An Unexpected Road Trip

A one-week, 3000-mile road trip wasn’t exactly in our plans.

If you’ve followed our blogs in the past, you’ll know that we love travel and we especially love road trips. During this pandemic, however, like most folks, we’ve been sticking fairly close to home. Travel hasn’t been an option lately until David’s older sister needed some help… in Oklahoma. Karen was in an untenable situation and needed to move ASAP. Despite the unexpected timing and the inherent challenges of travel at the moment, the thought of a road trip was not totally unwelcome. We were wary, but willing. David totally cleared out Blue so we had an empty cargo van again in order to accommodate moving Karen’s furniture and household goods. Then off we headed to move Karen from Oklahoma to her waiting apartment in a small mountain town in Colorado.

We left Las Vegas just before dawn… a sunrise view through an already bug-smeared windshield

This road trip was quite different from most we’ve taken in the past. We are usually all about the journey… what can we see and do en route. This time it was about the destination. How far could we comfortably drive in a day without killing ourselves? The distance was ~1,300 miles from Las Vegas to Nowata, OK and we planned on two days to get there… much further than we would ordinarily drive each day. We left Las Vegas just before dawn and drove to Albuquerque, New Mexico, ~600 miles, the first day.

Blue was all alone in the empty parking lot when we stopped at the Kingman, AZ visitor’s center.

Since Blue was empty, our composting toilet was gone. We purchased a camper’s porta-potty to avoid having to use public restrooms. The fridge was also left behind, so I packed food and drink in a cooler in order to avoid foraging for meals. Our one luxury was to bring our own coffeemaker, so we could indulge in good coffee throughout our trip without needing to stop.

We were not surprised by the lack of car traffic as we traveled through Arizona and New Mexico, but the endless stream of semi trailer trucks kept David on guard. Several rest areas were closed or had significantly limited hours. A digital traffic sign on I-40 advised that the South Rim entrance of Grand Canyon National Park had reopened, but only from 6-10AM on Fridays-Mondays and all trails and visitor centers remained closed.

Car traffic was light, but a neverending stream of trailer trucks kept David on alert.

We stopped frequently to stretch our stove-up muscles and bones and even walked a couple of miles on the Arizona Trail in Flagstaff to get a few steps in. We haven’t missed a day of walking our 10,000 steps since the New Year and we were determined to keep up our ~135-day streak.

No matter what humans are currently enduring, Mother Nature seems to be blossoming. View from the Arizona Trail outside of Flagstaff.

In Albuquerque, we would usually have visited our niece, Gentry and family, but we all agreed that it wasn’t prudent on this trip and instead stayed in a hotel. We fueled up in preparation for an early morning departure, then dined in, aka. a room picnic. Losing an hour in the time change from Pacific to Mountain Time upset our body clocks, but we managed to be on the road by 5am en route to Oklahoma City the next day, another 560-mile day.

We passed the long, boring, uneventful hours sometimes reminiscing about past trips and other times dreaming about possible future trips. We sipped coffee and munched on cherries and grapes. We figured out a way to exercise safely while Blue was on cruise-control. We accompanied our favorite music artists, singing our favorite songs with them. We stopped in small town parks and deserted rest areas for brekkie and lunch and to get a few steps in. The hours and the miles whizzed by.

Having lost yet another hour to the next time zone change, we wearily drove the remaining 160 miles from Oklahoma City to Nowata in the early morning hours and arrived at Karen’s by 8AM, ready to load up. She was pretty much packed other than disassembling some furniture.. We managed the task in less time than anticipated, but the dead battery in Karen’s car caused an unexpected glitch… and a few F-bombs to be dropped. We jump-started her car and had a replacement battery installed at Advanced Auto in a nearby town. We managed to drive another 250 miles to Salina, KS before finding a hotel for the evening. Our hotel choices were complicated somewhat by traveling with Karen’s two dogs, but we managed. Ugh!

After driving 160 miles, loading Blue then driving another 250 miles, we were tuckered out.

The distance from Salina, Kansas to Craig, Colorado is another ~810 miles. Karen was adamant about avoiding Denver traffic and mountain passes, so we opted for a longer route on I-80. We decided to stop in Cheyenne, Wyoming for the next night, ~550 miles, allowing time for frequent dog walking/pit stops and Karen’s naps.

A trivial note of interest, we observed that the variety of roadkill changed significantly as we passed from region to region. In Nevada and Arizona, rabbits, coyotes and slow birds seemed to litter the roadsides. Flat armadillos were in great numbers in Texas and Oklahoma. Kansas and Nebraska sported lots of dead raccoon and the distinctive stripes and aroma of dead skunks were most noticeable. By the time we reached Wyoming and Colorado, antelope and deer were in evidence on the roadways, some with severely damaged and abandoned cars nearby. Noting the volume of bug guts splattered and dried on our windshield, however, I’d say that flying insects probably took the biggest hit roadkill-wise.

By the time we reached Cheyenne, we were all extremely tired. After fueling up and getting Karen and her dogs settled in their hotel room, David made a quick trip for Chinese take-out for curbside pick-up. We gratefully enjoyed gaining back one of those hours we’d recently lost to time zone changes.

On the road again for the final 270 mile leg to Craig, the going was slow once we departed from I-80 due to roadworks in progress. We arrived in Craig just in time for a quick lunch and Karen’s appointment to sign her lease on her new apartment. We hustled to unload Blue by 4PM and made a quick trip to the local WalMart to stock up Karen’s kitchen with some basics, including the microwave and toaster she’d forgotten to pack. We dropped off her supplies and dinner, walked her dogs and after insuring she was okay for the evening, headed to our hotel. We were definitely running out of energy.

We returned to Karen’s early the next morning to reassemble furniture, set up her TV, hang drapes and pictures and make another shopping trip to WalMart to stock her fridge and freezer. She planned to unpack slowly at her own pace and didn’t feel she needed any more help. By noon, we were on the road headed back to Las Vegas… a mere 665 miles.

This was, by no means, our favorite road trip… 9 states and 3,000 miles in one week. It was good to get back to Las Vegas, but that of course, posed another problem. We share a home with David’s brother and sister and our road trip may have exposed us to the coronavirus along the way… something we preferred not to share with his sibs. Hmmm … what to do?

We took lots of safety precautions and David will expound on them and travel during the pandemic, as well as our return to Las Vegas. Check out his next blog scheduled for Monday.