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THE OFFICIAL WEBPAGE OF ROBERT D. WEST |
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An American Journey (or two)
An American Journey is unofficially brought to you by the 1991 Dodge Dynasty LE and the Argus DC1512 Digital Camera.
Introduction
In December 2003, I bought my first car. It wasn't really a planned purchase. It was my Senior year at the Milwaukee School of Engineering in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I was planning on having to get a car around graduation, because it would be necessary to get a job, but while in school I didn't really need one, so I wasn't concerning myself with the car issue yet.
My roommate Cody, already graduated from college and working, was offered a good deal on a former company car from work in November, and went ahead and bought it. He offered me his old car, a 1991 Dodge Dynasty LE, for $1000. Knowing that was what he had paid for the car two years earlier, and that it needed a little work (mainly replacing the right side mirror, and a lot of cleaning) I talked him down to $800.
In Wisconsin, license plates are issued to people, not cars. If you sell a car, you keep the plates, and can put them on another car. The purchaser of your car is responsible for acquiring plates of their own. Thus, Cody took his Wisconsin license plates off the Dynasty and put them on his new car. I may have been in Wisconsin, but officially I was still an Oregon resident, with an Oregon driver's license. I investigated licensing the car in Wisconsin. License plates would have been $60 a year, plus the initial fee. I probably would have had to get a Wisconsin driver's license as well, plus car insurance in Milwaukee, Wisconsin was a lot more expensive than in Rainier, Oregon. I knew there was a good chance that I would be returning to Oregon after graduating, and I didn't like the idea of going through all that for just a few months. In addition, in January, Oregon's auto license would rise from $15 a year to $50 a year, so if I took the car home over winter break, I could save some money. (This may not make sense, as it would cost far more to drive across the country and back than what I would save, but I justified it because I would have gone home for break anyway, and would have spent about the same amount.)
Thus I acquired car insurance in Rainier, (it really helped that Rainier is a small town and the insurance agent knew my parents) and purchased a temporary Wisconsin license plate for $3. These are necessary for out of state residents to buy Wisconsin cars, and not get pulled over for not having plates. The temporary plate is made of heavy paper, and is good for 30 days. The number on mine was V97 666! Not a good number for the superstitious, but fortunately I'm not.
I was now committed to driving home, to sign my insurance policy and license the car. The trip would take me west on Interstate 94 from Milwaukee to Madison, where I-94 met up with I-90, which I would follow all the way to Ritzville, Washington, southwest of Spokane, where I would switch to U.S. 395. At Pasco/Kennewick, I would join I-82 briefly to I-84, which I would follow into Portland. From there, I would take one of the familiar routes of either I-5 or U.S. 30 home to Rainier. I estimated a one-way trip would take about 33 hours of actual driving at freeway speeds, not counting any stops.
This map shows the route, with all the stops I would make, for gas, food, lodging or any combination of those, on all the trips covered on this page.
Preparations
Now with a car and a long trip ahead of me, I went in search of supplies. There was no way I was going to end up stranded if I could avoid it. On December 13, I went out to get an oil change & supplies. I started at Wal-Mart where I bought various tools, then had an oil change done at Meineke, and bought a set of fuses at the auto parts store next door. Knowing I would be driving through the Rocky Mountains in winter, I asked about tire chains, only to find out they are illegal in Wisconsin. If I decided I needed them, I'd have to buy them along the way.
I later decided I wanted a license plate frame with a clear plastic cover for the paper temporary license plate, so I went to another auto parts store on the 16th and bought one.
On the 18th, I returned to Wal-Mart to stock up on automotive fluids and other general necessities for the trip. At Wal-Mart, I also stumbled upon an Argus DC1512 digital camera for the low price of $19.67! At this price, I had very low expectations, but I figured for less than 20 bucks, why not? I couldn't afford a good digital camera, and I wasn't going to waste film taking pictures while driving with a 35mm camera. Most of the pictures on this page were taken with this camera. It was about what I expected.
