2 RV's to Draper UT

... spending the night in Rock Springs WY

7 AM local, we are up. The roads are still closed. No changes since last night. Expected opening time, 12 noon.

7:30 AM - All roads are open, no restrictions.

So we eat breakfast. No hot food, but I have two yogurts and what is left from last nights Cini-bun.

8:15 local - we are ready to leave. Two other transporters are parked next to us. One of the drivers is by his truck so I say Hi. I have never heard of that transport company. Likely because it is him and one other driver. And they only move tree trucks. What they can't move, we get.

Most of the road wasn't too bad from Cheynne to Laramie. Fog was more of an issue for the first half of the trip. So mostly under the speed limit. Variable speed limit was 65 by we were going 55 mph. Some were going less.

1st stop is in Laramie at the Flying J for fuel. We should have looked at the prices online again this AM. Where we stop for diesel had gas for $.10 less than Flying J today. That is unusual.

There was one other RV from our company at the fuel pumps. They had picked up in IN and heading to UT also.

Shortly after we got back on the freeway the two drivers from the motel passed us.

When we first left Laramie the speed limit was 55 mph but I didn't see a reason for it west bound. The left lane of the east bound was snow packed, but west bound was clear and most places was dry.

And then it was not so good. We drove a lot of it at 45 mph. It wasn't white knuckle driving, but it felt better to be driving slow. And in most places those passing were only doing about 10 mph more than the slow lane. W only saw one pick with a trailer in the ditch, but that had traffic stopped and single lane.

Almost to Rawlins the road clears and traffic is doing 65 mph.

"ROAD CLOSED AHEAD - NO PARKING ON FREEWAY"

That was the overhead sign, it didn't say where. We are one exit from our lunch stop. Then I see the traffic stopped beyond our exit. Then I see the cop turning everyone back onto eastbound I-80. The truckstop must be full. There may have been room in the car parking, but we didn't try.

Instead we take a snow packed back road heading somewhere the opposite direction. Then I see a semi parked on top of the rail road tracks. I decide now is a good time to stop and look at directions. We don't want to go where the semi did, but the other street will take us to a Burger King we have stopped at before. It is right next to a Walmart where we can park.

We could have parked, if we had been there sooner. Lot looks full now.

We pull into the Burger King and order food to go. Then park next door at the Comfort Inn in hopes of using their WiFi. Their's needs a password, but we also get the Days Inn WIFi, no password.

By the time we walk out of BK, there is someone blocking traffic. There is room for no more trucks at the Walmart. Not sure where they are going to park now.

I guess the road had been closed again all the way from Cheyenee to Rock Springs for a while when we were sitting here for lunch. Now that we have been here an hour, the road is now only closed from Rawlins to Rock Springs. Where we need to go.

When we pulled out this AM I was thinking we could still get to SLC yet tonight, maybe even by last light. Now we are still in Rawlins with no idea when the crash ahead will be cleared.

We stopped in Rawlins at noon local, by the time we finally got stopped. At 1 PM I clicked re-fresh and the roads were open, as fast as we could get our logs current we were heading out. One hour lost, half of it was our lunch break.

No one else was moving yet.

And two blocks later, neither were we. We got on the freeway and it was still stopped. I guess this is where all the traffic ended up once Walmart was full. They just let them park right in the travel lanes on the freeway.

One hour after the roads open, traffic starts to move. From where I am sitting I can see the traffic a mile ahead. Once it starts moving, I thought that it would move, bumper to bumper. It seemed like someone was giving the traffic the OK to move, one truck every five seconds. Not sure if that is what it was, but when we finally started to move, there was a cop driving against traffic coming at us. My guess is that he was there to wake up truckers who were taking advantage of their break.

We had briefly talked about driving through town to the next entrance instead of getting on the freeway a block from where we were sitting. We didn't. But that would have put us in front of another 200 or so trucks. And maybe gotten us going a half hour or more sooner.

As we do arrive at the exit on that side of town, I notice a tree truck coming down the ramp. Can't be sure it is one of the same ones we have been pacing, but it was the same customer and had a company pickup following it.

I'm a little ways behind but as I catch up I notice the chipper the truck is puller is tilting a little to the right. As he pulls on to the shoulder, I see he has a flat tire on the chipper. What a way to start back on the road. Get delayed for two hours because of a road closure and as soon as you move. Flat tire.

But because we had been sitting already for two hours, BB was going to need to stop sooner.

Traffic mostly moved well until our next stop.

Wamsutter at Loves for a restroom break. At Wamsutter, traffic came to a stop again. We were just able to exit without driving on the shoulder. Loves had someone out by the street directing traffic. Their lots were full. But the car lot was not full so no issue for us.

Up to this point we had hoped to still make it to Evanston tonight. Before dark. Nope.

We call ahead and make a reservation in Rock Springs at the Clarion. While we are at the truck stop I see a van that looks like a transporter. Except there is only blue tape around where a placard should be. As he drives away I see his plate is a transporter.

Back on the freeway. It takes us a half hour to go the next three miles. But this time we don't stop. I know because I want to get out and take a picture of the RV's with all the trucks in the background. But we never stop more than a couple of seconds. Right as we start to move, we see two tow trucks pulling partial semi trailers. Then we see a semi axle in the ditch.

From there traffic is open.

We get to Rock Springs at 4:30 local. Less than one hour before sun set. Evanston would have been two hours. If there were not more accidents.

We check in and go to our room.

CHIRP ... CHIRP ... CHIRP

Another room with a smoke alarm with a dead battery. The front desk sends someone up. This one also has a snap connection if I need to remove it during the night.

Once that is taken care of, we go down to order food from the in-house Mexican place. 10 minutes and it was done. I did a quick walk in the parking lot, but now that the sun had set the parking lot was quickly becoming a skating rink.

As long as we aren't delayed again tomorrow ...

We will still make delivery on the same day. And we will still need the car for the same amount of time. But we will now have one more nights hotel and it is less likely that we will do any more work before the weekend.

All this may not have changed anything as once we start heading home we will be behind a storm. I'm not sure we could have gotten ahead of it. So if we hadn't gotten delayed heading west, we would have, and still may, when we head back east.