14 hours on the road and two monster energy drinks later and I can almost see through time. At least I haven't started seeing bats, which is a real possibility with Las Vegas at the doorstep. Now we’re sitting in a hotel room in the home of America’s best tasting water, Beaver Utah. Who would have thought that Beaver water would taste so good? Hopefully the caffeine wears off soon so I can go to sleep. The hot tub should help with that. It has been a long 3 days with finishing the move and beginning our trip. Monday saw the return of the uhaul and a farewell to the Colclough clan in Rimbey. At least we had a real taste of winter before our trip began, with a few inches of snow and blizzards on the highway. The odometer was reset and the trip officially began from this point.
We arrived safely in Olds to say farewell to my parents and finish up a few last minute details (Shaw decided they no longer wanted me as an email client, so initiated a new gmail account, and they’re glad to have me on board). Tuesday afternoon we left for Raymond, just south of Lethbridge, to say goodbye to my brother and provide a good starting off point for the states. That night we met up with my brother and Jackson to watch some fencing action at the University of Lethbridge. There were quite a collection of “athletes” to behold. I guess the small proportion of Dungeons and Dragons crowd that aren’t confined to their homes due to the width of their doorways and girth of their persons find fencing to be the activity of choice. Jackson got off to a rough start in the tournament, but finished strong, beating the small crazy Asian contingent with a little help from some creative rule enforcement from the referee. But we’ll take a win any way we can get it. Next stop the Olympics. My brother on the other hand efficiently dissected the advances of his much younger and less bald opponents with the agility of a sloth.
The next morning at 5 am we got up and were on the road by 5:30. We arrived at the Coutts border just after 6 am, and after stating that our final destination was Panama and that we did not know for certain how much money combined in pesos, Canadian and American dollars we had in our possession, we were directed to the shed for further inspection. With butt cheeks clenched at the thoughts of having to unpack and repack all of our worldly possessions for the next 6 months, we arrived in the shed to find a friendly ginger gentleman who sent us on our way, not without first embarrassing my knowledge of the Spanish language. So what began at a balmy -15 in Raymond soon warmed up to -7. But as the temperature climbed, so did our elevation, and soon we found our self at 6600 ft just outside of Butte Montana at a temperature of -27. Ouch. The roads were a little icy, but soon we found ourselves on the most boring stretch of highway outside of the Calgary to Medicine Hat route. Thankfully the lack of traffic and generous 75mph speed limits, we found a steady cruising speed of about 150kmh and arrived at Idaho Falls before we knew it, just on the good side of the “E”.
Traffic steadily picked up the closer we got to Salt Lake City. 7 lanes of traffic on each side had us quickly retreat to the safety of the car pool lane, and not a minute later our previous lane came to a stop. Unfortunately for the car beside us, this observation went unnoticed, and a fender bender ensued. I almost thought he had the stop, but the crunch indicated otherwise. It’s a good thing we switched lanes, or that could have been us with the Chrysler up our hatch. Smooth sailing and a steady 80mph brought us to our current location in Beaver Utah. By my calculations, that puts us about 2000km from Rimbey, and about 3 hours or so from the Grand Canyon, our next location for adventure. That’s all for now, keep fit and have fun.
Tyler.
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