Heading out from Wendover along 93 Alt was the only part of the day’s trip that met expectations. After some 30 miles, it was all new territory in some way or other.
It was starting to get a little nippily at the Bonneville Salt Flats, so to avoid burning through a lot more propane, I decided to head southward. It was rain off and on all day. Turns out that the day’s climb in altitude put me up into the snowline! The rain turned to snow, and it stuck on everything but the pavement. I haven’t driven this rig on ice to this point, and there were small patches of it here and there. Now I’ve certainly driven on ice in my lifetime, and plenty of it. In a car, it can be fun. A loaded 3/4-ton truck has great stability, but can be clumsy and hard to predict on slippery surfaces once its limit is reached. Add a heavy trailer with a weight distributing hitch, and ice is no longer your plaything. Everything went okay, though I was eager to get through Ely and get to lower elevations and higher temps. Ely’s forecast for the day was snow with a current temp of 33, then a high of 50 before it hit the low 20’s that night. Unappealing. My 8,000 BTU Mr. Heater will handle the trailer down to about 30, and that’s it. Without heat, the trailer will settle in at 5-10 degrees over whatever is going on outside, making for an interesting early morning routine.
Alone in the paved universe, I am master of all I survey.
Despite many hills, the combination of overall descent and a brisk tailwind pumped fuel mileage up to a solid 14 MPG, something I may not see again in my lifetime with this rig. I did have to climb from Wendover’s 4,200′ to Ely’s 6,400′, but from there on in, Read more…
Strolling Amok 