Nebraska liquid salt and Wyoming mud
The Professor and Texn nailed it but Dr Lemming and NZ Skyliner get points for accuracy while under the effect of psychotropic drugs.
Monday, December 17
It’s 1:30 am. I can’t fall asleep. I’m at a Brownsburg, Indiana Holiday Inn Express. I’ve just driven a bazillion miles from my sister’s home in Pennington, NJ through driving rainstorms to where my wife Suzy and I now are. I’m on what I call my Victory Tour. I’ve just finished a ten-year stint helping to build an APM (Automatic People Mover) system at Dulles International Airport (IAD), and I’m on my way back home to Salt Lake City, Utah.Suzy and I are doing the Tour in our 2012 Subaru Impreza 5-Door.
I’ve got the bitch (the car, not Suzy) packed to the gills with ten year’s worth of crap, and am concerned that a teeny 2.0 liter (litre for those of you in Canada, GB, Australia and NZ) will be able to handle the 84 mph (135 kph) speeds that we will be running west of the Missouri River, ie, Nebraska, Wyoming and Utah. Nebraska and Wyoming are distressingly wide so every mph you can squeak out without attracting the attention of the gendarmes means a shorter day.
Wyoming snow and sunshine
We started from my sister’s house in Pennington, NJ Monday morning. We got a late start, about 9:30 am, so it was tough to rack up a lot of miles that day. By the time we got to Brownsburg (home of NASCAR’S Tony Stewart) we had racked up 684 mi (1100 km). We were beginning to hear that the weather was about to turn bad.
Tuesday, December 18
We take off from Brownsburg after having decided that we will not make a detour to Elburn, Illinois to check out the gravestone of my great-great-great-grandfather, Ebenezer Kendall, in the Blackberry Cemetery in that town. We have guests showing up at our home on Thursday so we have to make tracks.
I have driven I-80 through Iowa any number of times. Today was no great revelation, but there were more wind farms. As we were cruising along in Nebraska, Sue asked me what my favorite states were. I said that there were elements in each that I liked. She said that she was impressed with Iowa. Rolling hills, Grant Wood territory. Suzy is a painter (she graduated last week from the U of Utah with a BA in painting, her third degree). That evening we pushed through the rush hour in Omaha and on to Grand Isle, Nebraska. Watching the Weather Channel that night, we were told to expect the first major winter blizzard the next day at noon. And by the way, it’s really great to be able to sleep with a coed every night.
Probably lost some paint, a hazard of western driving
Wednesday, December 19
We arise at 5:30 am in Grand Isle so that we can get away early, maybe beat the coming storm. The weather is cold but clear. No snow. We hit the road. The two of us had decided to be extra conservative and gas up early during the day. The distances out west in the US aren’t to be trifled with, especially in Wyoming. Gas stops can be as much as 200 miles (322 km) apart. It can be lonely out there. We stopped for gas in Ogallala, NE after a couple of hours. Sue and I traded places and she became the driver. We continued on but by the time we arrived at Sidney, NE (home of Cabellas), things were looking decidedly snowy. And the wind was picking up.
From Sidney on past Pine Bluffs, Wyoming (WY), it was White Out City with strong crosswinds. The snow was dry so it was blowing across the road, but the wind gusts were upsetting our Subie. Suzy chose to follow semis since we could see their taillights. Otherwise, it was pretty scary out there.
By the time we reached Cheyenne, WY, the snow had stopped, but the roads were still icy and tricky.
Today the Subie gets a bath
Suzy drove on to Laramie where there was about six inches (152 mm) of fresh snow on the ground, but it was sunny and we gassed up. I took over the driving chores then, and with care, made it to our home in SLC by 5:45 pm after an 800-mile (1287 km) day. The bourbon tasted great!
The Impreza handled the snow and icy conditions with no sweat. The 84 mph cruising speeds were not a problem.
There was one glitch. Suzy had checked out Umberto Eco’s “Prague Cemetery” on CD from our local library. Let me tell you, even without the distraction of imminent snow, wind or death, “Prague Cemetery” is best listened to with a tab of LSD, and not in a car. Brain hurts.
The Impreza? One of the best cars I have ever driven.
A coed with the tolerance of a saint! 🙂
For 2013, looking forward to learning how you ended up in Utah and also more about your design work.
I don’t call her “Saint Sue” for nothin. Why she puts up with me is a mystery.
If we Hoosier Curbsiders had known you were coming to Brownsburg, we would have given you a parade, or at least handed you a glass of bourbon. 🙂
I have travelled the eastern 40% of the country fairly thoroughly, but have done virtually no driving west of the Mississippi (with the lone exception of a trek to Dallas in the early 90s). With those kinds of distances to travel in a short time, it is a good thing that Suzy is not one of those travelers who thrives on frequent stops. This is my kind of travel: “What do you mean you have to go to a bathroom – we don’t need gas yet.”
Your timing was quite good. Lots of wind and snow yesterday with Iowa taking a good hit. It’s the first time in my life where a one inch snowfall created 5′ drifts – the wind was that stiff.
I took a lot of the same drive two years ago and it is an awesome one. I was impressed with the number of wind turbines in eastern Wyoming.
