On our way...or not!
It's Friday, September 4. We planned to start our trip about 10:00 a.m., and sure enough, we start to pull out of the driveway, right on time. Unfortunately, the first few feet turned out to be not so easy. We turned a little too short, and caught the motorhome awnings on a low-hanging branch of our big maple tree. This turned out to be a real predicament, because by the time we realized what was happening, it was jammed in pretty tightly. We had to jockey back and forth, literally inches at a time.I should have taken some pictures here, but I figured that was probably a good way to get the camera crushed, or worse!
With our nose sticking out in the road, we attracted a lot of attention, and a handful of passers-by stopped to "help". Although we appreciated the assistance, at times it just added to the confusion, with three or four different people pointing three or four different directions. One guy even offered to go get his chain saw. I don't think he realized how large that limb was, and how much damage it would do if it was cut loose. After a couple hours or so jogging back and forth, and pulling up the ties on the edge of the driveway, we finally got enough space to get free.Regroup - now what?
We thanked the passers-by and pulled back into the driveway to assess the damage and the impact on the trip. There were three awnings affected - two that basically protect the tops of the slideouts, and the big awning that rolls out to provide shade when parked. We patch it up the best we can, but we will need to get it to the shop before long, if nothing else for some temporary repairs. Being a holiday weekend, that won't happen before Tuesday.Our original plan was to go North across North Dakota & Montana, and return via Denver and a little farther south. We know it gets cold earlier that far north, and the idea was to have an alternative in case winter came a little early. It's been cool this year, so that seemed possible. By Tuesday, we would have been in northern North Dakota or Montana. Needless to say, the chances of finding someone to look at it in that area were even less than if we stayed in Decatur. On the other hand, we could be in Denver by Tuesday, so we just reversed our route. With a little help from Google, we find a place that can look at it Tuesday a.m.
8 hours later...
Trivia: Decatur and Denver are both near the 40th parallel, which makes it just about as due west as you can get, if you are a crow.
There's not much day left, but we decide to try to get some miles behind us anyway. This will be about a 4,000 mile trip, and we are already late getting started. Taking a WIDE swing out of the driveway, we head West. Rather than traveling north to I-80, or south to I-70, We are taking I-72 to U.S. 36 across Missouri, then north on I-29. We wanted to see how this works out. Turns out a good portion of the road across MO has been expanded to 4-lane, and the rest of it was in the works. The only problem we ran into was finding a place to stop for a few hours. It's a little more challenging when you are off the Interstate (lesson learned). We finally stopped at a truck parking area almost all the way across Misssouri.Day Two
After a few hours sleep, we get up with the sun, and continue our journey. By midafternoon, we are just about worn out. At first we wondered how that could be, since we only drove a few hours each day. But then we realized that it wasn't the amount of driving in two days, it was the amount of driving in less than 24 hours. Fortunately, we were close to North Platte, where we wanted to see the new Golden Spike Tower at Bailey Yard. We stopped at a campground in North Platte for a good night's restNext page: Nebraska
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