The completed trip

The completed trip
49 states, 10 provinces and a territory

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Windy Wyoming

Well, today was supposed to be a pretty boring drive - up 85 to 80 then across Wyoming to Rock Springs.  Hmmm, best laid plans.

The road started climbing - although it is high plains as opposed to mountains, we still got quite high.  High enough that at 8,640 feet when we stopped to pour more coffee I could put my foot in the snow.  Some other things we saw:

  • At 8,000 ft we saw a town with a population of one.  
  • We crossed two signs for the continental divide.
  • The antelope were playing (but we saw no deer).  
  • We saw a covered wagon being pulled by four horses.  

We also saw variable speed signs all along this stretch.  Kinda like in Hazzard County - except they're supposed to change depending on the weather.  And the weather apparently means high winds.

The first highway advisory we saw said wind gusts over 40 MPH (64 kph).  Then we saw an advisory that said wind gusts over 50 MPH (80 kph) - no lite trailers permitted.  So, I got the iPad out and looked up what they considered a lite trailer.  WYDOT, being a typical government agency, does not define a lite trailer but says one that is empty or might be affected by the wind.  Well, we travel with full tanks and we purposely bought a heavy trailer, so we figured we'd keep going.  Paul did some white knuckle driving but we came through just fine.

We thought about stopping in Rawlins, but the WYDOT road conditions said the high winds advisory ended for the rest of the trip, so we kept driving to our planned destination tonight which is here in Rock Springs.  We have a 2010 Trailer Life and had selected an RV park, but when I went to look up the website, it was no longer there.  Luckily it has just changed to a KOA, not our favourite campgrounds to stay in but it will do for the night.

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