H.A.G Corps of Discovery II Road Trip Day 6

We were greeted by heavy rain in the morning.  This was the best part of the day!

Today was miserable.  All day was miserable.  But that was okay as this trip is flexible and fluid.  Weather changes and you just have to flow with it.

The photo above was taken this morning and you can see it was very dark, as evidenced by the street lamps being lighted, windy and raining heavily.  The weather prediction for our intended route was not good.  The very widespread rain was coming from the southwest to northeast and we would be driving north.  Time for plan B.  We decided that instead of traveling our intended route north along the Missouri River, we would drive due west on I-80 across Nebraska, then turn north with a new, non-Lewis and Clark destination being Rapid City, South Dakota.  As I have said in the past, no agenda and no timeline so changing directions was fine with all of us.

This new route would not follow the Corps of Discovery route along the Missouri River, but high chances of tornados where we would have been traveling is a good incentive to change directions.  Additionally, two of our party had not yet seen Mt. Rushmore and wanted to do so.  So, we headed due west, then north, eventually toward Rapid City, South Dakota and Mt. Rushmore.

For the first part of the day's journey, the rain stopped and then held off for a while.  But the wind was incessantly blowing from the north.  About 75 miles west of Omaha, the rain started and the wind picked up to about 20 mph with gusts to about 30.  The truck traffic was pretty dense, but we were fine and kept going west.  A minivan with the nice, large flat slab sides is a good target for side winds.

Because of the weather, which was getting worse as we drove west, we decided to only drive to Sidney, Nebraska.  That would be a full day's drive on a nasty day. 

Somewhere along the way, one of the guys looked at the weather on his smart phone and found there was a severe winter and wind warning for western Nebraska as well as for southern and eastern Wyoming.  Yes, it just gets better and better.  The severe weather warning was for freezing temperatures and SNOW, from 2-5 inches, for Sidney overnight.  SNOW!  FREEZING!  Unbelievable.  This is May isn't it?

Looking further into the weather situation, I-80 had already been closed between Cheyenne and Laramie Wyoming due to the snow.  This now sounded serious.  We decided to call ahead and get a room as we anticipated many people would be hunkering down for the night to avoid the weather. Turns out, we were right as the authorities closed I-80 at our exit.  All the truckers and drivers had to exit.  There are tractor trailers parked in every parking lot and along every road around the hotel area.

Yesterday afternoon the temperature was 84 degrees F.  The same time today the temperature was 33 degrees F.  That is a difference of 51 degrees difference in one day.  But as dire as that sounds, it probably is a good thing we didn't follow our original route as The Weather Channel is all over severe tornadoes in the area we would have been.

Unfortunately, no photography today.  This was a miserable travel day.  Just getting from there to here safely was our goal.  Success in that endeavor.

Lessons learned:  Be flexible and be prepared for any weather and any situation.  We were and are.

The adventure continues and just gets better.

Thanks for looking.

Dennis Mook

Many of my images can be found at www.dennismook.com.  Please pay it a visit.  I add new images regularly.  Thank you.


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