The evening that we left town was in the middle of one of the worst windstorms for several decades. Winds at 40-50 and gusting to probably 60-70. Not sure exactly how strong, but we did see several big rigs blown over on the side of the highway. And here we were heading out into it, at night.
My biggest initial concern was the solar panels. Would the adhesive only attachments be enough, or would I hear some terrible noises as the panels flew off the roof? After 15 minutes of driving directly into the wind and with a full crosswind, my fears settled. A bit. For now it was settling into how BoB overall was handling the winds. And for being a 9' tall slab-sided brick he did surprisingly well. Learned fairly quick to not fight the wind gusts, but to go with them a bit. You need to stay in your lane, but trying to hold it perfectly caused more problems than letting it float a bit.
We made it past more blown-over big rigs and came to a highway closure just outside of Hermiston, OR. On the road for less than an hour, and we're stopped; along with everyone else. But... I have the advantage of knowing many of the local backroads. So we headed south off the highway and onto the two-lanes. About 5-8 miles later we rejoined the highway when it had opened up. We also knew why it had closed. It wasn't specifically the winds, but the blowing dust. You could be moving along okay at 40-50mph, dealing with the winds, seeing things just fine, and then in an instant you could barely see your front bumper.
As we made our way to Pendleton it settled down a bit, but it was still quite windy. We were headed towards Boise when we got an error on the dash, something about DEF Service required, see the dealer NOW. We spent the night at a quiet rest area in eastern Oregon and made our way to the RAM dealer in Boise the next day. This had not been the best of starts to a 10-12 day road trip.
We made the best of it in Boise. Instead of sitting at the dealer we walked a mile over to the very large Boise mall and spent a couple hours walking and wandering. Not the usual thing that I like to do, but ya know... I was on vacation, so it was rather nice.
Turned out to be a software error for the DEF service. Easy fix and we were back on our way. A belated thanks to the Larry H Miller dealer in Boise for getting us in and out and back on the road.
After leaving Boise we booked it through Idaho and northern Utah on our first full day on the road. Spent the second night at a Walmart in Provo, UT. The next morning we headed up the American Fork river canyon, wonderful little drive and worth the detour to start the day.
A stop at In-N-Out for lunch and we would be back on the highway cranking out the miles. Next to In-N-Out was another Chrysler/RAM dealer. We had family watching our progress while we travelled and had one worried that we might be having a second day of vehicle problems. As we ate lunch looking at the RAM trucks across the street, we wondered if they'd be thinking that.
Travelling Utah in late November we were a bit worried about winter storms. We got lucky though, came through a few days after some snow. Made for some beautiful travels.
One of our destinations was Hwy 12 in SW Utah. Basically go to Bryce and then head east. We made it through Panguitch that night and through the red canyons west of Bryce. Hit those right at sunset, couldn't have time it much better. As we climbed out of the canyon to a mesa we came across a very large paved pullout area. Figured that was as good as anything for the night, so we pulled over and settled in. Odd part was, here we were in the middle of nowhere in SW Utah, and I had a very good 3G data signal with my phone. Made use of that before shutting down for the night.
Up next: Hwy 12 in Utah.
No comments:
Post a Comment