Whiteknuckling in Wyoming

I’m a person who loves driving.  I always have.  In fact, when I made the decision to take this trip, driving the 4,000+ miles was one of the most exciting parts about it.  That is until I hit Wyoming.

Now, I have been in this part of the country before, but not sure I could have ever prepared myself for the weather conditions I have faced.  A sampling:

Storm brewing in Montana

• Rain so hard you can’t see out the front window of Ringo
• Wind blowing so aggressively that you feel like Ringo is going to blow over, making it difficult to Snowing in Yellowstone Park which made sleeping in the Arctic-like conditions very challenging
• Hail in Yellowstone
• Bugs the size of small animals in South Dakota that covered the front of Ringo so badly that I had to pull into a gas station to clean the windshield in order to see the road ahead



Ringo covered with splattered bugs

Snow just outside Yellowstone

• Lightning storm in South Dakota/Minnesota that that was so dynamic it lit up the dark sky like a 4^th of July fireworks show

Rain storm in Wyoming

With all of the above being faced, nothing was worse than what I faced in Wyoming. 

My brother Ruben and I are driving out of Montana, through Wyoming and heading to South Dakota to see Mt. Rushmore.  We are in the heart of Northern Wyoming, it’s raining so hard that the wipers can’t keep up and the water build-up on the freeway is causing Ringo to hydroplane across the freeway, making steering feel almost impossible. 

But that’s not the worst of it!

During the rainstorm I’m doing back-to-back conference calls with my office in San Diego.  I hang up the phone and Ruben says let’s call Elaine, our sister to see how she’s doing (she had an accident at work).   As he’s in the middle of his conversation, my gas light comes on – reminding me that I need fuel.  I look at Ruben and yell – “Damn – we’re nearly out of gas in the middle of nowhere!!”  Now with all the conference calls going on, my brother talking with my sister, the rain, the hydroplaning – I forgot to see what our gas situation was (gas stations don’t litter the area like they do in Southern California).  In a panicked voice I said “Rub, search on your phone for the nearest gas station!”  Ruben is fumbling along trying to find something, I’m looking at the gas gauge trying to remember when we went through the last town and whether turning around made more sense than going forward.  I’m beginning to get very nervous that we are going to be sitting on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere, in an incredible rain storm out of gas!! 

I’m white knuckling as we finally see a sign that says 16 miles to the nearest town.  Ruben says “how far can you go on Ringo with the gas light on?”  Seriously???  I have no freakin’ idea!  Ruben says “16 miles, no problem, otherwise they wouldn’t call it a warning light, they’d call it, a you’re f*cked light.” 

Now I’m not usually a guy that gets too stressed, but in this case I was super worried.  Ruben continues to assure me that we can make 16 miles no problem.  But I can't hear anything he's saying because all I can think about is running out of gas in pouring down rain in the middle of Wyoming! !When we finally see the off-ramp with a Conoco gas station at the base of it, you don’t know how relieved I was.  We gas up and Ruben looks at me and says, “I knew we’d make it, I wasn’t worried!”  I could have rung his neck!!