Our trip/adventure west to the IRG in California.

OK, finally got a few minutes to get this down. It's long and possibly boring but it is the synopsis of our trip and the reason for the hard luck award we received at the IRG so feel free to skip it if you like. Just thought I'd get it down so everybody knows just how much fun we really had!!

Our trip to the IRG started out rather uneventfully, well almost anyway. The first problem started before we ever left the driveway on Thursday morning. Wednesday night (around Midnight) I put a 6 way plug on the truck and trailer so I could hook up the charging wire to charge the tear battery while we were traveling. Well apparently somebody rotated the wires one hole and when I check the lights Thurs. all of the fuses blew except the right turn signal which was now blinking the left turn signal on the trailer. So after finally get that straightened out we headed out. Now came the long ride out across Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and into Wisconsin with nothing to look at but corn fields, no problems except it was just slightly boring.

We spent the night in Benoit and headed up to Camp Inn in the morning. Where we spent a couple of very enjoyable hours with the folks there who took time out of their day to show us around the shop and just generally hang out and B.S. with us. Very nice place and great folks there!!!

Friday got us out across Minnesota and South Dakota to near the Badlands and we spent the early part of Saturday driving thru there. Been a long time since I've seen it but it's still a cool ride.

From there we headed up toward Yellowstone. We made pretty good time to Cody, Wyoming on Sunday and were figuring on finding a campground on the other side of it and hitting Yellowstone Monday morning. We pulled into town and spotted a Quizno's so we decided to grab a sandwich. When I pulled in it came to my attention that I for some unknown reason had no clutch. Well figuring that the fluid could be low we went ahead in had a samich and when I came back out I put a little fluid in it and wouldn't ya know it...no improvement...just that now I couldn't even push the pedal down. Hmmmm....not good....push a little harder....pedal went down, fluid deserted the system in a hurry. Still no clutch, not good.

Cody Wyoming...where for the most part they close up the town on Sunday except for the rodeo. Now what??? Well it was off to Walmart where at least we knew we could spend the night and deal with it Monday. So with more than a little playing around I drove the 3 miles to the other end of town and pulled into Wally World. We got out of the truck and wouldn't ya know it Vick spots a Checker Auto Parts across the street. Well I high tailed it in that direction and saw a guy standing out front....well I'll be da----, they're open, probably the only other thing in town besides WW that is!!

All right!!! We're in business....well a bit premature I guess cause I don't even know if they have the slave cylinder for my truck...but at least they're open!!!! Across the road I hike and low and behold they have one in stock!! Yehaw, now we're in business!! Back across the road I go and proceed to pull the transfer case and transmission out of the truck in WW's parking lot. Everything went reasonably well for the most part except some of those bolts had been in there respective holes for the better part of 220k miles and they weren't real happy to relinquish their positions. But with a little perseverance and more than a little cussin' everything finally came apart.

Now I should probably mention here that during this whole operation I did have a little entertainment provided by the local constabulary and some local teenagers who from what I could ascertain from my vantage point under the truck had a girl with them who got caught shoplifting CD's. They spent the better part of 3 hours questioning them and searching their car. Apparently the local police didn't think someone laying under a truck with parts scattered every where using a flashlight at midnight in WW's parking lot warranted their attention tho because no one ever even said hi to me.

Finally got it back together about 3 AM, cleaned up and crawled in the tear for a little much needed sleep.

Well from here on out it was pretty much just a nice ride thru Yellowstone and on down thru Bonneville and into California (well after Bonneville it's just a ride... a long ride looking at desert. It's kinda like one of those rolled scenerys from and old movie.) The first person we ran into in California was at a bug checkpoint on 395(?) and he was from Jersey. (is anybody really from Calif?) Well we were inspected, detected and checkded for Gypsy moths and some other bug that I can't recall. Very nice guy and girl working there that were more interested in the TD than the bugs!

Now I have to say here that I have been on some bad roads in my day (I've been to Missouri) but for being the most expensive state in the union California has to have some of the $hittiest roads I've ever been on!!

I was really beginning to believe that they pave with a shovel and a tamper....new pavement= rough road???? What's up with that??? Thinking Our roads may be bad but at least when they first pave them they are smooth!! At least for a year or so.

So we arrived in Redding, Calif. Tuesday night about 10:30 and I seriously entertained the idea of driving the 80 miles to Carlotta that night but decided since it was only less than 2 hours drive we'd pack it in and head out in the morning.

For those of you that have never driven Rt 36 a word of advice DON'T. I can't believe there are not 'Travel At Your Own Risk" signs posted every 50 feet on that road!!! It should read "Keep off, this is a cow path and the cows are all drunk, following them could be hazardous to your health. Those that claim cigarettes are bad for your health have never been on this road....no comparison!!!!! The smokes would lose their warning label to Rt 36!