Here is what a $20 digital camera looks like:
Here is a summary of my supplies:
The total for these supplies was $167.47.
Westbound
I had originally planned to leave Milwaukee around sunrise on the 20th, but I was too excited to sleep well, so I ended up leaving earlier, around 4:30 AM. I stopped for gas in Brookfield, a suburb of Milwaukee, and added fuel injector cleaner and cleaned all the windows for the first of many times. This was at about 5:00 AM.
I stopped briefly at a Burger King in LaCrosse, WI for breakfast around 8:00, and drank my first ever cup of coffee (I figured I'd need the caffeine). I didn't need gas yet, so I moved on, crossing the mighty Mississippi River at the Wisconsin-Minnesota border. As I had just bought the car, I hadn't driven it much, and wasn't sure what to expect in the way of gas mileage. At about 8:45, I got off the interstate at the Rochester, Minnesota exit in search of a gas station. Rochester isn't actually on I-90, and I had to search a little to find one, but didn't have to go too far. I was only 260 miles from Brookfield, and so far my mileage wasn't too good, but I wasn't using cruise control at this point, and I had actually stopped sooner than I really needed to.
While in Minnesota, I stopped at a rest area with some photogenic views, and decided to try out the digital camera a little. I'd only taken a couple of shots from the car at this point, but figured I'd get what stationary shots I could. This being Minnesota in December, there was snow and ice everywhere, including in a newspaper vending machine!
Aside from the break at the rest stop, Minnesota was largely uneventful, although I did spot a few electricity-generating windmills.
As 1:00 approached, I stopped for lunch at Burger King in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and also got gas at a station named... wait for it... Kum and Go! I don't want to know where they came up with it. South Dakota is a big state with few places to stop, so I made sure to fill up here before moving on.
One thing I tried to photograph, but it didn't show up well, was the reddish color of the asphalt in South Dakota.
South Dakota is a big, boring state, the highlights of which are big signs for such attractions as the Corn Palace, Wall Drug, Mt. Rushmore and others, and it was while in this state I finally turned on the cruise control, and really got to appreciate it. Unfortunately I only turned it on after getting pulled over by one of South Dakota's finest for going 84 mph in a 75 mph zone. Truth be told I had been going faster for a while. I ran the car up to 100 mph briefly, just to be able to say I've driven that fast, though it's really nothing to be proud of. Fortunately, the officer only gave me a warning, and I vowed to myself to use the cruise control as much as practical from then on, at least in South Dakota. Also, it was right around this point that I found South Dakota's scenic highlight: the Missouri River.
Around 4:00 I ended up stopping for gas near the Badlands of South Dakota, as I didn't think I could make it further, though I probably could have. The gas station was in the middle of nowhere, and virtually closed down, though the pumps still worked with a credit card. The store itself was shut down and no one was there. The station probably did decent business, in gas anyway, as I wasn't the only visitor during the short time I was there.
I wanted to get as far as I could that first night, so I cruised on past Rapid City, despite being tired. Originally, I had wanted to get into Montana before I stopped for the night, but considering it was dark when I entered Wyoming, I realized that wasn't going to happen. Out there in the dark, I-90 doesn't feel like an Interstate, more like a country road. Little other traffic, and you often can't see the lanes for the other direction.
I was going to try for Sheridan, Wyoming, but ended up stopping when I got to Gillette instead. I was just getting that tired. I checked into a Budget Inn Express, while proved to be much nicer than a Motel 6, but only a few dollars more expensive. It even had an indoor pool, which I visited after dinner at a local establishment called Grandma's Kitchen. It was the only non-fast-food restaurant I stopped at.
The next morning, I watched The Weather Channel for a while before checking out of the motel, hoping to determine what I'd run into in the mountains of Montana, but it wasn't much help. It did however, show that the routes through southern Wyoming and Colorado had been hit hard with snow, so it seemed my route was the best choice, at least.
