 |
 |
In Portland, I caught up with Vicki and Claudius and Andrea. They are all well and Portland was gorgeous, as it is in the summer. I only saw Stacey and Dave and the girls (a third one is on the way!) briefly as they are usually trying to catch up with all their friends in the area. I visited with a few friends while my car had transmission surgery that kept me in the area longer than I'd planned. The transmission died, which was an unfortunate message to get (that being that the car is asking if it can retire). The repair bill was pretty nasty, too, though it doesn't make much of a difference financially in the long run. Without the services of the car, I didn't get out of the area for any pictures (though there are plenty already online).
From Portland, I was playing with a few options for a travel route. I wasn't sure whether I would start in the northeast and go south or vice versa. I left on the afternoon of the 10th from Portland and drove through the night, mostly on Interstate 90, which was a new route for me. I stopped on the east side of Coeur d'Alene Lake to take a few pix:
|
|
The drive took me through the panhandle of Idaho and then southeast across Montana and then through the northeast corner of Wyoming to:
Actually, I was all set to stop in Rapid City, South Dakota, dump my stuff in a hotel, and crash for a few hours. But I got there at lunchtime on the 11th and the hotels weren't letting anyone check in that early, so I drove a big loop around Mount Rushmore and Crash Horse Mountain and then back to Rapid City. First up was Mount Rushmore; the pictures don't really do it justice...at least to me -- they remind me of postcards.
 |
 |
After that, I drove another 15-25 minutes to get to the work-in-progress at Crazy Horse Mountain. Here are a couple of picture that show what it looks like now and what it will look like when it is completed:
 |
 |
| A small sculpture inside the museum. | A larger depiction with the mountain in back |
After that, I drove around Custer State Park (seeing a few bison) back to Rapid City where I crashed for the night. There, I talked with Justin and realized that it wouldn't be a good idea to visit during the week. I'd planned on spending the next weekend in Annapolis with Henry's family, so I suddenly had a free week. So northeast going south became southeast going north; I would visit Lawrence just outside of Atlanta for a few days and then drive up to Annapolis on the weekend. This is where my driving plans and schedule became entangled with the weather.
A cold front had dropped into the Rapid City area and it was autumnal the next morning, the 12th, as I left:
Actually, the front had made it's way across South Dakota and I slowly caught up with it on I-90 going east that morning. When I got to Sioux Falls and turned south onto Interstate 29, there was some nasty weather visible to the south. I finally hit a severe thunderstorm driving through Council Bluffs, Iowa, just across the Missouri River from Omaha, Nebraska. I kept getting closer and closer to the lightning strikes until finally one ground strike that was about 1/4 of a mile in front of me on the opposite side of the road. Fortunately, the lightning has the effect of relieving some of the electrical "tension"; looking north through my rearview mirror, the activity seemed to intensify as I left the area.
 |
 |
| Gas stop just north of Council Bluffs/Omaha on
I-29... it looks pretty nasty, doesn't it? |
Past the really nasty stuff, the veil drops from a thundercloud |
From there, I drove a couple more hours to a familiar stop in St. Joseph, Missouri, just north of Kansas City. Now that I was out ahead of the front, it was warm and muggy, but while I slept, the cold front caught up and passed me again.
The next morning, August 13th, it was rainy and at least comfortable in St. Joseph. The drive east across Missouri on Interstate 70 to St. Louis was uneventful and I got to Mount Vernon, Illinois, and turned south again on Interstate 57. Here's where things got dicey...I've driven through my share of downpours, but the closer I got to Interstate 24 and Paducah, Kentucky, the worse it got. Until I drove through three of the longest sustained downpours I've ever seen. Each of them lasted at least 10 minutes (at freeway speed, though we had to slow down to keep control), if not longer. It was amazing. It was until I got into the Nashville area in the early evening that the heat and humidity returned:
 |
 |
| Downtown Nashville from Interstate 24 | Home of the Tennesse Titans (and others), Adelphia Coliseum |
I only got a little farther that evening, finally stopping closer to Nashville between there and Chattanooga.
The next day, August 14th, I finished up the trip, getting into Alpharetta, Georgia -- the home of MyNetWatchman.com -- around noon.
There I met the Baldwins for the first time and spent a couple of days doing some actual work before driving up Interstate 85 overnight August 16-17 from the Atlanta area all the way to Richmond, Virginia, and then back to I-95 to Washington, D.C., and then on to Annapolis.
Last Revised: 7 September 2002
Complaints: blupwa@lupwa.org