Part 22 - Laramie to home

States & Provinces visited on this segment: Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Oregon

Dates: Friday August 31 to Sunday, September 2

Miles Driven: 1,162 (13,341 total to date)


Summary: Friday was an uneventful day. The slides went in fine and we left our campsite in Laramie slightly after 9 AM. We drove the remainder of the way across Wyoming, stopping for the obligatory $0.50 ice cream cones at Little America. Shortly after entering Utah we merged onto I84 which we would take the rest of the way back to Portland. We drove ~470 miles on Friday and stopped for the night in Snowville, UT, just south of the border with Idaho.

On Saturday we left Snowville and headed NW on I84 into Idaho. We drove across the southern portion of Idaho, and back into Oregon. It was good to be back in our home state. The kids were especially excited to be back in Oregon. They wanted to know if we couldn’t just keep driving and get home that night. We could have made it home really late that night, but no one would have enjoyed that, so we stopped early, spending the night just south of La Grande. We enjoyed our last night camping by relaxing in the pool at the campground. Well, I relaxed in the hot tub and the kids had fun playing in the pool.


On Sunday we drove the rest of the way home. We had less than 300 miles to go so we had a relatively short day, arriving back home mid afternoon. After 78 days, 30 states, 6 provinces, and over 13,000 miles we were finally back home. We had a great trip, but we were also all glad to be home. The kids rushed inside to explore the house (they claimed they had forgotten what it was like).

Next up: School and work on Tuesday. We will add some closing thoughts over the next couple of weeks, as well as get the photos for the last few sections posted.

Part 21 - The drive home, Amana to Laramie

States & Provinces visited on this segment: Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming

Dates: Wednesday, August 29 to Thursday, August 30

Miles Driven: 824 (12,179 total to date)

Summary: Wednesday morning we said goodbye to my parents. They headed east, and we started the drive back home. We dropped down to I80 and started the long drive home. We are planning to take 5 days to go back home so we need to average about 400 miles a day. The scenery on Wednesday in Iowa was basically trucks on I80 with fields of corn in the background. Corn, corn, and then some more corn, with an occasional field of soybeans thrown in for variety. Then we entered Nebraska and it was more of the same – lots of trucks on I80 and more corn, corn, corn. We went ~430 miles on Wednesday, and stopped for the night at Fort Kearny State Recreation Area.

On Thursday we got up a little bit earlier and were almost ready to go by 9, which is early for us. One of the last things we do before leaving is to put in the slides on the trailer. When we went to put in the main slide, the front part started to go in and the back did not move. I crawled under the trailer to see what the problem was. The slide has two gear driven shafts that move it in and out. However, there is a single motor which directly drives the gear connected to the front shaft. The rear gear is driven by a rotating rod that connects to the front gear. I found that the bolt connecting the rod to the front gear had sheared off, causing the rod to not rotate when the front gear moved. I had a bolt in my tool box that was the correct size so I reconnected the rod and attempted again to put the slide in. This time I had Karen manually crank in the slide in so I could see if everything was working properly. Unfortunately, only the front part started moving in and the new bolt sheared off, just like the original bolt. I spent a bit more time trying to figure out the root cause of the problem before resorting to calling the technical assistance line at Holiday Rambler. It was a long and frustrating morning as I was put on hold multiple times, then told they would call me back in a few minutes (which apparently means they will call back in 30+ minutes), and so this continued with me providing the same description of the issue to multiple people over the next 3 hours. Finally they dispatched someone to come out. Once the guy was on site it took less than a half hour to get everything fixed so we could proceed on our way. I will give the guy who came out an “A”, and Holiday Rambler a “D-“. I wouldn’t have even bothered with then except the trailer is under warranty so if I didn’t work through them I probably would have had to pay the bill myself. We finally left the campground at about 1:40 PM. Despite the late start we still managed to drive ~390 miles, crossing the rest of Nebraska and making it ~100 miles into Wyoming, stopping for the night in Laramie as it was getting dark. When we drove through Cheyenne I stopped and bought a large adjustable wrench so I could manually turn the gears on the trailer slide if they ever get stuck again. Hopefully it will never happen again, but if it does I don’t want to lose 4 ½ hours getting someone out to fix it. I would hate to think how long it would have taken if we were in a more remote place.

The only bright side of the issue in Kearney (the town has two e’s in its name but the fort only one which was another source of confusion with Holiday Rambler that took up more time) is that Karen and the kids got some time to go see Fort Kearny. Originally we weren’t going to go to the fort as we didn’t want to get going too late. However, when it became apparent that we weren’t going anywhere quickly when dealing with Holiday Rambler I unhitched the truck and they drove the ~3 miles from the campground to the fort and spent the morning doing something fun. I don’t think they would have wanted to listen to me complain all morning about the poor service from HR tech support. The kids enjoyed looking at the exhibits and going through the recreated stockade. At least they had fun before being strapped in their seats for the rest of the day.

Photos (to be loaded soon): http://picasaweb.google.com/bryan.vacation/Part21drivehome1

Next up: The final 3 day drive to get home