Life on the road means calculating distances, estimated times of arrival and gas station stops. It has been wise for us to add at least two hours to our travel time calculations due to alternate route decisions, points of interest and frequent breaks. Our day in Wyoming, however, stretched us to a near breaking point with a few miscalculations.
There are three mountain passes on the route we chose from the edge of Idaho through Wyoming. I'm a bit squeamish (okay. a lot squeamish) when it comes to mountain driving, but a moment of weakness made me think I was strong enough to persevere. Shortly after leaving Idaho, we made it through our first summit, 8,431 feet. One down, two to go. It was time for our routine lunch break of sandwiches and fruit so we pulled into the parking lot at a convenience store and shortly thereafter eased out onto the road again. We continued onward through summit two and I sighed with relief. One to go.
There is a point in every trip that will forever go down in history and this was it. As we rounded the curve at the base of the mountain, I saw the "Welcome to Idaho" sign. Few words were exchanged between my husband and me but we both knew what had happened. We had mentally turned ourselves around in the C-store parking lot and had just crossed the same summit twice. Two summits down, three to go. Inhale deeply. Summit again and again.
By late afternoon, I was mainlining Cheese curls and my husband was looking for an illegal-in-some-states size soda pop so we could maintain our sanity. Our last push was through the highest summit of all, 9665 feet. The scenery was absolutely stunning but my husband had seen enough curvy roads with a skittish passenger for one day. We also had a slow moving caravan of three RVs ahead of us and a renegade Cujo RV with fuming diesel pushing us from behind.
More Cheese curls, please.
Finally, we limped into our hotel, looking like a couple of jellyfish washed up along the shore.
Our final calculation: one more travel day. That's a number that's looking mighty good.
Bahahahaha....oh my......THAT was something I would have done. And isn't it amazing how Cheetos cure most ailments?
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