Watching The Weather Channel had delayed my departure from Gillette, and it was almost 11:00 when I bought gas at The Rock Stop in Sheridan. I traveled through eastern Montana without incident. It wasn't until I approached Homestake Pass that things got interesting again.
Homestake Pass, located just east of Butte, Montana, is I-90's pass through the Rocky Mountains. The pass crests the mountains at an elevation of 6,375 feet. It is also the crossing of the Continental Divide. It surprisingly does not look that imposing from the east, though it is significant. I had passed through Bozeman, about 80 miles east of Butte, with what I thought was plenty of gas. However, as I climbed Homestake Pass, my Low Fuel light came on. Not knowing how far I could go with the light on, I began to imagine running out of gas as I neared the top of the pass. Fortunately, that didn't happen. I crested the pass and coasted down the other side into Butte, using as little fuel as possible. I filled my tank in Butte, putting just over 15 gallons of gas into the Dynasty's 16 gallon tank. This experience did finally give me an indication of the car's range, however; I had gone over 350 miles on that tank.
It was nearly 4:00 when I arrived in Butte, so I had dinner there. While in Butte, snow started to fall. It wasn't quite sticking, but I knew I had another pass yet to cross. I decided this was a good a place as any to buy tire chains. A gas station pointed me toward a Wal-Mart, where I bought some fairly cheap cable chains, just in case. They cost $24.82.
The search for tire chains made it well after 5:00, and getting dark, before I left Butte. Snow was falling, but not heavily. I discovered that rest areas in Montana had speakers installed playing the National Weather Service radio broadcasts, which helped a little. Thanks to Mountain Dew, I wasn't tired as I passed through Missoula, and I kept on toward what would be the most treacherous part of the trip: Lookout Pass.
Lookout Pass is not as high a pass as Homestake Pass. It is only 4,725 feet high, between the Coeur D'Alene and Bitterroot Mountains. However, while I had crossed Homestake in daylight with fairly good weather, I faced Lookout in the dark, and in a snowstorm. Lookout, while not as high as Homestake, does seem to be steeper climb. As I climbed, my headlights, covered with winter dirt and dust, were barely of use, and I found myself following the taillights of a Jeep Cherokee in front of me. It had no vehicles ahead of it, so it could use its highbeams/foglights to cut through the weather, which was a help. The Cherokee's better vision made its driver more confident than me though, and I occasionally found myself going a little faster than I really wanted to in order to keep up with the tail lights I was depending on.
Climbing toward the pass, the highway narrowed to one lane in each direction, a wall of snow filling the other. The pass was open, but only one lane was plowed each way. I passed a chain-up area without stopping. No one else was in it, and I really didn't want to stop in these conditions. After cresting the pass, which is on the Montana-Idaho border, everything quickly cleared. As I sailed down toward Coeur D'Alene, I listened to a cassette of 1950s & 60s surfing music. Oddly, it just seemed appropriate.
I passed through Coeur D'Alene, stopping only at a rest area (where it was so cold the sidewalks had all iced over, making them incredibly slick and forcing me to walk in the frosty grass), and into Washington. I considered spending the night in Spokane, but I wasn't tired yet, and now being in Washington, I felt I was too close to stop now. So, I continued on. Not far out of Spokane, however, the fog began to set in, and I began to feel tired. I came across a rest area, and pulled in for a nap.
After a short nap in the rest area, I realized that being back in Washington, the rest area might have free hot drinks. Sure enough, it did. I wasn't in the mood for coffee, and had a hot chocolate instead. The chocolate and sugar made me ready to plunge back into the fog.
I was getting low on gas, and decided to start searching for a station. The first one I found had closed down for the night, though it looked open, and the pumps didn't take cards, so I continued on. I finally found one near Sprague, at a place called Tokio. Most of the lights were off, and the fog was thick, but the pumps took cards, so I filled up and cleaned my windows and lights.
