's instructions and Mark making death-defying moves across the flow of traffic, we made to the rest stop without much trouble. Getting back on I-70 wasn't so easy. After negotiating a couple more rotaries we found ourselves with the choice of I-70 west (back where we came from) or city streets. We chose the city streets. Several rotaries later (one the original we hit on the way in, we made it onto I-70 east.
Grand Junction presented more problems, but only because of the street names. To get to US-50 from I-70 we had to negotiate some city streets. At one point Hildene said to take a right onto 25th street. We stopped at a light at 24th street. The next traffic light should be at 25th street right? Nope. It was 24 1/2 street. OK. We had a good laugh and went on. Before the next right was a separate right turn approach lane separated from through traffic by curbing. This one had to be 25th though there was no signage to the effect. Well it wasn't! It was a second 24 1/2 street. Now we were in real trouble - real city streets. Hildene came through though and we made it out. Another street name we came across was B 3/4. In fact there were a couple of 3/4 streets. We have concluded that the new Colorado pot laws have played havoc with city planning.
C008772 Black Black Canyon Motel, Montrose, CO (ex69)
QC61-03 A Return to Utah
May 17, 2016 (Wed) Bend, OR to Mountain Home, ID (365/3983 miles/34.2mpg) 57/78° - Party last night! Not us, we weren't invited. It started too late anyway - 2:00am. It went on until about 5:00am two doors down or that's when we finally got back to sleep. I guess motels aren't much different than campgrounds in that respect.
We got off at about 8:40 this morning after breakfast at IHOP. Yes IHOP - we thought we'd give them a try. Not bad but almost as expensive as Denny's. We came out of the West Cascade Mountains soon after leaving Bend and traveled through long stretches of flat sagebrush covered plains. I hadn't realized Oregon had such country. Prairie Dogs crisscrossed the road tempting us to hit them (we didn't) and the prairies themselves were often a haze of purple flowers. US20 through Oregon was beautiful, whether across the flat lands or later through mountain passes. It was a whole lot different then the same road in the east which tends to traverse some of the worst eastern cities have to offer.
We're in Mountain Home, Idaho for the night. from our window, off in the near distance, we can see the Walmart where we spent the night in our motor home several years ago. Is this motel room better? Well yes and no. The folks next door are playing their TV rather too loudly but that may be better than cars without mufflers roaring by.
C007406 Mountain Home Inn, Mountain Home, ID
May 18, 2016 (Thur) Mountain Home, ID to Salina. UT (440/4423 miles 36.8mpg) 47/72° - Here it is, the picture I tried to include with the last post. The original picture is huge. What with newly installed windows 10 and some senior moments, I couldn't make it smaller.
It's a scene from Chihuly Garden. The orange and purple shapes are glass sculptures. The garden and museum have hundreds of other sculptures. Absolutely fascinating and beautiful the way the sculptures compliment the gardens.
We were up at about 5:30 this morning (habit, we almost always get up about then), showered and went down to the Motel-provided breakfast. It wasn't much, they never are, but it held us till we could get a more substantial meal later. Since we were going into scenic environs, we decided to get sandwich fixings. We did that at the aforementioned Walmart and finally got on the road at about 7:40. The ride down I-84 and I-15 was, indeed scenic and beautiful - Salt Lake City traffic, not so much. Because of some miscommunication, we left I-15 before reaching I-70 and struck out cross country. We may have missed seeing some scenery we'd looked forward to seeing but the countryside and vistas on the "back roads" have their own beauty and it was new to us. Lunch, very late, was outside Yuba State Park. Outside, because going in would have cost $10.
C007045 Scenic Hills Super 8, Salina, UT (pl83)
May 19, 2016 (Wed) Salina, UT to Panguitch,UT (275/4697 miles/30.2mpg) 51/67° - We"re in the area so why not? We've never been there. It seemed like a minor park when we were out here before - Zion seemed the place to go. So we found some motels last night and away we went today - destination, Capitol Reef National Park.
This is from one of the side roads and doesn't begin to show the awesome beauty of the park. What a place! We'll have to come back and explore in detail. Four hours is nowhere near enough. But we have reservations on down the road.
When we left the park, we decided to take a more scenic route than Hildene was suggesting. That would be UT12 and it was most spectacular! The narrow, twisting two lane road took us up to over 9000 feet past vistas that took our breath away. At one point, maybe more than one, at about 8000 feet along what was called "Hell's Backbone" the road side dropped away on both sides with no shoulder and no guardrail. We could look down for hundreds of feet and out for miles left, right and ahead. We were glad we were in Cigggy not Q!