Mr. Martin,
I bet you are looking forward to returning to Utah after your time in Northern Virginia 🙂 How did you like living in the region?
I live and work in Alexandria, in the Old Town section. I love it but at times I yearn for my home state of Vermont.
PJ,
Before coming to Utah in 1995 Sue and I had lived in Chevy Chase, MD for 22 years, so the DC area is no mystery for me. Every time my older son had to play a soccer game in NOVA we got out our passports. I will not miss the traffic and the BMW-driving yuppies. We’ve got a different type of asshole here in Utah, but Utah assholes bear a remarkable resemblance to those in Virginia.
Kevin, I had no idea you were in SLC…the world gets smaller (I’m not from there, but my folks live in the Aves and I’m a Ute). I’ve driven those same roads several times, however often picking up 80 in Ogallala/North Platte area coming up from Texas to avoid Denver. Your drive is much different than the one I recently did when I brought my wife a new Accord home, from Houston. It was late September.
Wyo is very treachorous this time of year, glad that little Subie did so well. I sure wish I had started driving the boxers sooner, the first car I brought out west was a 90 Integra and it made it through some tough drives, but not with the ease that my 07 Outback exhibits.
When I was in college, my dad (just retired with Sinclair) got me a job working for Sinclair and Little America, often I’d be traveling to the refinery or hotels with a F350 hauling a gooseneck and hoping to make it before the roads closed and I had to turn around. Got hairy a few times but I was always thankful Earl Holding didn’t cheapen out on trucks (manuals, diesels, 4WD, off-road suspension, duallies, studded snow tires) except the vinyl seats.
I like the new Imprezas, and wouldn’t mind a Crosstrek if it had a little more power. And I like bourbon too.
I had concerns about power too, but my Victory Tour put those fears to rest. The 2.0 Impreza can get you into speed trouble no matter where you are. But if you want to win Stop Light Grand Prix, this car probably isn’t for you.
One of the beauties of the CVT transmission is that it holds the speed you set on cruise control to a tee. Speed doesn’t vary, but rpm does, but transparently. The engine is very quiet. I love this thing. In this respect the CVT is much better than the 4-sp auto in Suzy’s 2011 Forester. In the mountains it just doesn’t know what to do.
Little America is always a fallback if the weather is bad. But once in WY the weather was sunny. The biggest problem was glare from the setting sun.
My dad was a career Mobil guy. Although he was in marketing, he had a degree in textile chemistry.
Suzy and I loved the Aves but there wasn’t anything we liked when we were house hunting. We settled in Murray two blocks away from State street, car dealer heaven. I can see both the Wasatch and Oquirrh ranges from our driveway.
Suzy is also a Ute, so you and she could have a big yuk fest talking about your school days. But maybe not.
Suzy rocks! The best Grant Wood paintings in my opinion, that really capture how voluptuous the land can be, are Stone City and Fall Plowing-ask if she has seen those. Not sure how they would have looked with all those windmills. And your next time through, let us know and we can have you stop in at my brother’s in Davenport for some Templeton Rye (Al Capone’s favorite-my Aunt Ginny is in charge of the people who put on the labels). Gotta take along something good to drink, just in case you have to wait for the Interstates to open up again. Traveling through the Midwest this time of year can be a crap shoot-glad to hear you arrived safely.
Hawk,
My mother graduated from Iowa with a degree in nursing. She was a full
leutenant during WWII in the USN. She outranked my dad who was only a leutenant jg. She also attended Grinnell for three years.
I have always been seduced by Iowa’s beauty, just from what I can see from I-80, especially in the spring.
Looks like you just missed the really icky weather Kevin. If I’d known you were passing through, I would have bought you a drink, as I’m in Rock Island. Did you drive through the Quad Cities, or just skirt it?
Yes, we really got walloped on Thursday. Here is a photo of my drive home yesterday. Pouring rain turned into a whiteout in about 15 minutes!
Tom,
We went right through the Quad Cities. I feel so guilty because of all of my aunts and cousins in the area. I would have liked to stop and meet you but we had to be in SLC by Thursday to take care of our house guests. Plus we knew that the weather was going to get really ugly, and it did. But we largely escaped the worst of it. The Subie is a great bad weather car. I love this thing.
Our own tour on I-80 was this summer, coming home from a license plate collectors’ convention in Des Moines; quite a bit different than yours. We could hardly see the wind machines in Wyoming because of the smoke from the Colorado and Wyoming forest fires. We saw a thunderstorm start a little fire not too far south of the highway…kind of interesting to see the smoke suddenly billowing up where there had been none.
We had some winter driving here too on Friday, really heavy mixed rain and snow with some slush on the ground, big rooster-tails on the freeway, wipers barely keeping up with the big wet gloppy flakes. I’d rather drive in dry midwestern snow than that crap.
Yes, every state has something to say for it. A nice scenic winter drive is between Milwaukee and Minneapolis, on a sunny clear cold day after a snow storm.
Kevin,
thank you for thinking about Canadians and including metric references, eh 🙂
Yep, ditto for those of us in New Zealand!
Haha, except for the 152mm of snow reference. 15cm would suffice. We’ve gotten 60cm of snow in less than a week (2ft for the Americans).