For those of you that have driven the Dragon I can honestly say you ain't seen nothing yet!! There isn't a 50 foot section of this 80 miles of road that isn't either going up hill, down hill, around a sharp turn....around back behind you then back the other way or all of the above at the same time. And all of this is accomplished at up to 9k feet on the side of a cliff with no guardrails or any other safety concerns including shoulders on the road of which there are none. If you cross the yellow line on the downhill side....you are going down hill. And they actually have the audacity to post signs that say 'Rough Road' well no $h!t!!! I hadn't noticed. I actually saw a road sign that out did the switch back signs, it was a complete circle. Never in my 30+ years of driving had I seen that!!!

I started down this road with just over a half tank of gas which with 80 miles should have been no problem...riiiiight!!! There is nothing on this road except a few town signs with populations ranging from 10 to around 50, none of which I can recall seeing one actual live person in. There may be a reason for this but I didn't feel the need to stop and investigate that reason. The Deliverance theme kept running thru my head. Now about 40 miles into this mess I am down to less than a 1/4 tank of gas and I'm still going up hill for the most part. It seems like you go up 800 feet and down 300, then you go up 900 and down 400 and so on and on and on and on and................ and it never seems to end and you never seem to be making any downward progress. I was really beginning to believe that at some point we were going to drive off into the ocean at about 6000 feet!!

Well I digress...back to the gas situation. I finally saw a sign for gas in a few miles, relief!!! Not so, I believe the pop. there was 10 and presumably they all left since that sign was put up and took the gas pumps with them. So onward and ever upward we go until finally after about 50 hard miles we come across a working gas station, well it would be if it were open...9 A.M. and nobody home. Well he just happened to pull in behind me and opened the place up. Hurray!!... I got to pay $4.95 for gas....but at least I had gas. So now with a full tank of gas and an obvious sigh of relief we started the rest of the trip down killer road. And believe it or not the road got worse... I really didn't think that was possible. Now the fellow at the gas station tried to console my bitching about the road by telling me that people come from all over to ride that road for the scenery, on bikes! Whoopee, so I'm not riding a bike, I'm pulling a trailer and as for scenery, all I've seen so far is tree tops and smoke (California is on fire after all)!!! And of course the edge of the cliff. Some one really needs to introduce these people to dynamite!!! When we have a mountain that size around home we put a hole in it!!!!!! Then we don't turn a 10 mile mountain crossing into an 80 mile white knuckled run for your life!!!

So finally 4 1/2 hours later and a huge sigh of relief we arrived at Pamplin, nearly exhausted and all we need is a bathroom and a way to get the fingernail marks out of my dash board on the wife's side of the truck. Yep, we made it and I was never in my life so glad I decided to wait till the next day to go some where. That road would have really sucked at night!!!!

End of part one. The continuing saga at a later time. Maybe later tonight. So if I haven't bored you to tears yet check later it gets better.

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And now for the rest of the story. Some of you already know this part too but I'll finish what I started in case anyone else is interested.

Part 2, the saga continues.

After a very enjoyable 4 days at Pamplin (thanks again to all involved that made it such a great time!!!) we headed off down the coast road. Ah yes, another windy, twisty sumbeach of a road!! Not near the ups and downs of 36 but crooked none the less. A quick note here...my brother had ask if I would grab him a piece of driftwood from the ocean if I saw any that looked interesting. See it I did but somehow I forgot my rappelling rope so he didn't get any I'm afraid. You guessed it, most of the way down you are a hundred feet or more above the beach on a cliff!! Not quite sure how it got called the coast road, ain't even close to the coast!!

Forget where we stayed that night but it was closing in on San Fran so we hit the Golden Gate the next morning, well it was too early apparently cause there was a pretty good fog over the bridge, enough that we couldn't see the tops of the arches. Oh well, maybe some other time.

From there we headed on over toward Yosemite with the intention of seeing the really big Redwood trees but after looking at the map upon entry we decided that the trip down and back up was a little more than we wanted to do so we just did the northern route thru. As you might imagine, more twisting, turning, up and down roads. At this point I have pretty much ascertained that California is nothing more than one big long mountain from coast to eastern border.

Now I didn't get much south of San Fran so I'm not certain about that but if I had to guess, well...........

Anyway, after cruising thru Yosemite we set course for Death Valley. Now mind you we had five days of beautiful weather in Pamplin and now it's just HOT! Neither of us particularly cares for HOT so aside from the scenery DV really sucked!!! 115 to 120 degrees in the shade and the bottoms of your shoes got hot walking on the pavement, time to keep moving. Oh yeah, more twisty, turny up and down roads here too....who'd a thunk it?

Well we finally hit the northern route out which is amazingly and I must believe totally by accident, STRAIGHT!! Oh yeah, 10 miles of straight and up and up and up and....... I can't recall how many thousand feet we climbed in that ten miles but I had to do quite a bit of it in 3rd gear. Well wouldn't ya know at nearly the top the road turns a few times (really??) and then it crests and turns again ( no??? ). Well just as I crested the hill the engine quit, no it didn't do anything like sputter or cough or give me any warning it just quit. Well lo and behold the road on the other side of the up hill climb goes down and I know you won't believe this but it was STRAIGHT! Well I just put it out of gear and let it coast....for about 6 miles. I said it goes down, I weren't kidding. Finally pulled off and opened the hood, man it was hot in there.