The Purple Sage Motel has a full sized cardboard cut-out of John Wayne and a very friendly proprietor.
C008120 Purple Sage Motel, Panguitch,UT (B79)
QC61-02 Out of Washington
May 10, 2016 (Tue) Edmonds, WA - At the base of the Space Needle in Seattle there is a garden. Not just any garden but one that combines the normal garden variety planting with unusual and whimsical glass sculptures. And inside the building is more glass of a wide variety of colors and shapes. A dazzling display of creativity. Dale Chihuly is the artist and his work is displayed around the world. The Seattle and Tacoma area is his home base. We went there to see it today and what a wondrous exhibit it was!
May 11, 2016 (Wed) Edmonds, WA to Victoria, BC (Canada) - We left Cigggy (our trusty steed) in Edmonds and traveled with Phil and Gail by car and ferry to Victoria with the mission to explore Butchart Gardens - another wondrous display of color and beauty - this time all natural. We have roamed several gardens in our travels. This is one of the most spectacular. We ended the day, tired and very foot weary, in an excellent Greek restaurant in Victoria.
May 12 2016 (Thur) Victoria, BC to Edmonds, WA - Before heading home Joy had to visit the local yarn shop. While she and Gail did that, Mark and Phil visited what was called "Miniature World". This was a collection of quite well made models build into many large dioramas depicting many events that contributed to the making of the world as it is today. There were many scenes of famous novels and fairy tales as well. The feature display was an operational lumber mill in 1 inch scale. It wasn't actually working at the time but videos showed how it did and had.
May 15, 2016 (Sun) Edmonds, WA to McMinnville, OR (248/3449 miles) - We didn't do much of anything on Friday. It was a day to re-coop from our rigorous 2 day sojourn into Canada. Saturday it rained pretty much all day so Joy and Gail got out a jigsaw puzzle (of Butchart Gardens) and Mark and Phil caught up on their reading.
We chose Sunday to start our return trip east because we thought the traffic would be lighter down I-5 through Seattle. That worked, but further south, not so much. Add almost constant rain, heavy at times, and our trip to McMinnville was less than enjoyable. It was good we had a break in Lakewood (WA) to see Bob. He is there to help Kecia babysit three great grandchildren, all under five, and three dogs while their father is doing some military training in the desert. It was good to see Bob holding up so well. And we enjoyed seeing Kecia again.
After a delicious lunch we went on to McMinnville where we met up with nephew Jake. After dinner at a very nice Cajun restaurant, we walked a bit in town looking in the interesting shop windows. Ice cream for desert and then to bed.
C006878 Guesthouse Vineyard Inn, McMinnville, OR
May 16, 2016 (Mon) McMinnville, OR to Bend, OR (163/3617miles) 57/63° - When we went the the restaurant last night we just happened to park in front of Boersma's Sewing center. A Quilt shop. A big one, it turned out, four stories. Joy had to check it out, of course. we had plenty of time this morning before we were to meet Jake again at his place of work - Coelho Winery. Can't go to a winery without tasting the wine. Jake did a great job of explaining the background of each wine we tasted.
There is a very famous, to quilters, quilt shop in Sisters, Oregon. Sisters is very near Bend. our destination for the night. Of course we stopped and after lunch in what turned out to be a local hang-out "Restaurant & Bar" with an ambiance more bar than restaurant, Joy went off to buy some more fabric.
C007041 Holiday Motel, Bend, OR
QC61-01 Westward to Seattle
Wow! Really late sending this out. Anyway, here it is. Jennifer says it should be titled "Crossing the country in a blur without the aid of Walmart".
May 1, 2016 (Sun) Home to Indianapolis, IN (732/732 miles) 48/78° Mostly rainy - Packing for this trip was easy. We had only our suitcases to pack not a whole motor home. We were off at 6:10 with an ETA of 6:21 (according to Hildene and that will change). The trip across New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio was uneventful for the most part. Sunday morning (at least) is a good time to travel in the New York City area, especially at 6 in the morning. Everyone sleeping in after a night of wild partying, I guess. It rained off and on all day. We'd heard rumors of possible storms in the Midwest, our destination and this made for beautiful cloud formations as we crossed Ohio and entered Indiana but the pending weather stayed off in the distance. But as we neared Indianapolis, the skies slowly darkened with flashes of lightning lighting up the billowing clouds. The sometimes spectacular displays to the west and north grew in intensity and looked serious. We didn't know how serious until we got to Lee and Frannie's home south of Indianapolis. They had their TV on tuned to a weather station. It showed serious tornado-rich conditions headed right at us. Within five minutes after we got there the wind began to howl. Soon our smart phones began screaming a government alert warning and the city sirens began to sound. It turned out that a tornado did touch down within a few miles and very near the highway we came in on. No substantial damage to anyone though.
