On the Road!

12/26 On the Road!

Up early this AM, final packing and prepping the house for long term survival (water off, hot water heater off, furnace set, etc., etc.)

Four inches of fresh fluffy snow this AM! Of course I took the snow tires off the smart yesterday when we got home from Christmas dinner (Thanks Julie!), so we tip-toed out to the storage barn on snow covered, slippery roads. Weather forecast looks good for the whole route once we get out of northern IL so we decided to go for it in spite of the snow.

Nancy loaded the last minute stuff into the trailer while I got the truck fired up and loaded the smart. We left Clayton’s barn at 9 AM, right on schedule! Decided to go east towards the city instead of west to I-39 as the road report said the expressways were just wet around the city. 10 miles of snow and slush covered roads in fairly heavy snow to I-88, from there on the roads were just wet except for a 20-30 mile stretch south of Springfield. Took I-88 to I-355 to I-55. Heavy snow squalls with limited visibility until just north of St Louis. Nancy’s comment: “How long can I hold my breath? Apparently about 200 miles!”

We had planned on stopping at Boiling Springs Campground in Dixon, MO., but when we called they said it had snowed there and the steep hill into and out of the campground might be impassable. So we ended up at the little Good Sam campground behind the Country Hearth Inn in Dixon. Arrived just after 6 PM and it is perfectly adequate.

12/27 Back on the road at 9:30 after breakfast at Cracker Barrel. Dry roads most of the day, but the left lane was wet and sloppy most of the way across Oklahoma. Truck, smart, and trailer are seriously dirty! A fair amount of snow in Joplin and Tulsa. We could see that the roads off the interstate were still a mess, particularly in Tulsa.

The campground we had targeted between Tulsa and OK City said they were still snowed in so we went on to OK City and ended up at Rockwell RV Park, a very nice campground on the west side of the city. So we are 50 miles ahead of schedule and we don’t have to fight OK City traffic on Monday morning! OK City is still a mess from the snow. Several place a lane on the interstate would suddenly go away do to piles of plowed snow! Still a fair number of cars in the ditches all the way across OK.

Tomorrow it’s on to New Mexico.