Sunday, October 27, 2019

Day 35, 930 pm, Goodland Kansas

If there is to be one reason why i will never take another road trip, or even drive a vehicle again, i just experienced it. That stretch of road between Denver and Kansas, especially at night, which is how i have always experienced it, is absolutely terrible. It got worse after my earlier report....high winds, made worse by the trucks passing in either direction; an undivided two-lane highway (with only thin cones separating opposing traffic) in 20-mile zones. I learned when i showed up at my bivouac for the night that they often shut down the i - hundreds of miles of it - due to high winds, and since there is no alternative route, travelers have to bivouac here, sonetimes for days.

The worst part about driving this stretch at night is that you get the impression you are driving through a dark tunnel. You have no sense of i scenery around you and you stsrt to hallucinate about what scenery's there...Forest? Canyons? Steep drop-offs, etc.

What you see is this...a big black screen in front of you with sometimes hundreds of bits of light: white, red, orange, green, blue, in different shapes abd sizes, appearing all over the screen, and moving. Your job is threefold...first, to find the five white strips of road lines that tell you where to go next, five and no more because you cannot see beyond five; second, try to guess if any two white lights you see approaching are headlamps of an oncoming vehicle or some extraneous something else; and third, if those lights are indeed an oncoming vehicke, if you are in its lane or vice versa.

When you approach one of the small towns about 50 miles apart, things get worse because hundreds of more small lights just pop out of nowhere and you have to then factor them into your task of trying to find the next fifty feet of your drive.

Your attention cannot be distracted for a second as you are driving...you have to pay attebtion to the road and only the road, which is what i did. But that can be a probelm. When i started the drive at 4, i had a full tank of gas and figured i could make it to Goodland on it, only 200 miles away. When i checked into my room tonight, i glanced-at my fuel guage, and you saw what it showed. Empty. Actually, when i filled up, i saw that i had 1,3 gallons left, or 20 miles. Close call.

Earlier today, i decided that i would not camp tonight in Goodland as it would be way too cold and i could not afford to take hours to set up and break camp in the cold. I planned to take a rustic cabin instead. But the weather was so bitter cold when we arrived here, i scrapped that plan and took a room at Motel 6. Donner appreciated that, as i am sure i will.

Despite the unwelcome excitement of the trip here , i had a plesabt visit with my grad school roommate Bob and his wife, Dorothy. Their gracious hospitality made up for what came later.

The good news is that i dodged that big Denver snowstorm for the most part, and probably saved three days by doing so.

My plan tomorrow was to camp at wonderful Perry Lake in Kansas, but with rain and mid-20s forecast for there tomorrow, i think i will pass that and try for another Motel 6 right off i-70 in Topeka, 350 miles up the road, my daily goal My goal on this leg of the trip is not to continue the edventure, but to get home as fast as i possibky can. Donner would second that, i am sure.

Time to get some shuteye.

Ed

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