9/28/2017 - Driving East - Day 4

Thursday (I think) - It's really bad when you are looking at the Cracker Barrel menu trying to figure out if you should be reading the Tuesday special or Wednesday special -- that was us last night.

Although we had another parking lot sweeper episode last night (we are now checking out the Walmart parking lots as we pass them to see if they are clean), we got up on time, had breakfast at Stacy's Restaurant which was recommended by the helpful lady at the laundromat, and were on the road by 7:15.  We beat the sun, but it greeted us very shortly, in full blast.

Our visors didn't quite get it yet, and even our clip-on sunglasses only helped a little.  So Joe had to sit up a little straighter for the visor to come into play.

I started giving him hundred-mile treats yesterday -- when we reached a 100-mile marker (multiples), he would get 3 cherry sour candies.  We stopped at mile marker 298 last night so he missed out on his last one yesterday, and wasn't ready first thing this morning, so he finally got his treat somewhere past Topeka.

They messed us up, from Topeka to Kansas City with a toll road, and they changed the mile marker numbers, so he probably was a little passed his 100 mile treat, but we are back on track now.  But unless I buy another bag of candy, I'm going to have to parcel them out just one or two at a time.  We have more hundreds than I have enough candy for at the 3-at-a-time rate.

We went through Topeka and I waved at Mark Dillon's parents, as requested. 

We hit Kansas City, Kansas about 9:00 and buzzed right through there, although the freeway makes lots of jogs through that city, and the city itself was really smoggy - it did not look very appealing.

We crossed the Kansas River, but I missed the Missouri River, I must have been typing. We crossed the Missouri state line at 9:20 (which I also missed) and started across that state.  We finally made a fuel stop at Higgingsville and I replenished Joe's 100-mile treats so we should be able to continue on. 

And sure enough, it wasn't long before he had logged another 100.

We began to come into the outskirts of St. Louis about 1:00 and Joe immediately started watching for signs of a White Castle.  We took the 370 bypass, to the 270 bypass, and I found a couple in my Next Exit book, so we found his White Castle and made our lunch stop.

I think we crossed three arms of the Mississippi River, or two plus a canal, going across on the 270.  We think this may be beyond where the barges run.

Once across the river, we took the 255 south to I-64, then started working our way across Illinois.  We could see the Arch and St. Louis skyscrapers in the distance.  We decided to spend the night in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, at the Archway RV Park, a very nice little campground about a mile off the interstate, where it inte3rsects with I-57.  We have full hook-ups here (I didn't even ask about a laundromat after last night's fiasco, and I have my laundry done now, anyway), and can go in tomorrow from here with empty tanks and a full tank of water.  We are about 100 miles from Vincennes so that should be an easy run in the morning, thanks to Joe's marathon driving.  But today we were off the road by 4:15, and he ONLY drove 455 miles today.  And we only bought 85 gallons of gas today.  No wildlife today, but they are really working the fields in southern Illinois -- the combines are really stirring up the dust in the bean fields, it must be really dry here.

We are really looking forward to arriving in Vincennes tomorrow and getting this part of the journey behind us.  It's been a trip!

9/27/2017 - Driving East - Day 3

Wednesday - Well, that wasn't the best night on a Walmart  parking lot.  About 1:00 a.m., the sweeper started cleaning the parking lot, very loudly.  I thought it was traffic from the highway, but it just kept going and going.  And this was not a very heavily-traveled highway when we were on it.  Finally, I asked Joe what that was and he said they were cleaning the parking lot, it was the street sweeper or whatever you call it.  That went on for a long, long time.  So please take note of how clean the parking lot is.

But we were on the move early again, by 7:05.  And we were only about a mile or so from beautiful Vail, Colorado!!!

We didn't have any sun this morning, but we could still see some of the fall colors on the mountainsides and we could see the ski slopes.

Then we encountered some fog.  The spots in the pictures are not snowflakes -- they are bugs on the windshield -- Joe didn't get that chore taken care of this morning.

 But we did have snow on the mountainsides.

These pictures would have been better if the sun was shining on the mountain slopes, but it made for easier driving to have the clouds.

We had two passes over 11,000 feet to climb.  We were not making fast miles this morning.

And we went through a few tunnels, a couple were pretty long, maybe a mile long.

We drove through some fog, and could see lots of very low clouds in the valleys (and lots of bugs on the windshield).

Once we cleared the mountains, we hit Denver about 9:00, and there we encountered some rain, but it quit about the time we came out the East side.  But that spiced up the drive through Denver a little bit.

Here is downtown Denver, through the rain and distance.

From Denver east, Colorado is very flat, very different from the western part of the state.

We did see some antelope through this plains section, 3 small herds. The second group was on Joe's side and he thought it was sheep at first, but I straightened him out.

We crossed the Kansas state line at 12:45, and we saw one more antelope, all by herself.  We are definitely in the grain belt -- we saw big fields of corn, soybeans, sunflower, milo, and hay that had already been cut.

We saw fields of late beans in the low areas, but I would say milo (or sorghum) is the main crop through here, and it makes a really pretty field as it matures - sort of reddish-amber.

We had hoped to see a whole line of combines coming across a field, but the closest we saw was a line of farm equipment, some of it looked like it was ready to go, but maybe not.