C004156 Johnson home, Indianapolis, IN (x2)
May 3, 2016 (Tue) Indianapolis, IN to Lawrence, KS (529/1261 miles) - A new experience for us - finding a place to spend the night without our motor home. Instead of looking for a Walmart parking lot in a situation like this we had to find a motel. To do this we turned to an app on our smart phones. Trivago lists several motels in a specified area with a discount rate for a given time (sometimes more that one) and a rating (provided by non-biased guests). We assume that the closer we book to the night we want to stay the better the discount. At about 3:00 we chose Lawrence, KS as our destination for the night and among the several motels with available rooms we found one at the Virginia Inn with a good discount ($65 vs $129) and a high rating 8.4 (out of 10 we assume). we booked a reservation via the app and here we are. We got here at about 6:15 and our room was waiting for us. So far we agree with the rating.
C004685 Virginia Inn, Lawrence, KS
May 4, 2016 (Wed) Lawrence, KS to Denver, CO (554/1815 miles) - Denver, CO has played a big part in our lives - especially for never having lived here or anywhere near here. During our days as executive couple with Episcopal Marriage Encounter we would fly int for meetings 4 times a year and got to know the area a bit because we would explore when we weren't in meetings, which wasn't often. Our son Jeff went Colorado State in Fort Collins (50 miles north), our Daughter Jennifer took a job in Minturn over the mountain, our nephew lives in Franktown thirty miles south of Denver and our granddaughter Rachel and her new husband have just moved here. It was to see them that we stopped here tonight. We had a great visit and a wonderful Mexican dinner downtown with them. It was so good to see them!
C004685 Llewellyn, Denver, CO
May 5, 2016 (Thur) Denver, Co to Evanston, WY (445/2287 miles) - Another long day on the road today. We chose I-80 to cross the Rockies. We've taken I-70 several times and thought this way might be interesting. It turned out to be a little disappointing as far as scenery goes. Going over the mountains was a non-sequitur. Beautiful but there were not the spectacular rocks and canyons that we have found on I-70.
Our motel tonight is a Best Western. It's a little more expensive and not quite as nice. That could be location.
C005262 Best Western, Evanston, WY
May 6, 2016 (Fri) Evanston, WY to Pendleton, OR (603/2890 miles) 54/72° The included breakfast at the Best Western this morning was much better than we got at the Virginia Inn in Lawrence. This time it was waitress served scrambled eggs etc. instead of danish/bagels and coffee.
We got off at 6:25 and hit Utah at 6:35 and drove I-80 west into darkening skis. Flashes of lighting ahead and to the south heralded the rain, very heavy at times, that hit us around 7:15. The winds came up too, blowing all dust from road construction debris across the road. We barely missed being hit by a warning sign that sailed across in front of us. We ran over the legs of another that had toppled into the road. No damage to the tires that we could tell.
We wanted something other then the Wendy's fast food for lunch so we headed into Boise (ID) looking for a Chinese buffet. Big mistake! Not only was the food terrible but the traffic was impossible.
The Travelodge motel in Pendleton, OR was in the middle of town and not much to look at but it was a welcome sight after 15 hours on the road. We were so tired that we couldn't even check out the street fair that was going on up the street.
C006313 Travelodge, Pendleton, OR
May 7, 2016 (Sat) Pendleton, OR to Edmonds, WA (311/3201 miles) 54/70° Our new car calculates mpg fuel consumption as we drive. It was fun watching it reach 42.5 - instead of the 10.5 mpg (at best) that we were getting with the motor home - as we traveled somewhat flat country albeit ever so slightly down hill. But that changed as we approached the Cascade Mountains. It dropped to well below 25 mpg in the mountains for an overall average of about 27 mpg for the day. The average for the whole trip so far has been 34.5 mpg
Breakfast this morning was at a Denny's. We could have gotten something at the motel (bagels and coffee) but would have had to wait till 7:00. not worth the wait! We would have saved some money though, Denny's was expensive.
C003201 Lovell, Edmonds, WA
