July 12, 13, 14 - bunch of driving and annoying water issues

July 12, 13, 14

From: Hamilton, OH

TO: Cheyenne, WY

Important Facts: More water in trailer, lost license plate, corn

So we left Roy’s Farm bright and early on Friday, having had two beautiful days free of rain and with warm weather.  We said goodbye to the cows and the car collection, packed up the canopy, checked the tires and drove off into the morning sunlight.

June 12: THE. LONG. DRIVE.

We set our GPS for Park City, UT and it said 1,658 miles. We had to do that in three days to make it to Park City on July 14^th.  That’s a lot of miles. And given that our speed really didn’t exceed 70 miles per hour and we had to stop for gas every 150 miles, we were considering pushing back our ETA at Park City to July 15^th. Nevertheless, we took off, like a bat out of hell, dragging a moose.

Ohio was gone quickly. Iowa and Nebraska were corn on the left and soybeans on the right, though sometimes that was switched for variety.

Regardless, we had to drive.  And we did. Through Ohio, more rain, into Iowa, reaching Des Moines around dinner time. We had checked the trailer and found more water and realized the front window on the trailer had popped loose.  Luckily, I had packed a caulking gun and some extra silicone tubes so we did some emergency repairs.

Previously, with nearly an inch of standing water in the rear compartment, I had drilled a half inch hole in the bottom of the storage area to drain the water.  Of course, mildew had begun…I worried we wouldn’t be able to sleep in the thing. But, Binh’s optimism showed through and we simply trudged onward.

Around Omaha, we thought about camping but Binh had taken over driving and her resolve to get us under 1,000 miles to go on the GPS pushed up to a Motel 6 outside Lincoln, NE late in the evening. It was a new hotel and crowded with what seemed to be a football team but was quiet and clean.  I grabbed a mattress from the trailer and slept on the floor, with the rest of the team sacked out in the two queen beds.  The shower was magical.

In the morning (this being the 13^th), we got up and started moving.

In western Nebraska the scenery changed from cornfields and farms to more ranchy, hilly grassland. We had entered the West.

We had another whipping powerful rain storm in Wyoming - 5 days driving, 5 days with rain...WTF?

TRAINS – A note on trains

In Corning, NY, the campground had been hard by a set of railroad tracks and the train wasn’t shy about blowing its horn every time it came by – around every 6 hours it seemed.

At Roy’s farm, there was a train as well, much more distant; though you could hear it’s horn faintly at times.

All along I80, the main thoroughfare we had picked up to reach Salt Lake City, we followed train tracks and a few times when we stopped for gas we had to cross tracks to get on or off the highway.

Last night at the AB Campground/RV park outside Cheyenne again the sounds of train whistles could be heard above the sounds of cars and doves.  At the campground which we pulled into around 4pm, with the sun still high in the sky we unpacked and it all dried quickly.

In addition, there were coin laundry machines and we washed everything that had a mildew smell.  We were at 6,000 feet and by the time we hit the hay, everything was dry and clean. We cooked pasta and spaghetti sauce and it was an all around success.

A note on the stove: Our vintage stove has worked perfectly – the one thing we really worried about. It starts easy, has ample fuel from a propane tank on the trailer tongue and burns a clean blue flame with no odor.  If only everything else worked so well.

Another note: we hit a pretty bad storm outside Cheyenne – tornado warning, driving rain, slowed down to 40 miles per hour, etc.  When we got to the campground, Max noticed that our trailer license plate was gone. Just a tiny tag of metal left. It had been blown off during the storm.  Ordered a new one from our insurance company and it should be fedex to us in Park City. Meanwhile, I put the front plate from the car on the trailer…

July 14: Getting Going

So here I am at the picnic table in Cheyenne, typing up this blog post, unable to post it since the wifi here isn’t so good. Will post later.

July 14: Arrived in Park City...posting....