Saturday May 13th 2017

This morning around six thirty my old nemesis the wind woke me up. I looked outside to find snow falling. It wasn’t accumulating. The ground temperature was sufficiently above freezing that it melted on or before contact. When I got up at 8am the ground was wet, but the only evidence of snow was more white on the nearby mountains. The sun was breaking through white puffy clouds.

More snow on the sides of the mountains out my front window this morning.

I had two possible places in mind to stop tonight. One was in Wells NV about 175 miles east on Interstate 80 and the other was at Jackpot NV on the Idaho line 45 miles north of Wells. Neither was a long travel distance so I planned to leave around eleven. Mother nature had other ideas. Around 9:30 black clouds were approaching from the west, but my escape path to the east was still sunny. I completed my packing and got underway at ten in a sleet storm.

I drove out of the storm about 5 miles west. I had partly sunny sky for the next 125 miles. The road passes across long areas of flat ranch land then negotiates a ridge line. Most of the ridges were handled by climbing over the mountains through some form of pass. The highest was about 6200 feet. One short ridge was cleared by way of a tunnel through it. Each successive flat area was a few hundred feet higher in altitude. I can never tell where the exit from the flat valley will be. Usually you have half an hour of watching the far wall of rock get closer to figure out how you’re going to get over it.

Crossing the last flat area I couldn’t see the mountains in the distance. They were blocked by low gray clouds. It was clear looking to the left and right, but straight ahead it was a wall of gray. As the road climbed out of the valley the road became wet, then light showers were encountered. Visibility kept getting worst. Crossing another flat area it became snow. Like this morning it was not accumulating on the road. Thankfully, there wasn’t much traffic because visibility was down to a couple of hundred feet. My windshield wipers kept the front view clear, but slush started to build up outside the wipers path.

I was pretty sure I was dealing with an altitude driven squall, but I still wanted to get off the road. After ten or fifteen miles of crap driving I reached the exit for my first RV park alternative in Wells NV. I pulled into the park a little after 1PM. My fight with mother nature was over for the day, but I still had a few issues to deal with.

When I stopped at the campground office, I lowered my power drivers window to talk with the women from the office. The window got stuck in the down position. I thought I’d had it fixed last fall. It took a few minutes to get the window up after I’d parked. In the mean time, the snow blew in. I also had difficulty getting, my leveling jacks down and the slide rooms out. This happens when the emergency brake interlock is not reporting the brake applied correctly. A few more minutes of playing with things and I got that working too.

Site 24 at Angel Lake RV Park in Wells NV.

By about 2:30 the sun was out and all signs of the snow were gone. It still never got higher than the mid forties temperature wise. Tomorrow I head north for Twin Falls Idaho. I plan to stay in that area for ten days.