Now after Midnight, I remained in the fog as I left I-90 for 395 into the Tri-Cities. The cities themselves were confusing but relatively fog-free, though when I started down I-82 toward Oregon, I encountered the thickest fog I had seen. Barely able to see the lines on the road, I proceeded carefully, being passed by cars at freeway speeds that I thought couldn't possibly see where they were going. Finally, I broke out of the fog and into Oregon.
I stopped at a couple of no-frills Oregon rest areas, mainly just to nap. I ended up coming through Portland just before the morning rush hour. Somehow, I'd had enough freeway driving, and drove on into Rainier on familiar Highway 30, finally arriving home about 7:00 in the morning, about 50 hours after leaving Milwaukee.
At Home
While at home, Scott Keller and I replaced the missing side view mirror. This cost $25 at a salvage yard for the mirror (it was a power mirror). And, of course, I got the car licensed in Oregon, and got my Oregon plates: ZYJ 015. (Another nice thing about Oregon, you get your plates right there at the DMV that day, whereas Wisconsin has to make them and send them to you.) And, of course, I filled up my gas tank. Winter break for MSOE is only two weeks, so after New Years I had to worry about going back to Milwaukee.
Classes started again for me on Monday, January 5. My dad tried to convince me to leave Thursday, New Years Day, so I "would have plenty of time," but I wasn't very receptive to the idea. As it turned out, an unusually large snowstorm, made even more unusual due to the fact that there had already been one large storm just a few days before (it rarely snows in this part of Oregon), moved through the area on New Years Day, and I decided I wasn't going to leave in it. So I ended up leaving on the morning of Friday, January 2. I would have liked to have waited one more day, as the roads still weren't completely clear, and there was a chance I would catch up to the storm again (a good chance, I would find out) but if I was going to be back in Milwaukee by Sunday night, I couldn't wait any longer.
Eastbound
It took me longer to load the car than I had planned, and it was after 8:00 before I was on my way. By this time though, the remaining ice on I-5 had melted (it had caused a major accident earlier in the morning) and the roads weren't bad...yet.
After passing through Portland and entering the Columbia River Gorge on I-84, the highway gradually got more and more snow-covered. As such storms are rare, Oregon doesn't have the snowfighting equipment of other states, like huge fleets of plow trucks (there are a few) and deicing salts. I, like most everyone else, stopped to put on chains (they were required for trucks, and recommended for everyone else without snow tires). Cable chains are mediocre at best, but they worked. The most annoying thing about them was the end of the cable wouldn't stay in the clip meant to hold it, and it would strike the wheel well with each revolution of the wheel. Upon reaching The Dalles a little after Noon, where I stopped for gas and lunch, I stopped at an auto parts store to get some cable ties for $3.99 to solve the annoying chain noise. As it turned out though, just past The Dalles the road cleared up considerably, and I ended up taking the chains off.
With the roads cleared, I was able to travel at freeway speeds again, but I wouldn't be able to make up my lost time. Originally I was planning to get to eastern Montana, or maybe even Wyoming, before stopping for the night. Now, I was hoping I'd be able to get across Lookout Pass and into Missoula. The roads were good for most of the day, though they were heavily sanded (since Oregon doesn't use salt in winter, it uses liberal amounts of sand instead) and I got a good-sized rock shot into my windshield, resulting in a good-sized chip. Fortunately, it was on the passenger side and not in my field of vision.
It wasn't until Spokane that the weather started to worry me again, and when I reached Coeur D'Alene, the snow covered roads suggested to me that I shouldn't attempt Lookout Pass till morning. Apparently, I had caught up to the storm, and felt I'd better let it pass. This was discouraging, as it was only 6:30 when I arrived in Coeur D'Alene, and I really wanted to keep going, but I checked into a Motel 6 and went to bed early, hoping to get an early start.
