As a brief break down of the journey, this is our summary of motion:
Oct 17, we left Bellevue at 11:30 am, heading for Couttes and on down to Arizona. We stopped at Great Falls, Montana at around 6:30 pm at the Flying J. (We chose Flying Js for all the stops as it feels safer to be surrounded by other RVs and trucking rigs)
Oct 18, we headed out at 9:40. The notable and time consuming stop was in Blackfoot where we picked up a couple cell phones. The plan is much more gentle on the pocketbook than the Canadian plans, and can be used in Canada at no extra cost. However, the stop probably ate up a good 2 hours in commuting time. We finally called it a night around 6:50 at McCammon, Idaho.
Oct 19, we left at around 9:40 again (purely coincidental, as we have decide that we are not going to have an agenda, but go when we are ready, and stop when we are tired. It works for us, but I digress....) and continued on our way. The third night was in St. George, Utah arriving at 6:30.
Oct 20, we started early as there was a refrigeration truck running all night, and we were awake and ready to go by 8:50 am. We hit quite a slew of states that day. We were in Utah, briefly Arizona, Nevada, briefly California, and finally back in Arizona. We are now at Mohave Valley half way between Needles California and Bullhead City Arizona. We arrived around 12:45 yesterday afternoon.
I like the location, but we will move on next month as we are needing to find a location that is supported by Verizon so we can use our tether for internet. When it is in a service area, it is an awesome deal, with 5 G data usage for only $9.99 on top of the usual cell cost. That way, we have the security of our own network instead of wi-fi hot spots.
I will elaborate now on a few highlights.
First, a rhetorical question: Is there any part of the western states that isn't a continuous up hill climb???
From the time we crossed into Montana, we were going almost unnoticeably up hill. However, being the mule pulling the 17,000 pounds of home we live in, we found it quite noticeable. We definitely crossed some very noticeable climbs as well, but truly, they are wonderfully laid out - wide lanes, double highway, gentle curves, and in general not anything like the frightening Kicking Horse Pass and Rogers Pass of the Canadian Rockies.
Ogden Utah. What can I say but wow. To clarify, not Ogden's fault, but our beloved GPS (for those familiar with the occasional misguidings these devices are capable of, you already have a tingling of fear for the nightmare looming, but I digress...) we programmed it to take us to the Truck Stop of Flying J for refueling as we didn't want to deal with Salt Lake City. (More on that later...)
.... and so we faithfully followed the directions and wove our way into downtown Ogden - towing the 36 foot 5th - to what we discovered was the Corporate Headquarters for Flying J. Didn't know it was based there, probably would have found it to be neat trivia info, and for what it was worth, was a really nice building complex.....
However, the weave back out of the hilly, highly intersected, and under extensive road construction, city took us to highway 89 south and finally reconnected us to I15 south - with no following stop for fuel that we were comfortable with until after Salt Lake City. We made it to Springville and refueled, just as the low fuel warning alarm went off.
We are not generally big city friendly, and Calgary Alberta was the largest Ken had conquered, and under heavy guidance from his navigator. We didn't have to turn off, but nonetheless were quite aware of the 6 lanes buzzing around us, and for what extensive distance it covered.
Vegas was another BIG city, and we did have to do some highway changes on it, but all was well, and it actually was less scary than Salt Lake City, believe it or not.
Anyway, I am behind on laundry and house cleaning, having not had power or ability to open slides for 4 days, so I will bid you,
Adieu
Wow, that was a FAST trip!
ReplyDeleteI LOLed at your Ogden story. Too, too, too funny.
Glad you made it safely!