Travel Days 7 and 8 — and the Mountains Win
We’re still in Lexington Nebraska and have made arrangements to have the trailer shipped to Oregon. We’re going to drive to Denver, and have the truck shipped from there. Then we’ll get on a plan with the cats in our laps.
We spent several hours yesterday inspecting routes on google maps and street view. We discovered that if you say you are travelling by bicycle, google will show you the elevation changes across your route. This is sobering information. It’s also frustrating, because google helpfully gives you bike-appropriate routes which are generally very different from anything we want to do. However with a certain amount of struggle, we were able to determine our “best” route across the Cascades.
It was dreadful.
The flattest route we could find would take us almost into Canada mostly on state roads whose condition, this time of year, could optimistically be described as “sketchy”. We’d also be, for much of the time, hell-and-gone from any sort of roadside assistance etc.
So, plan E (I kept track) has been engaged. We are both very relieved.
Today, we are prepping the trailer for pick up next week and readying the truck for a three-hundred mile drive to Denver. Those roads (I-80 and I-76) should be clear and have plenty of pull-offs etc. Its currently very foggy here, and we’re waiting to see what tomorrow will bring. Our current hotel has all-day free coffee and decent wifi, but apparently just living here from now on is not acceptable to the, um, group.
Once the trailer is prepped we’ll take it to a local campground where they want $15/day to hold it until our shipper arrives on Tuesday. We’re mostly moving stuff from the truck to the trailer and cleaning out the fridge.
If the fog continues tomorrow, we may be here another day. Overall it looks like we have a few days of good weather coming up, so we’ll get back on the road when visibility improves.
