Cross-country trip: phase 1

I know there has been an absence of blogs lately, so I will try and remedy that, I’ve just been too stinkin busy having fun in Colorado (-: I arrived a bit less than a week ago in Fort Collins to spend time with my friend Tyler and to help him with his snow igloo. He enjoys snow camping as much as I do and we have been able to get out for 2 excursions so far, but more on that later.

I embarked from West Virginia a week ago where temperatures were unbelievably cold, -5 F! It was so cold on the morning I left, when I opened my trunk of my Volvo, the struts that hold the lid up failed! I was very sad to leave my girlfriend, who has a semester remaining at WVU to finish her program. I had to leave my sister too, saying goodbyes is always difficult. I drove with a furiousness up through PA, and then into northwest Ohio where I encountered lots of lake-effect snow around the Toledo area. A quick application of the brakes, some gas pumping and a re-setting of the GPS navi (her name is Maggie) and I was in Indiana for another tank of gas.

The first days drive was pretty easy until I got on I80 in Iowa, which was an enormous yard sale of hundreds of cars that slipped off the roads and were stuck in snowbanks. The problem wasn’t the snow falling, but the snow that was relentlessly blowing in from the plains/fields and keeping the road slicked up. I took my time and pulled into Des Moines, Iowa around 11pm after leaving Morgantown, WV at 7:30am.

This first days drive I had a mascot, a pretty silly one indeed, but it reminded me of Madison (-;

Not much can be said about the 2^nd days drive through western Iowa and the unbelievably wide state that is Nebraska. It was fun watching the altimeter traveling west because Nebraska is one big hill and by the time I hit the Wyoming border and Cheyenne it was 6,000 ft, pretty damn cool. I do love being at altitude (-: