Hello everyone and thanks for your input to my original question.
I am finally in Athens Texas after a VERY long drive. Started Thursday at 1400 and pulled in here Sunday at 0200. The route south through SLC and across the pass to Moab worked out just fine. I did encounter a few snow showers at the higher elevation but nothing on the road at all. Lots of traffic on that route for sure. Didn't know that driving in Salt Lake City is a competitive sport... but I survived. I took the Rt 6 pass across the mountains towards Moab.
The most painful part of that leg was NOT being able to stop in Moab!
This is the first time I've parked overnight in a rest area. Did it twice this trip and it all worked out perfectly fine. But I did learn that my batteries are crap and need to be replaced with Lithium. Thursday night I stopped in a nicely lit rest area north of Dillon Montana, alone I-15. It was below freezing so I had to run the furnace to keep the pipes from freezing. I didn't expect to encounter freezing temps but should have. It worked out.
The next night I stopped at another rest area along I-40 just east of Albuquerque, at mile marker 127 (I think). That also worked out just fine even tho it was packed with RVs and Trucks doing the same thing.
I was expecting to arrive in Athens at 1800 on Saturday, giving me all day Sunday to rest up for class. However, there was a nasty storm in the area of North Texas and 10 miles west of Wichita Falls I was forced to pull over. I found an empty parking lot along 287 and turned the rig into the wind. The winds were 25 to 35 with gusts to 59 and blowing at exactly perpendicular to my route! I learned those wind speeds after pulling over and turning on the weather radio in the camper. I nearly had to change underwear due to the winds... saw a Target tracker-trailer nearly loose it from a gust of wind, not 500 feet in front of me as he sped past at 70... I was doing 45 with my flashers on. I sat in that parking lot for 5 hours waiting for the winds to die down. Good thing I did cause that is when I found that the wind driven rain was forceing water up and into the 3 aluminum window tracks (through the built-in weep holes) along the driver's side of the camper. This was filling the window frame and forcing it to overflow into the camper. While I waited, I exposed all of the water in the carpet and soaked it up with paper towels. After leaving the camper all opened up today (Sunday) everything has dried nicely so I don't think I did any permanent damage.
Hoping to go home via Denver and through Wyoming like I'm used to doing.
Took me 37.75 hours behind the steering wheel to drive from Northern Idaho to Athens Texas. Expect to do better on the way home.
Oh, and I learned that you just can't trust the Garmin to take you the way you want. But it did get me here... missed an exit to I-35S in the Dallas highway system... the part where it is turning in circles south of downtown... glad it was mid-night so no one in that tight and run down neighborhood was out to see me and wonder what in the world that fool is doing pulling a camper through here, at midnight! Yeah, it was a joy and made me glad my wife wasn't along on the trip!
Advice: avoid downtown Dallas highways on a Saturday night, the traffic was nuts! Especially when I came around a bend in the highway, where there was already construction, and had to throughout the anchor to slow down and avoid the 10 fire trucks and police cars with all their blinding lights taking up the entire right-lane!!! There was no warning before I came around the bend, and I'm guessing because they were responding to some emergency... but all I saw was one lone car and a police officer talking to one civilian. Thought I caught it all on my traffic cam... this morning is when I remembered that you must first push the record button... :-(
Wish there was a practical way to program the exact route you want and then just have the Garmin execute the plan. If I am missing something that would let me do that, please let me know! I never would have let it take me through Dallas... used to live there, I knew it could be a problem... and it was!
Thanks again!
Pete
