The most awful cross-country drive-EVER

Hi everyone,

So Colleen and made it safe and sound to Idaho Falls on Tuesday evening. Here's a state by state breakdown of our trip.

New York-We left early in the morning, around 8m. We sat and talked with Anna and Trevor for a bit, then they saw us off. The drive out of New York was pretty nice, no rain or anything, but it was cloudy.

Pennsylvania-Not much happening here, quick trip through the state to Ohio, started raining a little bit.

Ohio-Almost the entire drive through Ohio was bad. Lots of punding rain with little visibility and very high winds. We found out as we were leaving Ohio and entering Indiana that the area we had just driven through had tornado warnings for pretty much the whole area we had just been in.

Indiana-Nothing much must have happened here, since I can't even remember driving through the state. It was still a bit windy, I think, though.

Illionois-Thankfully we avoided Chicago, which when we drove through it on the way to New York it was pretty bad. But since we went a different way this time, we were able to avoid it.

Iowa-I actually really liked Iowa. We drove as far as Grinnell, IA on the first day. That's almost 1100 miles. We spent the night in a hotel and left abour 9 the next morning. The drive during the day was really nice, lots of rolling hills, and there was one spot where we could see windmills along the side of the highway. Huge things, and in my opinion, really quite beautiful looking.

Nebraska-No offense to Nebraska, but it has to be by far the worst state in the country to drive through. It's long, flat, and there's almost nothing to look at right at the end of winter. Maybe it's different in any other season, but this time, it was pretty bad.

Wyoming-Wyoming made me swear that I would never, ever, drive through that state unless it was sometime between May-August. Maybe not even then. We started out in Wyoming doing pretty good. Nebraska was over, so at least we had that going for us. Our goal was to make it to Evanston, which is about 10 miles or so from the Utah border. We passed Cheyenne no problem, but then we started climbing in elevation. Getting closer to Laramie, a really thick fog set in, reducing visiblity to almost nothing, so we decided to stop in Laramie for the night. About 3 hours short of our goal, but better safe than sorry. Laramie was nice, we ate dinner at an actual restaurant, instead of the car, which was really nice, then we went and got a hotel. We got up the next morning at 7, and it had snowed a few inches. Not too bad though. I checked the road report, and it said blowing snow with some slick spots, but overall seemed pretty good. We set off, and about 10 miles outside of Laramie is when it started. Really high winds blowing the powdery snow from the night before all over the place. Blinding white to the point where you could slow down to 25 or less in spots due to the fact that you couldn't see any further than about 5 feet in front of the car. It cleared up after a bit, and then it got even worse a little bit down the road. More winds blowing soft snow all over the place, only this time there was about an inch or so of snow on the highway, which we didn't encounter the first time. Slowed down drastically, and lots of hills so it was kind of treacherous. Then it cleared up for a bit. Then it got even worse a little bit down the road. More winds blowing the soft snow all over the place, snow still covering the highway, only this time on the spots where there wasn't snow on the highway, it was black ice, which is lots of fun to drive on. So we're going nice and slow, but still fast enough that we needed to pass a semi. Only about 35mph. We passed the semi just fine, then as I was changing lanes to get back into the right lane, we must have hit a patch of ice or some thing, but the u-haul trailer just real suddenly whipped to the left and started dragging us toward the median that separates the 4 lanes of the highway. We slid all over the place, ending up in the median. But, thanks to my superior driving skills, we ended up facing the direction we wanted to face, and the u-haul trailer didn't flip. Thankfully there weren't any other cars around us when this happened, or it would have really bad. In case some of you haven't driven through Wyoming before, there are very few places to exit the highway and change your pants if you need to. Good thing I didn't need to. Can't say the same for Colleen, but she managed. Just kidding, but it was pretty damn scary. So a little bit further down the raod, still the same weather and road conditions, we come upon a group of semis that were just stopped in the highway, in both lanes. So we stopped in the right lane, and a semi was stopped next to us with the very end of the trailer viewable from the drivers side window. We're stopped, waiting for traffic to move, when all of a sudden Colleen says. "Oh shoot!" Only she didn't say shoot, but you know what I mean. We were both looking in the side mirrors behind us watching as another semi is barreling down the highway directly towards us, and didn't seem like he was slowing down. Let me remind you that it was extremely low visibility, so this guy had very little time to react. He switched lanes and tried to slow down as much as he could, but it still wasn't enough. He slammed into the semi next to us, with the collision happening right next to the drivers side window, sending pices of his truck flying. All in all, it wasn't that bad, no one got hurt, and neither of the truckes were too badly damaged, but it was still pretty awesome to see it happen. When I saw awesome I mean terrifying. Then the wind died down for a bit and I realized why the semis were stopped in the road-they were putting chains on. Now, you know you probably shouldn't be driving when the semis are just stopping in the middle of the highway to put chains on. We only had 10 miles to Evanston, which was the next exit, so I put it in 4 wheel drive and drove about 25. About 5 miles down the highway, the weather cleared up and the raod was clear. It was a bit wet, but almost no snow, no more wind, and no ice. It was pretty crazy. Wyoming sucks almost as bad as Nebraska. At least something was happening in Wyoming to make it exciting.

Utah-Since the waether didn't really clear up until we were practically in Utah, I must say that's nice to see actual mountains again. No offense, Catskills people, but nothing in the US compares to the Rockies. Utah was pretty uneventful other than the landscape. We didn't stop at all.

Idaho-Almost home again!

We miss everyone in New York a lot, and we're excited to see west coast people again. Hope everyone enjoyed this post.