July 14: The Trip West

I somehow managed to put in 4 hours of work before racing home to get the truck packed at 10:30 AM. Once at home it was just a matter of throwing a few totes of gear in the back, taking a shower, saying goodbye to my boys and mother, and we were on our way.

For some reason I was not as excited about this trip as I was for our 2004 and ill-fated 2005 Glacier trips despite thinking about this for nearly a year. As uninspired as I was we backed out of the driveway right on schedule at 11:45 AM.

We didn't need the car top rack on this trip as everything we needed for this trip fit inside my Santa Fe.

As we got to Milwaukee Yumi commented that she wasn’t feeling too hot. I guess she wasn’t as I had to stop twice for her to puke. This was not a good sign and I began to worry about not only her health but the trip as well. I kept thinking back to last year’s vacation which was aborted before we were even 6 hours away from home. Eventually, she was able to sleep some while I sped through southern Wisconsin and into Illinois. Our progress was halted just north of Rockford as traffic was sitting still at the toll plaza due to construction. Finally, in a move perfected by Yumi I managed to miss our exit in Rockford which wound up costing us another half hour. By the time we got onto I-39 we were already more than an hour behind schedule. I didn’t know it at the time, but this delay and others would cost us later on.

Eventually we started to do some distance and reached Iowa at 4:45. when we reached Des Moines and gassed up at 7:20 Yumi took over the driving while I tried to sleep and promptly took a wrong turn. This was starting to get ridiculous. I managed to fall asleep for about an hour and a half in the back seat of the truck then took over the driving at 11:30 when we stopped for gas in Grand Island, NE. A couple of hours later I missed the the I-80 split near Julesburg, CO and started to drive to Denver. I solved that one easily enough by illegally using one of the emergency turn offs. Ridiculous didn’t begin to describe how I felt.

We reached Wyoming at 3 AM and Cheyenne a half hour later where we stopped for gas and switched seats. Yumi had been able to sleep almost 4 hours and felt good enough to drive for a while which was a good sign. Two hours later we stopped at a rest area near Ft. Steele to try and sleep but I couldn’t. I walked around the rest area for a few minutes and watched the Antelope cautiously creep by the semi’s parked in the lot. By 6:15 i got back onto the interstate for the final push to Rock Springs where we’d take a shower at the KOA there.

We didn’t make it to Rock Springs until almost 8 AM, about 2 hours behind where I thought we’d be by this time, which concerned me knowing that finding Big Sandy Opening could be a challenge and a further waste of time. I didn’t want to spend one minute more than was necessary at Rock Springs. Hot, dirty and dusty, this town didn’t look like it had any redeeming qualities save the $5 shower. somehow, though, we managed to waste an hour and a half here before finding highway 191 which would take us to Farson.

It was hard to believe this hot, desolate landscape was the portal to the Winds.

A half hour after leaving the Springs I caught my first glimpse of the Winds and I started to get a little more excited about the trip. There looked to be a good amount of snow still up there. Now if we could only find our way to the TH.

As it turned out, I was worrying for nothing. There was good signage a couple miles west of Farson which took us directly to the trailhead save one wrong turn near the Big Sandy Lodge. The county road was an adventure itself and I said a short prayer---something about avoiding car troubles---which led me to think this was going to be quite the trip. We arrived at 11:45 AM---exactly 25 hours after we left Manitowoc or 3 hours longer than I thought it would.