On the road

Airstream on the road

So it took us all day Thursday to pack the trailer. Not surprising since Jim was away until Wednesday night. And its veggie harvest season, too, so Marsha was freezing beans from the backyard farm and getting ready to hit the road all at the same time. Amazing woman, that Marsha. I try to keep up as best I can but my Male-ness is a bit of a handicap! Or so I'm told.

It was 7:30 Thursday before we were about done packing the Airstream and we decided we'd leave anyway and put in a few miles - just because we could. We got as far as Cheyenne, Wyoming before both of us were fighting the Big Sleepy and weaving the trailer around the highway like sailors on shore leave. We headed for an advertised Curt Gowdy State Park until, a few miles off the Interstate over by the Air Force base, we discovered Gowdy's state park was another 24 miles up the back road toward Laramie. So we banged a Uie and eventually found a string of semi trucks pulled over on a wide spot of the road near a massive trucking depot. Marsha whipped our Airstream around again and pulled right to the front of the line. Snacked and racked by 12:30 AM. 

Friday early traffic roused us at sunrise and we drove all day into the Wyoming winds from Cheyenne to Snowville, Utah 7 miles from the Idaho state line. Just under 500 miles but it took all of 12 hours. We hold our speed to about 60-65. On the way to Cheyenne from Denver we averaged 15 MPG. But by Evanston we were averaging only 12.3 MPG against the winds. Coming down Desolation Canyon into Ogden and up to Snowville, Utah the average MPG went up to 12.7 for the trip as a whole. We ended up in Snowville, where there is rumored to be a monument to two of daughter Elizabeth's winter trips back to Lewis and Clark College - snowed in at the edge of Utah, not halfway to Portland from Grand Junction. Well, we looked around for said "monument" but only found an overdue bar bill at the Wayside Pub and Eatery.
Saturday's drive across Idaho put us in La Grande. More on that later.