Trip from Hell

July 25, 2013, Thursday Day 55

It was not the trip to hell, as the place we were going to, Penn Valley, to visit Jacque and Lynn, is quite pleasant.  It was the getting there that was the hell part.

We started out at 7 in the morning as we wanted to make it in one day, about an 11 hour drive, which is not too bad for just driving the truck down the road.  First thing, Sharon forgot her rings so we turned around not far from the park and went back and got the rings.  It would be hell to not have any rings for those four days.  We also selected a route that was down highway 95 as it put us further to the west than going down 55 through Boise.  Well as it turned out this was the first nail in the coffin.  95 was not as straight as we had expected so it still had a lot of twists and turns.  We told ourselves that we would stop at the first fast food place that we came to for breakfast.  After we got out of the mountains and through a number of very small towns at 25 MPH, none with fast food, we saw a very friendly bill board advertising McDonald's, just what we ordered, so we drove and drove and drove and then saw another similar sign and we drove and drove, and drove, no McDonald's is sight.  Finally around 10:30 we needed a restroom break and stopped at a gas station that had a co-located Subway.  Have you ever had a Subway breakfast, they serve them all day?  I would not recommend it, but that's what we had.

A few miles down the road we encountered our next nail in the coffin.  Road Work, very extensive Road Work, they had removed the entire road and were building it back from scratch, from the bottom up.  It was dirt and well watered.  It was a no lane road with a flag man, looked like he had been there for weeks and the cars were backing up behind us, we were first in line, a good thing.  Noticing a little activity up the road we were encouraged but it turned out to be only the water truck, making things just a little more muddy.  Finally the pilot truck appeared and we didn't think the line of cars behind it would ever quit, but finally it did and it was our turn.  We made it through to the other side, with 16 layers of mud on the truck, but now it was going to be smooth sailing.

I had a fuel strategy, I knew the price of diesel in Idaho, I figured that Oregon would be similar to California and I knew I did not want to buy diesel in California, so we opted for Nevada.  As we were getting close to Reno we spotted a gas spot with reasonable prices, $3.90 credit and $3.85 cash.  I wanted to pay cash and attempted to do so from the pump outside.  I thought I had gotten instructions from the attendant on the inside, which was to pump my gas and then come in and pay cash.  Well, to get the pump turned on I used a credit card, pumped my diesel and went inside to pay cash.  I was informed that I had already used my credit card and the cash option was not available.  I had a little discussion but it was a no win situation and the credit price was not all that bad, I had paid more.

We ran into Highway 80 at Minnamuca, Nevada and this was the highway wer we counting on for more smooth sailing on to Penn Valley, great.  As we got closer to Reno we began to see highway message boards flashing information that said highway 80 was closed at exit 1 on the California border.  Not knowing exactly what that meant we kept trucking along until we got closer and closer to exit 1.  Trucks parked everywhere and very slow traffic.  We were stopped long enough to talk to a trucker that told us there was a mud slide just past the state line and they were turning around the traffic and heading it back toward Reno.  Another nail in the coffin.  I got on the phone to Lynn for him to help me with an alternate route.  He came up with heading back to Reno, then to Carson City, around Lake Tahoe, taking highway 50 toward Sacramento, then back over to 80.  It was a little after 5 and that's what we did.  He said it would take us about three hours from Tahoe to get to their house.  That was a bit optimistic.  It was kind of a white knuckle drive through the beautiful Tahoe area.  Sometime we will have to go back through there when we can enjoy it, because we definitely did not enjoy it this time.

To make a long story longer we successfully navigated ourselves around Tahoe, up Highway 50 to Highway 80 and then through the back woods, in the dark of night, to Penn Valley at a little after 10 PM California time.  We were greeted by our hosts, with smiley faces, in that they were happy to see us as were we to see them.  I said all I wanted was a cracker and some Whiskey, Lynn had a fresh bottle of Bushmill and I was a happy camper.  We sat around a little while then we found our beds.  The end.