Day 1: Leaving Shaw… A complete and total thrash trying to get final packing done & leave in time to catch the ferry… Fortunately we made it with minutes to spare AND there was actually room on the vessel! Once on board, we could relax for an hour before departing on the mainland for the first leg of our journey–Island to Sky…. Crossing the Cascade Range into Ellensburg where we have camped out for the night at a friend’s house. Well fed and rested, we will hopefully depart early in the AM for the most ambitious leg–Ellensburg to Sheridan Wyoming: Over 900 miles taking us over the Rockies and to the foot of the Great Plains. We’ll see how that goes tomorrow.

Day 2: Ellensburg, WA to Billings, MT….As you can tell from the bold print…we didn’t make Sheridan. There was no possible way, especially with the diesel truck only getting 4 miles to the gallon in the mountains, with a top speed of 30 MPH crawling over the passes. There were some white knuckle moments both going up and coming down…but nothing worth mentioning here…. We covered some 710 miles. By the time we got to Billings we needed fuel and rest badly. We found the fuel….

We managed to find a hotel which accepted pets. We didn’t bother tell them about all 5 of the girls.  While everyone arranged themselves I helped take care of the livestock in the trailer–a nice “quick” 45 minute chore. I also, on the sly, plugged the freezer into the hotel room–my plan to use an inverter was quashed by a faulty extension cable running back the the truck from the cab. Fortunately, I packed spare cords.  Then I proceeded to unpack a few items & cook some fried eggs outside the hot el room door. We made some quick sandwiches, ate dinner & went to bed.

7 of us packed into one room was cozy, but the beds were among the worst I’ve encountered. We didn’t last long..about 3:30AM we woke up and decided we couldn’t take any more. We hastily packed. I made espresso in the Mocha pot and we hit the road. We finally stopped just after Sheridan, WY–where we had wanted to end up the night before…We had a snack breakfast & continued on.

Day 3: Billings, MT to Brandon, SD…. Today was another grueling day. Having started early (see above) we made good time through the rest of Montana and into Wyoming. The weather has been phenomenal the whole trip, and today was no exception. We got to watch the sun rise over the Big Horn Mountains…and reflected on Sitting Bull & Custer’s little tete a tete for a few hours. We pushed on to Gillette, WY for fuel & a quick breakfast to eat on the road. Our next stop was Wall Drug where we fueled body, soul & vehicles.  After a few buffalo burgers we hit the road again forged on ahead to the South Dakota border, past Sioux Falls–Sorry, Uncle Jim, et all…we didn’t have time or energy to stop–to Brandon, SD. Another 719 miles done. At this point we are almost half-way through our journey.

Reflections from today….None of us care much for the Mountains of Montana. We all fell in love with the landscape of Wyoming–the colors, the geography & natural wonders. I love the history of the place. South Dakota has mixed reviews. Most of us didn’t care for the monotony. I’ve been here several times since I was a boy and have always been fascinated with the Native American culture & rocks everywhere we stopped.

Tomorrow….well we’re going to try to ease up on the pace a bit. These long days are rough. We want to get past Chicago somehow–avoiding rush-hour preferably–so we shall see how far we get.

Day 4: Brandon, SD to Portage, IN…. Today was a difficult day for some reason. Not only were we trying to cut through 5 states, but Kathy & I were both extremely tired. I was really surprised at how tired I was so early in the day. We both slept like logs, but I think the pace and the stress are getting to us a bit. Again the weather was perfect.  We didn’t have far to drive to get out of South Dakota. Minnesota was really windy. We both noticed a severe drop in fuel-milage, and increased difficulty driving. The MN prairie was barren & featureless, but the roads were bare with little traffic. There were a great many wind-mills spinning away & it was difficult not watching them, mesmerizing as the are. I was my eyes were constantly drawn to them. …

We only had 162 miles to drive in Minnesota before we headed South into Iowa on I-32. The idea of cutting through the monotonous corn-fields, dressed in their barren winter skins, was to be able to skip driving I-90 through the heart of Chicago at rush-hour. Iowa was SO BORING! Perhaps it was the time of year, or our state of consciousness…but I found it hard to get through. At the very end of our trip, as we passed through Iowa City we noticed a giant military Helicopter hovering…little did we know, at the time, that President Obama was speaking in town.

We finally hooked up with I-80 leaving Iowa, entering Illinois over the Mississippi River. The road was horrible. Lot of construction was going on, and traffic was building. We had skipped by Chicago, but there was still more traffic than I was expecting. We barely made it into Indiana… coming from a tiny island in a quiet corner of Washington does not prepare one for busy city traffic & crazy truckers zinging all over the place. We’re simple country folk…we got lucky to dodge off the highway & find a comfortable place to spend the night. We had covered 620 miles, for a total of 2182 miles covered in 4 days! More than 2/3rds there!

The idea is to leave early in the morning, again, and miss the traffic. We should be well on the way before it begins. Our hope is to get out of Indiana, through Ohio and to the border of Pennsylvania & New York. This should set us up with an easy day’s drive to my hometown on Saturday where we will spend the night and then a short drive to Home in Maine on Sunday!

Day 5: Portage, IN to Scranton, PA:….. Not much nice to say here…..The roads were horrid. The state police were out in force through Indiana which meant lots of people were getting pulled over, slowing down traffic. Ohio was the high point of the drive–even if it did cost us a fair amount in tolls to cross the state. By the time we got to Pennsylvania we were already sick of driving. PA was a slow state to cross for some reason. The roads were beat up, the traffic was heavy and the closer we got to where we were hoping to stop for the night the later it got.