We didn't see any more antelope once we got into the farming area, and no deer all day.  But we did see several hawks along the road, especially as it got more towards evening.  We got in 575 miles today, all Joe again, and got off the road in Junction City at 6:00.  I had a plan here, but it didn't work out exactly right.  There was a Cracker Barrel at the same exit as the Walmart, and I found a laundromat in town, so I thought we would park at Walmart, eat at Cracker Barrel, then I would do laundry while Joe took a shower back at the RV.  Well, we decided to do a drive by on the laundromat so I could come back by myself.  And check the hours.  So we found one, and it said the doors locked at 8:00, and you had to be done at 10:00.  So we decided we should start the washers, then run back to Cracker Barrel, then come back to put the clothes in the dryer.  We got the washers started.  Then we decided we better wait and get them in the dryer before we left.  So we did that.  Joe added an extra quarter to the dryers, but as we were getting ready to walk out the door, a lady doing her laundry told us that the doors were already locked (oh, forgot to mention, we lost another hour, and we thought we got here at 6:30 but it was actually 7:30) and she had to let her husband back in when he took a load to their car.  So if no one was in here to open the door, you couldn't get back in after 8:00, and after 10:00, it went to automatic lockdown and you couldn't get in or out. So we stayed, got them done and folded and hit the Cracker Barrel about 9:10.  Fortunately, they were open until 10:00 so we got our meal.

Then, we went back to the RV, Joe had to wait for his shower until the water heated because we forgot to turn the hot water heater on before we left for the laundromat.  I got the clothes put away and went to bed, too tired to do the blog (I'm doing this as we drive down the road across Kansas).  And then the parking lot sweeper started up again.  They must just do this in the west, we have never run into this before.  And those things are loud.  At least this was at 10:00 p.m. instead of 1:00 a.m.  That went on for about half an hour, sounded like they were coming on in to the RV.  Then a helicopter sounded like it was landing on our roof (we are near a military base, we later learned.)  Finally, it got quiet.  Then a semi pulled in right beside us, I mean RIGHT beside us, on the driving lane side, not the parking side.  He must have gotten out to get to get his suitcase out of the back of his truck, but it sounded like he was opening our outside storage boxes, so Joe had to go check that out.  Finally, we settled down, and we did et a good night's sleep.

We are making good progress.  Got through Colorado today and more than halfway across Kansas.  We are still on track to arrive in Vincennes Friday .And we bought 105 gallons of gas today, but the prices in Kansas were better -- $2.449, then $2.189. We hope the price keeps going down the further east we get.  It got a little warmer today, 72.

Joe is putting in long, hard days but we are making good progress.  If we can continue our early-rising, we should be in good shape to get to Indiana on Friday.

9/26/2017 - Driving East - Day 2

Tuesday - Whew, Joe put in one hard day of driving today -- and he drove every mile of it.  Basically, he was in the saddle 12 hours, 7:00 to 7:00, or rather, 8:00 to 8:00 since we are in a different time zone.  We got an early start, crossed the Utah state line about 5 minutes later, and headed across the Utah salt flats.  We passed the turnoff to the Bonneville Speedway, and drove for miles through the flat area, dusted in white -- we assume salt, and there was a lot of standing water on parts of it.

We passed a Morton Salt plant along here too.  That seemed fitting.  If you enlarge the photo, you can see their logo on the front of the building.

 We drove along the edge of the Great Salt Lake for a few miles, with mountains on the other side of the road. 

We hit Salt Lake City about 9:50 MST (I will switch to that time zone now). This city is surrounded by mountains.  You can see their tall downtown buildings in the distance, with the pretty mountains in the background.

 We took the 215 bypass, but we still drove in this metropolitan area for over an hour.  These mountains were snow-capped, so they must have been a little higher.

We finally made a fuel stop at a Flying J truckstop at Springville (the southern end of the SLC suburbs), and Joe did his tire check.  He wanted to do this yesterday but didn't find any air at the truckstop we stopped at.

We got on I-15 and took it south to US 50, then southeast to I-70.  U.S. 50 and I-70 run together the rest of the way across eastern Utah and across Colorado.  It's a scenic drive, and it was beautiful.

We did see some wildlife after we got on the I-70 part.  We saw a herd of elk, maybe 10; then some wild mustangs, and some donkeys or burros but we don't know if they were wild, and then some antelope.  And a prairie dog at a rest stop.  We were moving along too fast for any wildlife pictures, but it was sure nice to get to see them.  And I got to see some fall colors through here.  (You can see that I didn't have time for any driving - I was busy)

We left the mountains and trees behind and got into cliffs and rocks for a while.

We made a pitstop at a rest stop and the Indians were out with their pottery and jewelry.  We looked it over, and even found rings we liked, but we didn't buy anything.

As the sun got lower and shadows began changing the colors in the cliffs, I took more pictures.

We finished Utah and crossed the Colorado state line at 5:50, and fueled again in Grand Junction. 
This is an ever-changing landscape and a wide variety of scenery.

And we made it 168 miles across Colorado.  We were driving right along the Colorado River for miles and miles, but it finally got too dark to see. Part of this section had a double decker highway -- the opposing lanes of traffic were offset just a little, and raised a level so we were practically driving beneath them.

We made to the Walmart in Avon, elevation 7,516, temperature 56 degrees at 8:00 p.m. when we stopped.  I'm pretty sure this is a ski resort town, but it was too dark to see when we arrived.  And we are not very many miles from Vail.

So we got 610 miles in today, plus yesterday's 482, so that's 1,092, almost halfway there.  We didn't even look for a laundromat tonight, so now the second laundry basket is filling up.  May have to wait until Vincennes to get that taken care of.

Off to bed we go, so we can do it all over again tomorrow.