WOW, here it is almost 26 hours after leaving Indianapolis. Sounds like a awful trip to most but actually with the bus it hasn't been that bad and has been somewhat of an adventure. Leaving Indianapolis at 4:00 Sunday afternoon we all knew that to get to the salt by tech day (Tuesday) we would need to drive straight thru.
Scott, Stan and I are in the bus with me driving and Donnie and Ed are in the Dodge dually pulling the tri-axle support vehicle. Kinda to our surprise there was a few friends at the shop to wish us well and watch us leave. I kinda think they would have really liked to have jumped into the bus and went along for the ride. I drove the first leg into Illinois toward Iowa and as darkness come upon us the trip started going out very well. The big ole bus (now called the
Tennessee Toter home) ran out very well but appears to have a very short fuel range and smaller than advertised (by previous owner) as we were showing empty before we got into Iowa , We stopped for fuel cleaned off the bugs and it only took 30 gallons of fuel. Stan took over the driving chore and Scott and I started watching "Smokey and the Bandit" on the
DVD player. Pretty cool sitting on a couch and a recliner at 65 mph laughing at the movie. Stan could hear and watch a little bit thru the reflection in the side windows. (still safer than a cell phone) Ed and Donnie tracked us very well and off into Iowa we went getting darker as we went. Then we found the ultimate traveling toy "Satellite Radio" and a rockabilly country station. Up went the volume and we listened to Carl
Perkins, Patsy Cline and other oldies thru out the evening. Amazing that we all seemed to enjoy these old country songs. Our second stop was again short as it only took 30 plus gallons of fuel with a empty gauge and Scott fueled it up this time. If you look at a map we were crossing states the long way and each state is approx. 400 plus miles wide. We cruised along in the night with some hit and miss rain. I looked once at the weather map of the USA on my laptop internet and the only rain in the entire USA was where we were! Just our luck? Scott is at the wheel on into Nebraska and our next fuel stop I took over and Stan fueled us up. I noticed that now the fuel gauge reads full and the bill was for 48 gallons. It appears that we (Scott and I) hadn't been filling the tank! What a difference that made with our range just to know we actually had 65 gallons of fuel and the gauge was actually very accurate!! Somewhere in Wyoming we experience our first issue of the trip. We fueled at a stop and started to leave with Ed and Donnie behind us when Ed yelled into the walkie talkie STOP, STOP. I was driving and stopped just outside the station, when Stan said "Holy Bleep" a wheel fell off
Ed's trailer! Sure enough Donnie was driving and Ed was rolling a aluminum wheel and tire across the parking lot! Beats the hell out of all us how this happened but it did. Ed found three of the lug nuts in the lot next to the diesel pump and Scott actually found the other three (it's a six lug) at the
entrance to the lot. WOW , another chapter for out trailer towing book created over the years towing trailers, etc. It took a few minutes to rethread the lugs and roll the trailer up on blocks to replace the wheel. We had locktite in the bus and we retorqued the lugs and hit the road. If this had happened earlier in the evening it would have just shot down the highway and we wouldn't have ever seen that tire again. On thru the evening we went and actually was cruising pretty well, All of us had by now taken a nap on the couch and the recliner with one guy driving and the other two snoring to the country music!! Indiana, Illinois, Nebraska was pretty cool cruising and making good time stopping approximately every couple hundred for a stretch, driver change and a coke or coffee. Then we hit Wyoming! Not only is it a long state it has some pretty big mountains and long mountain grades. Our dinner stop in Wyoming turned up another gremlin after we had eaten with a flat tire on Ed's trailer. We replaced it with a new spare and tried to repair the old one with a plug but the belt was broken and it knotted up. Asking around the stop a Snap-On dealer took us down a back road to a tire center. They mounted up a new tire in only minutes and away we go! We finally got to the top of the continental divide and started our down hill trip. It was a welcome relief to the long dragged out up grades I looked over once
and Stan has us going 80mph with Ed and Donnie in front of us heading over
the grade. What a beautiful part of the country. At this point we have been on the road 25 hours and are about 150 miles from the Utah border. Our friend Larry Bilbee is ahead of us by a whole day just called and he has driven thru Salt Lake City and will meet us sometime this evening before we arrive in Wendover. The sign says Salt Lake City 50 miles, Scott is asleep and Stan says to me , do you smell burning rubber? I did but didn't think it was from us and then we seen Ed put his flashers on, dang it was a blown trailer tire. This makes our third gremlin today with the trailer tires. Oh well we are getting better at changing them. Scott never even woke up until we were done. We are now in Wendover after losing Ed and Donnie for a few miles in Salt Lake City and a shower is in order right away . It's 3:00 am (Indy Time) and the trip took 35 hours including a few meal stops and buying gas, etc. Also the tire issues eat a little bit of the time also but we are happy campers and should be one of the first vehicles in tech tomorrow morning. The bus is a traveling machine and performed very well even if we did hit the slow lane a couple times in Wyoming. More as the week goes on. |