For some bizarre reason we thought we wanted to stop in Scranton. It seemed like it was a good point to begin the following day’s trip from–I-80 changed in to where we needed to catch I-84 through New York into Connecticut just beyond. However, the more we drove the further away our destination seemed to get. Then, just outside of Scranton we hit a massive traffic snarl. Before we got there I hit a massively deep pot-hole going over a bridge. It sent the whole truck shuddering. I spent the whole time going down the next steep hill terrified that the tire would fly apart and I’d be stuck there after dark. Because we were so late in getting to where we wanted to be, we now got caught in road construction which was on it’s first night and had just begun. We spent almost an hour to get 15 miles.

Then the nightmare really began. As we broke free from the traffic we finally reached Scranton proper. We followed Google Maps into where our Comfort Inn was supposed to be. Only it wasn’t there. We drove around and around–a giant truck and a Suburban with a horse trailer–tiny lanes in an industrial park and still couldn’t find our motel. Finally we spotted a way into a Hampton Inn and a Comfort Suites. We managed to park the vehicles–which barely fit into the tiny driveway. The Comfort Suites has just sold their last rooms. We went next door. The Hampton’s rooms were really expensive and they didn’t take dogs….back into the wagons to search for somewhere new. While I was wandering around trying to get a room, the rest of the crew had used an iPhone to call a Budget Inn across the freeway. So we headed there.

Or so we thought. We got to where we thought the Budget Inn should be and found it not to be there. We drove in circles some more and bumped into a nightwatchman down one of the diveways we blundered. He pointed us in the right direction and we booked in to a total dive. Fortunately there was a microwave in the room so we could reheat leftover Chinese food from the night before. We were too exhausted to think. We fell into a deep sleep only to be woken by the dogs growling and barking at 2AM. The constant traffic outside our room, the dubious nature of the conversations had set our beloved guardians off. We calmed them down, but spent a fitful few more hours waiting for them to sound off again. At 5:30AM the again broke out. That was too much. I got dressed and took them outside for a long walk and into the vehicles. It was one of the colder mornings we encountered, so I did my pre-travel checks of oil, tires, coolant and trailer connections and loaded the dogs inside. By then Kathy and the kids were ready to go. We climbed in and headed off.

Day 6: Scranton, PA to Glastonbury, CT:….. Worst day of travel on the shortest leg of the trip so far. We decided to leave Scranton behind and drive up the pike for a few hours before stopping for breakfast. On the way in to the dive motel we stayed at we had seen a fuel stop. We headed there before 6AM to tank up for the trip to my dad’s.  As soon as we pulled into the tiny driveway I realised they didn’t sell diesel. Not only that, but they seemed to be closed or non-functional. I pulled out onto the road, but had to loop around the way we came so I could turn the truck around to point the right direction. Kathy meanwhile got confused and started out the wrong way up a one way road. When she saw her mistake, she opted to drive over the median separating the 6 lanes of traffic. I was sitting at  traffic light when I saw this and didn’t think she was going to make it. My light turned green and I pulled in just behind her–more than a little shaken up. We drove quickly back onto I-80 and up several miles to a proper truck stop where we tanked up.

While I filled my tank I added oil to the Suburban and checked for damage from the median. No worries. When I got back to my truck I saw that it only allowed me to put in $75 instead of the $100 which had been the normal in the Midwest. I was almost full, but I started to head into have the attendant run my card again…when I got inside I decided to get a mega-coffee and just get my reciept instead. Connecticut wasn’t too far away and I had more then enough fuel to make it there without bothering to top off completely. I climbed in the truck and away we went.

An hour or so later we stopped off just before the New York State border for breakfast. When I stepped out of the truck I could smell diesel. I went over to the tank and saw that I had left the cap off. Fortunately it was there, swinging on a chain. There was a bit of fuel splashed out over the ground and a nice trail leading right to the truck. For the last hour I had been sloshing fuel out of the tank! I think I must have lost around 5 gallons through my sleepy mistake. We stopped for a while over breakfast.

Refreshed after a sit-down meal–one of our first on the whole trip–and lots of strong coffee we set the caravan back in motion. All went fine through the rest of Pennsylvania and into New York, except I was getting really sick of steep hills by now. They take so long to climb in the truck and really eat through fuel. Trouble today really didn’t start until we hit Connecticut. Traffic had been building gradually as we went along. By the time we crossed the state line it was really thick, but the speed had picked up and hte insanity began. People weaving and lane changing rapidly, lots of angry driving. Insanity. Within 20 minutes I had to pull off to go through a weigh station. I probably could have gotten away with skipping it, but it didn’t indicate which class of trucks were required to go through. So I slowed down and waited in a massive que of trucks.

This was one of the worst designed weigh stations I have ever been in. It pulls you way off the highway and loops you around and around before spitting you back out. Even if it was empty it would take 20 minutes to go through. I sat there for 45 minutes before getting back on the road. By the time I was travelling again I realized there was little hope of catching up to Kathy to get ahead of her and show here an alternate, less trafficed route. I drove through the insanity until we reached Hartford where I actually did catch up with her. Kathy had been driving the speed limit while everyone else–me included–went 20 miles an hour faster. I finally got in front of her and we drove the last few miles to Dad’s without event.

We pulled onto his road without event, although much later than I expected. Much relieved we were able to plug the freezer in the back of the truck in while we ate lunch and helped Dad sort through the furniture he was going to give us. My brother and sister-in-law came over for dinner and we had a restful night at last. The dogs were very happy to see their grampa too.

Day 7: Glastonbury, CT to Montville, Maine:….The Last Leg Home

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