Traveling to Wyoming

We left Ridgecrest for Wyoming yesterday around 1:30 in the afternoon. This was a couple hours later than I wanted to but I had a lot of things I had put off until the last minute and it took longer to get packed and ready to go than I had planned on. I hate it when I’m the one that makes us late for arbitrary deadlines that I set. It’s much more fun nagging at everyone else who making us late for my arbitrary deadlines.

Regardless we finally hit the road. It was 108 in Ridgecrest when we left. It was 121 in Baker, CA when we drove through there a couple hours later. It was 115 degrees in Las Vegas. Basically it was HOT! DAMNED HOT! WELCOME TO HELL HOT!

To add to the heat we were driving in the middle of the LA to Las Vegas weekend traffic. This means that we were surrounded by idiots who were on their way to Las Vegas to lose all their money and can’t get there fast enough to do so. It boils down to a four hour drive in over 110 degree temperatures and surrounded by morons who if they ever knew anything about driving have forgotten it.

To top matters off my car kept overheating. The van tends to run a little hot, and when loaded down it will occasionally heat up while trying to climb steep hills AT 70 mph when it is hot out. Well it was hot out, and we were climbing steep hills AT 70 mph but we weren’t really loaded down. So I was surprised when the van kept overheating. So on top of the heat and the traffic we rode about 100 miles without our air conditioner.

Eventually I got past Vegas, the temperatures dropped a bit, the sun went down, the traffic thinned out and the van stopped overheating and we were able to get down to traveling.

We spent the night at a Travelodge in Provo Utah. This morning my first task was to check the van. There was plenty of water in the radiator, and everything else looked OK except for this one hose that came out of the manifold cover and was supposed to be hooked into the air filter cover. It was loose. I pushed it back onto its fitting and we traveled to Laramie today with the AC running the whole way with no overheating at all. Damn. I wish I would have noticed that little hose when I looked under the hood at the gas station in Las Vegas.

Just outside of Evanston WY we stopped for some lunch and I got a couple pictures of some of the local residents.