Not sure what exactly the problem was, we opened the hatch and made sandwiches. What else is there to do in a desert when the vehicle won't run? About 20 minutes later I hit the key and it fired right up! All I can figure is it got so hot under the hood that it vapor locked the fuel rails and shut her down. So off we go again, down the rest of the road and finally out of the frying pan. For the most part at least.

About 35 miles west of Vegas we pulled into a station for a break and gas cause we were down to a 1/4 tank anyway. Well I don't think that was one of my better ideas. There are a lot of possibles as to what actually started things going wrong after that not the least of which is bad gas. Didn't notice any problems till we rolled off of an exit ramp in Vegas and the truck started coughing and belching and it quit. Got off the road, let it sit for a bit and it started so we headed for WW for a set of spark plugs because at this point it was running rather rough. Figure maybe the heat and lean conditions that must have been going on in DV probably killed them, that was one thing I was right about....never seen plugs that looked like that, the electrodes were burned so bad the tips of them looked like lava stone!

Well the next day we rode down to the track for a look (LVMS) and everything seemed fine, stay at KOA at Circus Circus that night. Not the best choice but there didn't seem to be a lot of choices so that was it. Yes it was HOT there too. Oh, right but it's dry heat. Let me tell you something about that dry heat......it's still HOT!!! And 100* is HOT in my world no matter how you look at it!!

Well we did the strip that night, no gambling I'm afraid, just couldn't get in the mood for it somehow......maybe it was just too HOT.

So the next morning we packed up, decided the Grand Canyon would have to wait for another trip ( too HOT ) and pointed the truck toward the Hoover Dam. About a half a mile from the exit for Boulder City the truck quit....again!!!! Arrrgh!!

And naturally we are heading up hill. With a little fooling around and not a little bit of time I manged to coerce it to the exit ramp which surprisingly was down hill. We got into town and I was looking for an auto parts store when I saw a sign that said it was 110* and that was in the shade mind you!

So much for me crawling under the truck to fix it!! I've never been in a Dutch Oven and I had no desire to try it out. So I located a garage and got it to there. They got me in quick and checked it, found low fuel pressure. Changed the fuel filter, check the pressure and pump and all was good. Well while the trailer was off we decided to run down and have lunch, all was good. Well almost, we came back for the trailer and the truck quit in the garage parking lot. Back inside....this time the machine shows the fuel pump dead. Drop the tank and pull the pump, pump is trying to inhale the filter sock on the bottom of it, not a good thing. Likely caused by a number of things along the trail. Pump had to be ordered, ( surprised? not I ). So we got a motel for the night, way too hot to sleep in the trailer, don't think it got much below 90 that night.

Next day about noon they sent someone to pick us up, truck was done, $700 later, shoulda done it myself, had the tools but it was just too HOT! It was expensive but it did solve the problem and my fuel mileage improved so it wasn't a total loss.

We headed down to do the Hoover Dam crossing but when we got to the bottom of the hill we saw about 3 miles of traffic just barely creeping along and we decided we really didn't want to see it that bad.

So around we turn, Colorado bound. We made Aspen without incident and pulled into a rest stop for a potty break. Me being me I walked around and checked my tires for heat and noticed the right rear kinda looked a little funny so I rolled the truck a little forward and what did I see but what can only be described as a knot in my tire. It had been vibrating pretty good for a few hundred miles and I figured I thew a wheel weight, nope, the tire was shot but on a positive note, I caught it before it blew out.

Good justification for checking your vehicle during roadside stops. Of course there was one teeny tiny problem that I quickly discovered.....nope, the spare weren't left at home nor was it flat. Remember back to changing the throw out bearing? Yup I had lots of tools, even had the tools to drop the gas tank if it hadn't been so HOT. But there was one small detail someone over looked before we left, ya see, I don't normally carry a spare around home so I had no Tire Iron or 1/2 extension long enough to loosen my lug nuts!!! So I found a Midas tire shop and they loosened them for me and checked the air after it was back on. Nice guys all interested in the tear, one wanted me to start one for him till he realized where I was from!

The weather in Colorado for the most part was nice, better than the few days before to say the least. Pikes Peak was about 53* when we got up there, aahh it felt sooo nice!! Vick got a little sick on the way down but otherwise no problem there.

Next stop, Meramec Caverns in Missouri. Got there with no problem but when we hit their campground about 8:30 it was about 100* with humidity somewhere in the 200% area! Yep...HOT!. It did cool down nicely and the humidity dropped around 10:30 so we had a comfortable nights sleep. Hit the caverns the next morning, it was nice in there too, felt like about 55-60 degrees, not sure, but quite comfortable.

And that my friends is the rest of the story, nothing more exciting than rough, rough roads up thru MS, IL and IN and an over night stop in Tipp City, OH to visit Vick's sister and her family then home Wednesday evening, got in here about 11PM. I hope I didn't bore you all too much but I did promise the rest of the story!