Sorry some pictures didn't copy
In my last post, I was light-heartedly relating our tale of being stuck in Laramie, with the promise of catching up today. All of the locals we spoke to said, "Oh yes, it will be open tomorrow. Hmmm. It's tomorrow. Check out the pics. First you can see Laramie in the bottom right corner of the map. Arlington is indicated about half way between Laramie and Rawlings. Next look at the road closings in the second picture, then the camera of about a half our ago shows why.
The plan is to hold our room until about 1pm. By that time, if the roads don't open, we wouldn't make it across before night,,, probably; so we would stay the nite, hoping to move on tomorrow (Sat) More later, hopefully from somewhere else. We really enjoyed experiencing Laramie; but we're ready to move on.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2008the saga continues
Not much else to do right now. While waiting to see what was going to happen, we balanced the checkbook using our online banker and now my bride is taking a nap.. I think the stress is overbearing. Several of you have mentioned that you were praying for us. I guess we have you to thank for being stuck here, right? Well, if that's true, it's most likely a good thing. We wouldn't want to be in a mountain pile-up. I thought the images from the cameras on the wyroad.info site were interesting. when I saw this first one after being advised to "stay over, I thought, "well doesn't look bad to me" Then someone explained that just to the right of the green sign should be an exit ramp which seems to contain about an 8 foot drift. That settled my jets for a while (I hate making wrong decisions, especially when their big ones.) So we stayed, yadda yadda like I explained earlier. This morning while again trying to make decisions, the same camera was displaying this second image. Well this got my attention. Notice that the road is now white and "thick". The drifts from the ramp area seem to be coming out into the road. and those trucks are snowplows. I get the idea that the middle one is actually a snowblower. The problem is that this picture was up for several hours. I kept checking back to see if I had made the correct decision (at least I thought I had the power to make the decision???) Then finally about 3pm, the closing page made a sudden change to this, so I went back to see how things looked at the original site. Wow! the road is clear and there is a truck going through the closed road. Well, even if this section was good enough to get through, we still had to go west from Rawlins... Not good. Maybe tomorrow.
We're off and running
You can imaging my joy when I checked in with my recent favorite web site last nite to see That there were no roads closed and I could see the nite traffic passing through the nasty part. Then again this morning I can see traffic moving through.. As you can see in the morning photo, there is traffic moving through our "favorite" site, but wait,,,, I was again mis-informed. The exit appears to be just to the left of the green sign, not to the right... From previous photos, you could not have proven it by me.
So, for us it's an early start on the road to see if we can get over before the next promised winter storm hits this place. Hasta La Vista til later. skk
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2008
1600 down; 500 to go
We did get out of Dodge, I mean Laramie.
To prove it, see the photo on the right. That is the same sign I have shown you the last few days indicating one of the nasty spots between Laramie and Rock Springs. Well, we snapped this picture as we wizzed by at 75 mph (yes we've had the blessing of speed limit of 75 for a while.) I'm told that will end when we reach Oregon. You see, I don't speed, because I believe angels are so pure and honest that they wouldn't go faster than the speed limit... and I don't want to outrun my angels.
We ended up stopping at the Hampton Inn in Rock Springs (where we were supposed to stay Thursday nite.) Angelina, the manager on duty went out of her way to help us. Not only did she make and confirm our reservations for tonite (I'll tell you where later... patience, Gertrude.) but she reprinted our directions to Corvallis, which we misplaced and sent us away with snacks for the road. Although we have noticed that Hampton Inn people are "problem solvers" (You have a problem, let us help you solve it.) She was above and beyond. She even helped us with the "how far can we stand to travel today vs how far do we need to go. It was supposedly 14 hours to Corvallis, so we decided to drive 5 of that today, leaving hopefully 9 for Sunday. She set us up for the Hampton in Twin Falls, Idaho.. we have never been to Idaho before.. Wow, another nice place, except that as it grew dark, although we had enjoyed the snow since Iowa, we hit the first "problem" snow. It got so we had difficulty seeing the lines in the road and we had to reduce speed to about 30 mph. We got nervous until a semi went around us and cleared the road until the snow stopped. This nite shot of the snow at the Idaho rest stop gives you some idea.
So we made it to Twin Falls, Idaho and hope to arrive at Corvallis somewhere around 6pm Sunday. Of course the superbowl will be essentially over and we will have missed nearly all of the new commercials. However, assuming we arrive alive, we won't have missed that much. The good plays will be played on ESPN for a week and the new commercials will also play over, and over, and over, and... This last shot was one of my attempts to be artsy-fartsy. I wanted to show the mountains ahead of us as well as those behind us (in the rearview mirror). The result was less than stellar. But at 75 mph in the mountains... did I say I wanted to arrive alive>>>??? nuf sed for today.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2008Whew!
It's Monday nite about 6pm in southwest Oregon. We made the trek from Twin Falls, Idaho to Corvallis, Oregon Sunday, pulling in about midnight. We drug into bed and I "jumped up" to get to "work" this morning. A real eventful day; gave 2 hourly exams (written and practical) got introduced to lots of nice people and procedures. Didn't even have time to get my computer out til I got home. On one of our blogs, we will post pictures of the Snake River Canyon near where Evil Kneivel (sp) tried his jump in 1974.. an awesome sight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Falls,_Idaho
We drove across miles and miles of Southwest Oregon ranchland and more beautiful "hills". Then we hit the Cascades at Bend, Oregon and saw more snow than we have ever seen before. Interesting thing is that the locals say this is more snow than they have ever had. Snow loving Georgia has done it again. Gotta settle in. Thanks to all for your prayers, it was a rather harrowing ending, but we are here. Since we went through about the most beautiful part of the trip in the dark, we will definately need to make a weekend trip back the 100 or so miles to see. It all started at a little town called "Sisters".. http://www.el.com/to/sisters/ I also see from maps that there is a "Brothers"... will have to see what that's all about some time. OK, back to 2010.
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