On The Road

Hello from Iowa

We're at a rest stop on I-80, about 50 miles west of Des Moines. It's cold, grey, and windy out now. Hopefully it will clear up. At least, let's hope the wind dies down. Wind was the bane of my existence going across Nebraska yesterday.

First, Sun Valley. We took a slight detour to visit our friends Brian and Laura (and Laura's German Shorthair, Callie) in Ketchum, Idaho. It took us a bit longer than expected to get there; we left Seattle around 9am and didn't get to Ketchum until about midnight. We're still learning that the Bus takes just a little bit longer to get places than your average vehicle, but it does get there. The weather was beautiful in Ketchum, and we had a great day getting a tour of the area and playing with Callie.

We left Sun Valley early on Monday morning. Our goal was to get to Cheyenne, a bit less than 700 miles. Wyoming was windy, but fortunately it was at our backs for most of the trip, so we made great time. We actually made it past Cheyenne, into Nebraska, before we stopped for the night at a rest stop a few miles east of Bushnell, NE.

We were woken up Tuesday morning by someone pounding on the bus. Thinking that were were going to get in trouble for spending the night there ("No Overnight Camping" again, but it did say you were allowed to be there for up to 8 hours), I poked my head out and a very nice man just asked us to move forward a bit, as they were opening up soon and we were going to be blocking traffic where we were (I had pulled in behind a semi, rather than pull into one of the actually parking spaces). Jacqueline spent some time talking to him later and he assured us it was perfectly OK to spend the night there.

Nebraska is a fine state, I'm sure, but it was hell for us. There were strong cross-winds during our entire trip across. The Bus, being about 8 feet tall, with a wheel base no wider than your average Jetta, doesn't take too kindly to cross-winds. I'm sure our moms don't want to hear this, but sometimes it takes all the concentration I can muster just to keep it on the road.

The wind slowed us down a bit, but where we really lost time was in dealing with a few maintenance issues. First, I got tired of our stereo fritzing out on us, and gave it a good smack, and then it stopped working entirely. After driving along in angry silence for a while, I decided we had to fix it. We stopped and I spend an hour and a half mucking with it. I got it going again, although it still fritzes out every once in a while. Jacqueline did manage to get in a good run, so the time spent wasn't a total loss.

As we were pulling out of that stop, heading back to the highway, we hit a big bump. About 30 miles later, we realized that the funny sound we were hearing was the sound of our muffler dragging. We got off at the next exit and quickly rigged something up with a bit of wire, then went 10 miles up the road to a better-stocked truck stop and spend an hour coming up with something a bit more "permanent." Satisfied with my engineering job, we got back on the road and 10 minutes later we heard the dreaded sound again and Jacqueline could see it dragging in the side mirror. We pulled off on the side of the highway and this time managed to get it rigged "properly" (i.e. it's managed to last for 150 miles so far).

So that catches us up. I'll try to post more often so we don't have these massive screeds. We hope to get to Chicago by this evening, where we may meet up with a friend of Jacqueline's. More from there.

- b & j

P.S. As we passed an Ore-Ida plant in Ontario, Oregon, right on the Oregon-Idaho border, Jacqueline had the sudden realization that "Ore-Ida" was from "Oregon-Idaho". I really had never thought of that, either. We both always thought it was just a silly derivation of "All Right!" Did everyone else know that, or are we just clueless?

P.P.S. New photos are up!

Posted by brad at May 8, 2003 07:07 AM