Here's the proud papa as we get ready to head West. The first day was quite uneventful, a little construction traffic in PA, what a suprize, but other than that, pretty smooth sailing for 12 hours. We stopped at a little truck stop for the night, just shy of the Illinois Iowa boarder.
Sunday was more of the same for the most part. I-80 is one boring flat ride through Iowa and Nebraska but when you are pulling 12,000 pounds, thats not a bad thing. The only thing that suprized me was how much traffic there was between Iowa City and Lincon. We did get slowed down for a bit again because of construction, but no big deal. Another 12 hours or so later and we crossed into Wyoming and stopped off at a bigger truck stop, it even had a little bar/restaurant, Tee-Joe's, or something so we stopped in. Nothing too special, pretty much what you would expect, country music and truckers in cowboy hats.
Wyoming kind of sneaks up on you, all of a sudden we were at about 5000 feet of elevation. We headed out in the morning with the plan of hitting up a ride about 45 minutes or so from where we stopped for the night, almost to Laramie. This time the elevation didn't sneak up, we did some pretty serious climbing in the rig upto about 8500 feet. The Beast did quite well, usually at least keeping up 55 mph in the steeper parts. The scenery was starting to change, but not too dramatically, mostly going from corn fields to scrubbier grazing land. We found the exit for the ride and an easy place to park the big rig. From there we headed off on the bikes to the Happy Jack trails. The first trail was the National Headquarters trail, rather buff to start but had some technical little climbs. We stopped at a couple view points, pictures to come later when I can get to howie's camera. We got to the point where our map stopped but the trail kept going so we did too. It dropped about 400 ft over the next mile by the time it hit the end point. So we got to do our first climb at elevation, heading back the way we came, but surprizingly it was not too bad. As we got back to an intersection with another trail that we thought looked interesting, it started to rain so we opted to head back the way we came and hopefully hit up the other section of trails in the area. It never did rain too hard on us but we did come back through an area where it had hailed. Since it had pretty much quit raining by the time we got to the turn off for the other section, we headed over. The trails were fun, ranging from 0.5 miles to 1.5 or so, varing from wider almost double track to some real single track. I wouldn't go out of my way to ride there again, but it was a great leg stretcher and so easy to get to it was well worth it. So after about 15 miles and about 2.5 hours, we were back at the rig. We had set out a Sun shower to rinse off with so we hooked that up on the back of the trailer and got all the sand and dirt from the rather wet ride off of us. With the water left I was able to clean up the bikes a bit as well. We were back on the road with about 6 to 7 hours left to get to Park City. Right off the bat I got to use the "engine break" as we decended from that 8500 feet down to what ever Laramie is at, maybe 5500 feet, again the Beast did an admirable job. For the next few hundred miles it was more scenic for sure and not as much fun pulling the rig as cruise control was no longer an option. The traffic was much sparser so the variable speeds up and down the rises and falls were not a big issue. However the pavement conditions make PA look great. There were more than a few times I was very glad Howie upgraded the pin box, the hitch attachment from the trailer that locks into the hitch in the bed of the Beast. It really smoothed out some of the rough patches. You would feel the truck go over the offending pavement but never really feel the trailer. We got to the exit outside park city and planned to pull into a Walmart lot that Howie's book of interstate exits said was there. This ended up being the strangest Wallyworld ever. Normally they are lit up like Christmas trees and you can see them from a mile away. Not this one. We got up to a traffic light just off the interstate and notices an unlit, low to the ground, sign for walmart. Unfortunately it was a right turn and I was in the left lane. So we proceed up the road to try and find a place to turn the rig around, not an easy thing to do in the dark. We ended up driving through Deer Valley and luckily got turned around after a while and headed back. We had a small issue with the trailer safety brake cable pulling out, but believe it or not, Howie was the one that figured out what the issue was. Granted I was the one that popped it back in to where it belonged, when I did, the brakes on trailer let loose, jolting the whole rig while I was right at the hitch point. I was never in any danger but I did about pee my pants. Well made it into the wallyworld lot and had a peacefull nights sleep there. We need a few supplies so we figured we would patronize the place since they did let us sleep in their lot.
This brings us to Tuesday. We were only about 20 minutes or so from the Campground and had talked to them the day before and they said we could show up in the morning no problem. So we pulled in about 9:30, checked in and headed over to the site. Well the previous campers were still there and turns out they weren't required to leave till 11am so we just parked the rig by the office, pushed out the slide out, and started getting things organized and then going through email. Howie reserved a "pull through" spot so we didnt have mess with backing the rig in, so we got situated quite quickly. Everything went quite smoothly as far as hook ups etc. We put in the DVD of the video we had made when the guy at the RV dealership showed us all about the rig. The only thing we really needed a refresher on was putting up (or pulling down) the awning. By the time we got things somewhat settled, the afternoon thunder showers started popping up in the mountains so we decided to skip riding for today, get things organized and get an early start tomorrow.
This is the first "view point" from the National Headquarters Trail, then looking at the valley on the other side of the ridge we were on, and finally a bit of what the trail looked like.
