Saturday March 1st - part 2

Seems like SOME of the team are happy to be home, or at least on a surface that's not bouncing around.

Saturday March 1st

There's a rule that all good things must come to an end. If I ever find the person who made that rule, I'm gonna have a few words with the SOB. I mean, why not make all BAD things come to an end, and let the good ones last forever? Wouldn't that be a more reasonable rule?

We (Gab, Mojo, and I) arrived safe and relatively sound back in Lamont about 9:00 last night. Rather than go the usual route from Coutts home, we took highway 36 pretty much due north from Warner all the way to Viking, then cut over to Tofield on highway 14, up to Chipman on 834, and then across to Lamont on 15. Streets and Trips showed this as the shortest route home, and I have no doubt that it was. It failed to take into account the miles and miles of bad frost heaves, however, or the thousands (OK, dozens) of stock haulers insistent on travelling at 130k+. Most seemed rather surly at my 100-105k speed - at least there were no thank-you flashes of the backup lights or 4-ways when I signalled over to the shoulder and slowed to let them get by as quickly as possible. The only thank you flash I got was from a regular trucker pulling a box trailer.

On the bright side, the number of stock trucks on the road must mean that the price of cows is good, right? So the ranchers'll be happy. Hah hah.

So anyway, an uneventful trip from Helena home. Even the border guard had a good sense of humour when I pulled up with a cheat sheet of receipt totals, licence plate numbers, quantities and types of meat, dairy, and produce items in the unit... then had to dig for a minute or so when he asked to see my ID. OK, so I was ALMOST well prepared.

Highway 36 is flat flat flat, except for the occasional precipitous plunge in and out of a river valley and the mini mountainous terrain of frost heaves. If you go I recommend new shocks beforehand and, if cow prices are good, fill up with premium as you'll need the extra octane to keep ahead of the truckers.

The weather co-operated nicely today, and we (Wendy and I) were able to get the motorhome unloaded in nice +6C temperatures today. There's a little more snow here than when I left - Wendy says there was lots and a lot of it melted, but she has no pictures or other proof so the jury's out on that one - and it looks like what's here might be gone within the next couple months. So Alberta is EXACTLY like Utah. Except for the forecast of -17C or some
foolish thing tonight.

So now I'm enjoying the last remnants of the trip: a glass or two of duty-free rum ($11 for a 40 pounder, if you can believe it, and REAL rum too - not that prettied-up stuff that passes for rum below the 49th) mixed with some Sam's cola from Vegas and ice cubes made with good water from Phoenix, munching some potato chips from Montana. That's about it for this particular journey, except that over the next few days I want to pull a little stats table together & post it. If you're interested, check back in a week or so, and if I don't have anything posted yet email
me a reminder. I get forgetful sometimes.

I've heard that everyone else has made it home safe and sound (or at least, I haven't heard that they haven't), so that's definitely something for which we should all be thankful.

Thursday February 28th

Tonight finds me in Helena Montana, without a whole lot to report. Today was a long driving day, with the roadside scenery going from patches of rotten snow to 2 foot high snowbanks and back to patches again. Good thing, or I might have been looking for a turn-around spot. Nothing much else to do, so I took a whole card full of thu-the-windshield scenery shots. I won't inflict you with ALL of them, though.

If you notice any little black spots in the pictures, those are bugs on the windshield believe it or not. I have no idea when they hit, but there they are. There was also a housefly flying around inside the windshield for a while, but he keeled over and died all on his own. My theory is that he looked outside.

Tonight I'm doing my best to try to finish off Tina's beer, so it doesn't infringe on my alcohol entitlement at the border. It's a tough job, but one that has to be done... Other than that, I guess it'll be add up the receipts & head for bed. Supposed to get down to 27F here tonight, so
I'll try to stay cozy (funny story: last night in Payson the furnace kicked on a few more times than I thought it should... when I got up this morning I noticed I'd left a window open after it was so nice out in Nephi. So if spring comes a little early you'll have me to thank).

In the last picture, both the other motorhomes in view have Alberta plates, by the way. In case you're keeping track.

Wednesday February 27th

In case you haven't noticed yet, I seem to be struggling with what day it is. I like when holidays go like that; soon I'll have no choice but to know.

Anyway, I just checked the calendar and Wednesday is indeed the 27th, so I must be in Utah. Actually, I only made it as far as Payson today - a whopping 192 miles. Believe it or not, it was still a full day. Since the weather was forecast in the 50's and no rain or snow, it was a good day to do the scheduled oil & lube on the Bounder. I'd serviced it last fall before I put it away, but the odo was ticking over 3,000 miles since then & there was no way I wanted to put another 1,400 miles on & do it at home. I had picked up the oil and filter and one of those mini cartridge grease guns (assuming I'd just leave that in the MH for anyone who needs, um, greased), so I had the supplies and the Flying J in Nephi was the perfect place.

While I was there, I also did the winterization on the water lines - I hear it's still cold way up north. Given a choice I think I'd have preferred to just wait until the weather warmed rather than waste more good antifreeze... but unfortunately nobody's given me a choice. In any event I pulled into Nephi around noon and I left around 5:30 having accomplished pretty much everything I needed to do (a couple things I wound up not being able to do because I was short parts, but they're not critical). Good timing to be gone then, as the lot was filling up with trucks for the night.

Leaving Nephi the choice was to either stop early or get past Salt Lake City (another 80 miles or so), as I DON'T want to be navigating it in morning rush hour tomorrow. The Payson Wal*Mart is right beside the Interstate, so convenience wins out. It's only supposed to be in the high 20's or low 30's tonight (about the same as last night in Cedar City), although there's a lot of snow on the mountains and patches on the ground here.

The first couple pictures are from Cedar City this morning - last night's pictures in the dark turned out like crap. Notice what's hiding behind the Wildwood trailer, thinking he can't be seen. Hey, I'm just saying...

BTW, the Dutch Star is from Alberta and headed back. The brown MH in the first pic also had Alberta plates, but I'm not sure which direction they're headed. Probably saw another 8 or 10 Alberta MHs, trailers, and horse trailers headed north today, so the spring migration must be starting.

I didn't take any pictures at the Flying J - thought about that as I was leaving. Would have made good pictures with all the crap unloaded, compressor running, etc. The last pic is from Payson.
I'm showing an unsecured WiFi connection available, so I'm gonna try to jump on it and get this posted. TTFN

PS - I just finished the last of the rum, so I'm gonna try to tough it out and finish off Tina's beer before Great Falls...

Tuesday February 26th

Guess I haven't done an update for a few days - sorry about that. You know how it is.

As I'm writing this I'm in the Wal*Mart parking lot in Cedar City, UT. I don't have a WiFi connection right now, but I may later so I'm prepping this just in case.

Not much has happened since Thursday - the wedding, visiting, sighseeing, etc. If you want to know more about the wedding, check Cliff's website. I won't bore you with the other stuff.
Got the kids to the airport Monday night, and Wendy there at noon on Tuesday. As I write this she's probably touching down, and Steven's already been back to work for a day. Ah, the advantages of air travel! Me, I have to work myself back gradually.

As I said, I'm in Cedar City tonight. Temp is supposed to drop into the high 20s overnight and only into the low 50's tomorrow. There's a pile of dirty snow at the edge of the parking lot. Guess I'll sart to acclimatize. Sigh.