Days 21 & 22 The Road Home

3/28 & 3/29 - Days 21 & 22 The Road Home

I got up this morning and left Aurora, CO at 7 a.m. I arrived in Boise about 6:15 p.m. It was a long day, driving into a big head wind in Wyoming, some snow, some rain, lots of freezing temperatures along the way. It was an interesting drive until I got down the hill near Ogen, UT, and from then on it was easy. I only made two stops all day, both for fuel, coffee and a long stretch and emptying my bladder. (What, too much information?)

When I left Clarkston, Margaret made sure I had the ice scraper in my car. Good thing, because snow had frozen to the passenger side of the car this morning and it would've been a drag having to wait for it to thaw out. Thanks, Honey!

The sight of the snow capped Rocky Mountains as the back drop to Denver is awesome. I had never seen them with this much snow on them.

The roads in northern Colorado and most of them in Wyoming are siped/striated so that they have better traction when there is snow on them. I appreciated that this morning. It was thirty four just west of Cheyenne. It got down to as low as 16 degrees on I-80 and didn't get above freezing until about Rawlins, WY.

I'll be home tomorrow & I'm looking forward to seeing Margaret & my little orange buddy, Ivan. I was going to go through McCall, but it looks like snow that way so I will go through Weiser & Council up HWY 95. It's about the same amount of driving time (about 5 hours) and the road is better than HWY 55 from Eagle.

When I crossed the the White Bird Creek I took the old White Bird HWY grade, at least the lower part where it hooks back up with HWY 95. I always wanted to drive it as I have heard stories about it for many years. I knew Margaret wasn't really interested so I was able to drive it without scaring her. NOW I want to drive the upper part which includes the summit and hooks back up with the Johnston Road cutoff on the north end.

Very little worked out on this trip as I had hoped except golf.
I think the golf courses I played were as advertised and most of them were bargains too. I was just about to get to the good part of the trip, less driving, more flavor of the areas, but there was no reason to stay on the road with no place to play, and no local flavor to be experienced.

I plan to try again, maybe around Labor Day, maybe next year, depends on what the situation with Coronavirus is by
mid-August. If I do a fall / late summer trip I'll go backwards on my route and do the northern states first, then New England. I'll proceed down the east coast and to Florida then come back up through Alabama, Tennessee, western Kentucky and finish in Missouri. On the way home there is a course I skipped in Kansas I want to play, one in Albuquerque and one in Cortez, CO. The latter two I missed on because of weather. Wish me luck!

I don't know when things will get back to normal, or what the new normal is going to be. I've heard several people say they think Coronavirus is a hoax and/or a conspiracy. Hoaxes rarely kill this many people. If people want to believe that, its their prerogative. Conspiracies are where you find them, usually in your own mind because they fit your point of view, be you liberal or conservative.

Hope you enjoyed reading this, or at least some of it. It was difficult keeping up on the blog with the long travel days. That was about to get easier too. I have spent time editing & re-writing (most of) the things I wrote on the road and posted them on Facebook.

Randy

Random thoughts while I was driving:

Colorado & Wyoming get my votes for the worst roads. Of course they have more severe winters than of the other places I drove, so maybe they deserve a pass. Louisiana probably had the best roads / highways, but most of the states do a pretty good job. An astounding amount of road construction projects going on. I hate the road work ahead signs and reduced speed limits when no one is actually working on the road! There is a lot more of that than actual road work.

Texas drivers must think the speed limit signs indicate the minimum speed they are supposed to travel. It's not just that they disregard the speed limit in Texas, they make a mockery of it AND cars with Texas plates do the same thing out of state too!

It turned out I actually lost 3 lbs. on the trip. All that walking to and from the golf cart and inconsistent meal times must have been a bonus.