A Long Journey of Many Miles, Lots of Snow and Questionable Sanity (Part 1)

Well its been quite a while since the last post mostly because I really haven't been paddling wildwater.  After training intensely for one sport for about two years without a major break, it was good to relax a little and not do ridiculous training all the time.  I did an adventure triathlon in the fall which was pretty fun, 19miles of biking 2.2 miles of kayaking and 4.5 miles of running. I even did my first half marathon in december and it went surprisingly well. I guess I was just having a little fun with my fitness.

Anyway, the boat I raced with in France was shipped on a container ship to Seattle Washington. I got word that it was there right around the time I was trying to figure out what to do over winter break so my next logical thought was oh well I'll just drive to Seattle and pick it up.  The good thing was that there were several other boats that needed to come back east, 9 others, 4 to Chattanooga, 2 in PA and 3 were from the Canadian Team. While my car is quite big, it couldn't fit 10 wildwater kayaks on the roof so I set about borrowing a kayak trailer. Luckily I was able to get one from the local paddle shop, I just need to grease the bearings which is not  particularly pleasant task, especially when it is below freezing. But all the preparations were made including sliding a twin mattress in the back of the blazer so I wouldn't need to get a hotel room every night.

On December 26th after I had loaded the Blazer with Christmas cookies and sleeping bags I left Montoursville with the goal of making it past South Bend Indiana.  I was on the road around 10am and thought I would have plenty of time, but there was a pretty large snow storm working its way over western PA and Ohio.

Once I was west of Snowshoe PA the snow started and was pretty bad.

Ohio was a little better, at least they used snow plows. Three would run side by side to force people to drive slow so things like this wouldn't happen.

This pretty much sums of western Ohio and Eastern Indiana.  Snowing, slippery and cold.  At around 9:30pm I called it a day and found the nearest truck stop.  In the roughly 14 hours I spent driving I only manages 500 miles, not a great start to the trip.

Day Two took me from central Indiana to eastern South Dakota.  Nothing exciting happened this day. I woke up, and got on the road. I passed through Chicago around 10am so traffic was busy but it was moving good the whole time. 

On most toll roads, you grab a ticket and pay wherever you get off, but that makes too much sense for Illinois.  for I284 to bypass downtown, there are 5 toll plazas where if you don't have their Ipass you have to fight your way across traffic to a mini exit where you pay 2.25 and get the pleasure of driving 3-4 miles before having to do it again(5 stops total).

Wisconsin was pretty cool, but then again after driving through Ohio and Indiana any place that has trees is a nice change of scenery.

Minnesota was pretty boring, just rolling flat farmlands after climbing up from the Mississippi River.

The frozen Mississippi River

Later that night in eastern Minnesota it started snowing, not really have but it was cold enough it didn't melt and would just blow.

Visibility did become a problem whenever a semi would pass

Day Three was a pretty cool day.  I made it far enough west that I would be able to drive through the Badlands in the morning as well as stop by Devils Tower in Wyoming later that day.

There's really not much in South Dakota

Except for metal tyrannosaurus rex's

And the Badlands 

The clouds cleared about 20 mile from Badlands National Park and that combined with fresh snow gave some pretty awesome scenery.

Yeah it was pretty cool, I even found some Buffalo 

After spending a couple of hours in Badlands, it was back to the highway to get some miles in.  A couple hours later I made it into Wyoming and made my way to the Devils Tower, there was some slick roads to get there but I made it to the park fine. The park had a trailer parking lot so I took full advantage.  The combination of 4 wheel drive with a high torque engine on pack snow is very fun driving.

It was at this point in the trip that some things started to go wrong, for example the blazer developed some electrical problems and I lost running lights, everything else work headlights brake lights, turn signals, but there weren't anylights on behind me at night, luckily western Wyoming and eastern Montana is not very busy so I would put on the 4 ways whenever someone was close. I opted for a hotel that night it was getting pretty chilly and I could use a shower.  The next morning after trying to figure what what might be wrong I went to a NAPA store to replace the turn signal flasher and the plug for the trailer to no avail still no driving lights.  At least the sun had some out so for the time being I would get some miles in.

Something not flat

At a rest area they showed a scenic highway that ran parallel to the interstate but went though the mountains instead of around them so that seem like a good change of pace.

And it was there were some really cool spots like this one.

It was in Butte Montana that I came up with a sort of solution for the lack of light: bike lights.  I managed to find a bike store and bought two red bike lights that I zip tied to the trailer and would just turn on whenever it got dark.  I really liked western Montana, I stopped into Missoula to grab some food and try some beer, even managed to find an "Eddy out pale ale." The next morning was really nice, scenic snow on the pine trees of the rockies in Montana and Idaho. 

Several hours later I made it into the Cascades where there was tons of snow, and within 2 hours after that, I made it to Tom's house where all the kayaks were. Halfway done, well not really.