The next morning I started up Lookout Pass with the daylight, and found the road covered with snow. It was mostly packed snow however, and after trying the chains for a while, I decided they weren't doing any good and took them back off, proceeding at near-highway speed. I caught up to Idaho state plow trucks, and stayed behind them to the summit, where they turned around. Fortunately, the Montana side had also been recently plowed, and posed no trouble. Though it was cold outside, the trip remained uneventful through Montana. Homestake Pass was once again no problem. As I entered Wyoming, it began to get dark. I made up my mind not to stop in Wyoming unless I absolutely had too. I wanted to start Sunday in South Dakota if at all possible.
It was 7:30 PM when I stopped for gas in Sheridan. It might be a late arrival in Rapid City, but I was confident I could make it. As I passed Gillette, I was tempted to spend the night at the motel I had stayed in just two weeks before, put instead I plunged on. It was starting to snow lightly, but wasn't a problem.
Unfortunately, as I headed toward South Dakota, I realized I had caught up to my storm once again as the weather got worse; however, I couldn't readily tell how much worse. With almost no other traffic, snow sticking to the road, and nothing else around, I hadn't realized how much visibility had dropped. I was aware that my visibility was reduced, and thus wasn't traveling anywhere near the 75 mph speed limit. I was, however, in the 50s.
Suddenly, I saw taillights appear in the snow ahead of me, and I was closing on them fast. I tapped the brakes and quickly realized that in the snow they weren't going to stop me in time, so I moved into the snow-covered left lane and coasted past a short line of cars. I slowed down to pace the line of cars, and found they were going less than 30 mph: excessively cautious, even for this weather. The two cars at the front of the line had license plates I didn't recognize, and I had become familiar with the plates of the nearby states. These people had probably never seen snow before.
I passed the line of cars, and sped up into the 40s, which I considered reasonable, so long as I didn't encounter any more slow-movers like those. Other drivers, probably more used to snow, passed me by, stirring up the snow and reducing my visibility considerably. Once this happened on a curve, and I was completely unaware of where the road was until I saw the guardrail out my right side window.
It was almost Midnight when I finally arrived in snow-covered Rapid City and checked into a Motel 6, though I had gained an extra hour crossing into Mountain Time when entering Montana, so to me it was more like almost 11:00. Still late in any case.
After breakfast and gasoline (which I didn't really need yet, but I wanted a full tank to make it to Sioux Falls) I left Rapid City at about 9:00 the next morning. I had to make it back to Milwaukee by tonight, but on my westbound trip I had gone farther in one day, so I was sure I'd make it. It just might be really late if I caught up to my storm again.
The trip across South Dakota was uneventful, except that I found that my bottle of Windex had frozen solid in the car overnight, so no unscheduled window cleaning. Though I put the bottle under a heat register in the car, it remained frozen for the rest of the trip. I stopped at Sioux Falls for gas and dinner at McDonalds (my only stop at McDonalds, I usually prefer Burger King or Arby's) and again for gas at Sparta, Wisconsin around 8:00, though I was now in Central Time, so it was more like 7:00 to me.
As I approached Madison in the dark, the weather turned bad again. Turns out I wasn't going to get break for the home stretch. The weather didn't get quite as bad as my approach to Rapid City, but it was close, and the roads were worse. Wisconsin's road salt kept the roads slushy and slippery. Milwaukee itself had the most difficult roads of the trip.
I finally arrived back at my apartment at around 11:00. I learned there had been a huge accident on the freeway in Madison due to the weather, but somehow I had missed it. I never did take any pictures on the return trip. Either the weather and/or roads were too bad for me too worry about pictures, or I already had taken pictures of the area on the westbound trip. Plus, I had realized how much the pictures from the camera sucked anyway.
Here is a table showing fuel stops for the round trip. The last two columns show the miles driven since the last refueling and the average gas mileage for those miles.
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