YCGL - Thursday, June 15, 2023 - Day 1 - Hardly Wyoming? No, Huntley, WY!
I'm on the road! Finally!
Yesterday, I really scrambled to get the trailer and the truck ready to go.
Some things scrambled more than others. When I got the notice to renew the registration for the truck and the motorhome in early May, I taped the two notices on my kitchen cabinet. I found out that I didn't have to renew the license on the motorhome when I put it under consignment. Well, I happened to look at the two notices on Tuesday evening about 3:00am, and realized I didn't have time to renew the truck on-line, I had to go to the County Treasurer's Office. Now, I've seen lines out of the Treasurer's Office, into the hallway and into the Tax Office and wrap around, but that is on the last day or two of the month. I figured I had a better chance on the 14th.
In the morning, I was doing stuff like washing the sheets and installing an outlet attached to the 2000W inverter I had installed last year.
(The previous owner had installed a surge protected multiplug under the dining room table on the wall. It was plugged into a 110V outlet under the bench seat [which is really hard to get to]. The multiplug is convenient since I always have electronics plugged in there. And that system works fine as long as the trailer is plugged into a power supply in an RV park. It doesn't work if you are using an inverter that is not hooked up to the trailer's electrical system. [You don't want to do that because you would be using your battery to power the inverter into the electrical system which would then charge your battery, which you are using to power the inverter....It doesn't work without some more sophisticated switching that I don't want to do.] So, I have an extension cord (three, actually) from the inverter into the cabin. I've run the extension cord into the bench of the table, snaked it up through the cushions and then tied the head to another extension cord plugged into the 110V outlet under the bench seat. Now I can plug the multiplug under the table to either the extension cord from the inverter or from the 110V outlet. OK, that was easier done than said. That's why its in the parentheses.)
Then I hooked up the trailer to the truck so I would be ready to go.
Anyway, I had a haircut scheduled for 3:45. I finished the above job at 2:50. I decided that I could go to the Court House and get the registration and, if there was no line, grab a bite to eat at the DQ next to the hair stylist. And Lo and Behold, I walked right up to the registration desk and got the tags, ate lunch and got there while she was still working on the previous client. Which gave me time to accomplish something else that I hadn't had time to do also. :)
When my previous stylist, Jolene (who hated Dolly Parton's song!) moved (years ago), I started going to Tasha, who Sally had been going to for a while. I love going to Tosha's. (Put in the plug here: the Tonic Salon on 4th St.) She starts the appointment with a head massage, working her fingers in my hair before she washes it. The head massage is wonderful. No matter what has gone on before I sit in the chair, my blood pressure drops, my breathing slows and I relax into a puppy-like state that boarders on nirvana. She says she massages my head much longer than her other clients because I enjoy it so much.....She's offered to skip the haircut and just do a 45 minute head massage. She doesn't know how close I've come to taking her up on her offer. (Not true, she knows exactly how close I come to taking her up on her offer!!!!)
After that, I had a zoom church meeting at 6:30 that I had to read and prepare for. That meeting lasted until 8:00. While the meeting was taking place, another pastor from Ronan, MT came in and waved. Seth Nelson was an intern here 2010-11(?). Since I was chairman of our internship committee for 20 years, I was Seth's chairman. Sally and I always considered Seth one of our "golden" boys. He and Jen had a baby while they were here, they are a great couple, she's a nurse. We were able to visit them when we made our retirement trip on the Park to Park Highway trip in 2015. Anyway, I then ran over to church to catch him. He was here with a group of high school students going to Denver to do some service volunteer work. It was good to see him.
Since it was late by then, I ran over to O'Dwyer's for fish and chips and a Guiness. I got home at 10:00. Then went back out to the trailer, worked there for a while, carried out a load of food (which was primarily for the second trip), cleaned around the kitchen and wrote the blog last night.
I woke up well before noon this morning (see previous blog), got my clothes together and out to the trailer. I took out two loads (1 load = 1 laundry basket packed till I can barely carry it) of refrigerator and freezer stuff. I was expecting a package to be delivered and I was kind of stalling to see if it would get there before I had to leave. The Harvest Host asks that we get there by 4:00, so I had to leave by 1:00 at the latest.
As I took off, it started to rain. We've had a ton of rain this spring. I believe it has rained every day but two over the last three weeks. I was just lucky. (I asked Liz why she sent Portland to Laramie, and she said because they had gotten Albuquerque. It has been over 100 degrees there!) The front of the storm cloud had just passed over the house as I was leaving, and I stayed in that relative location most of the way to Cheyenne.
I stopped at the RV dealership where I had the motorhome under consignment and verified that the motorhome was sold. I had asked that they keep the check and I would pick it up when I drove through. The bookkeeper didn't get the message, so she sent it yesterday under "urgent express". I knew both packages would be in front of the door, so I asked my next door neighbor if he would put them inside the door and also do the same with the package that would arrive tomorrow. He likes doing it and it seems like there is something that gets delivered often when I go.
The drive from Cheyenne to Huntley was beautiful. (Huntley is hardly there [the joke at the top]. I had called Ken Griffin and said I was headed to Huntley and he asked Why? and I said "I wanted to go someplace where there weren't many people." He replied, "I think you found it!". The current population is 30. Former governor Stan Hathaway grew up on a farm here and graduated as the valedictorian of his class of one! Of course, he was also the bottom of the class too.) There is one point in the drive where you transition from the South Platte River watershed to the North Platte watershed. It's a ridge, and as you drive up from the south, you crest the ridge and can see for twenty or so miles. And it wasn't just green, it was verdant! I told my hostess here that it was like driving into Ireland. Just Beautiful.
As I got to Hawk Springs, the clouds were turning dark grey and smooth, a scary sign. I stopped in Hawk Springs, checked the weather and the radar for signs of tornados. The weather report was for heavy rain, possible hail and high winds. I got about a mile north of Hawk Springs and it hit. I may have been the strongest downpour I've been in for years. I had cars behind me, so I couldn't just stop or pull over. I slowed to 45 mph and the wipers at full speed barely kept a section of the windshield visible. I was driving between the centerline dashes and the white line on the side of the road. I could make out very little in front of me. Driving the truck and trailer in the heavy rain is especially worrisome because you don't have good traction on the road surface and with a stiff side wind, it is very possible to blow the trailer off the road. This lasted for about five minutes. The one consolation is that you rarely have tornados in heavy rain because the rain disturbs the wind pattern. I was happy to get out of that. It rained lightly most of the evening and night.
My Harvest Host here is Table Mountain Vineyards. They are "Wyoming's largest vineyard and winery and produces its wines from 100% Wyoming grown grapes and fruit." No kidding! (For some reason, a bunch of pictures on my phone haven't uploaded to icloud, so I'll have to take some more pictures tomorrow.) They are in Wyoming, about 1.5 miles from the Nebraska border. But for real, they have 10,000 grape plants in several sections of their ranch and surrounding ranches. The fields are located in the corners of the quarter sections that don't get irrigated under a center pivot sprinkler. They started growing grapes in 2001 and had their first pressing in 2003. They currently grow six varieties of grapes/wines and make one blend.
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