Bill’s Blog on the River

Left Walsenburg, CO on Friday morning.  Took the puppies out and really thought they would just turn around and come back in, but surprise, they acutally stayed out, did their business and played in the snow a bit;

The day started out nicely with a beautiful view of the Rockies out the left side of the coach.  Here’ s a photo taken out the driver’s side window as I was driving.

As pretty as it was you can see the clouds about the Rockies.  Radio said that a storm was coming in from the Rockies with the potential for some serious snow.  Well, they weren’t wrong, by the time I got to Denver at about 10 AM it started to come down.  Within an hour or so it was really coming down.

These picutres were taken out my window as I was driving.  I guess I was lucky since I was just a bit ahead of the really heavy snow.  If you look closely at the second picture you can see how blurry the window was.  That’s because my windshield wiper broke about 15 minutes after I started using it.  I guess living in Palm Springs they don’t get a lot of use and just couldn’t stand up to the ice and snow.

The wiper has two arms.  One of them became detached from the motor.  I stopped and tried to get it back on, but short of taking the whole cap off the front their was no way to get to it so I just kept going figuring I’d stop at a truck stop as soon as I found one.  I did find a couple, that is, when I could see the signs for the exit due to the snow, but alas, seems that most truckstops aren’t really truckstops anymore and only have fuel and food…..no garage.  So, just ended up coming on in to Hasting, NE peeking through the streaks in the windshield.

Got to Hasting about 6 PM.  Stats for the day were:  552 miles traveled, total drive time 8 hours and 21 minutes at an average speed of 66.1 mph.  That’s because I was trying to keep ahead of the worst part of the storm.  Fuel mileage dropped substantially due to the several thousand pounds of ice I accumulated on the coach and the tow car.   Take a look:

As I said, even with all the snow and ice and problems, made it to Brandy, Tom and Sam place in Hastings…….and, it was worth the trip!  Everyone is good and Sam (Samantha Natalie) is growing like a weed.  She celebrated her first birthday on Dec 12th…but actually having a birthday party today. 

The puppies had never seen such a tiny human, so they had a ball playing with her and she had a ball playing with them.   Here is Sam and Jake:

As you can see, Sam is a real ham….posing for the camera everytime I picked it up.  Here is one of her and Oscar…this time she couldn’t pose for the camera:

That’s it for today.  Brandy and I are heading over to Wal-Mart to get me a pair of boots.  These mocassins just aren’t cutting it in this snow!  Who knew….don’t need snow boots in Palm Springs!

Will be leaving out of here later today and heading towards Chicago on I-80.  Hopefully can find a truckstop with a mechanic and get the wiper fixed.  If not, I’ll just get it fixed when I make it in to the Newmar factory on Sunday.  Hope to get there Sunday afternoon, leave the coach there and drive the Saturn on in to Delaware.

John made it to Amarillo, TX night before last and then to Ft. Smith, AR last night but not before breaking down in the Penske rental truck.  Penske was there within an hour and got him back on the road.  I’ve got all the snow…he’s got torrential rain.  He did say that coming thru Oklahoma City that it looked like the city had been hit by a bomb.  Nearly all of the big trees were destroyed by the ice storm they had last week and limbs were laying everywhere.  He also said it was very weird driving through Oklahoma since most of the electricity was still out.  I guess hundreds of thousand of people are still without power and more snow expected Sunday or Monday.

Bill

Filed under: Daily Update, Motorhome, The Puppies