March 2 & 3 2024
Who would have thought that the first two days of our trek would be so dramatic! We left really early on Saturday morning at 4:45am. The Montana portion of the drive through Dillon was uneventful, dry weather, no traffic, no critters. We picked up I-15 in Dillon and knew that the Lima and Monida Pass area could have snow showers.
Well, snow showers is an understatement. We had blizzardy conditions with blowing snow (40 to 80 mph winds) – wet and heavy – and bad road surfaces, with ice forming and slushy snow making driving a nerve-wracking experience. And, of course, I was in the driver’s seat at that time. After driving through that hell for an hour, Yeti offered to take over and I let him. He is better at that kind of snowy stuff. He did a great job navigating the terrible roads, even daring to pass people which I would never have done. All through Idaho it was like this. It was horrible. Finally in the last 15 or 20 miles of Idaho it finally started to improve.
Utah offered us rain and high winds – and I mean high winds: gusts of 60-80 miles per hour. The car was being buffeted all over the place. You had to hang on to the wheel at all times. The poor car. With the TIcTak on top and the crazy wind, we were getting terrible mileage per gallon. Anyway, we soldiered on and in spite of the weather didn’t do bad time getting to St. George, Utah where we stayed the night.
Yeti and I were both exhausted from the strain of the drive and conked out pretty early.
Next day was sunny and at first way less windy. Around Las Vegas, the wind picked up a bit. It was not as bad as the day before, but was still a constant presence. The drive to California was pleasant on the whole. Once we were off the main Interstates, it was a nice ride through Nevada, Arizona (for a brief stint) and then California desert. Scenic – desert, mountains in the distance. DISASTER strikes. We stopped in El Centro, CA to get some supplies and noticed that the EcoFlow – our worker bee power source for all of our essential stuff (Fridge, Starlink, Solor panels) was not working correctly. We decided to proceed to Jacumba Hot Springs and work the problem there. This could have delayed our trip.
Got to Jacumba where we had a dramatic weather change. It had been sunny and warm (74 degrees) in El Centro. Just before getting to Jacumba, the weather changed to cold and rainy – 47 degrees, a drop of almost 30 degrees! Checked into our lovely lodgings – I splurged and booked the new Jacumba Hot Springs hotel. They have mineral pools, jacuzzi etc. Nice place.
Yeti brought the EcoFlow into the room and started looking up stuff online and troubleshooting. The AC part of the unit seemed to be working, but not the DC part, which we needed. But, amazingly after a bit Yeti turned on the DC again and it worked! We are thinking it may have overheated and shut down. There is a lot of stuff in the back and it may have been blocking air circulation to the unit. Anyway, it seems to be okay. What a relief!
Yeti is doing a short day tomorrow, eliminating the road miles to the railroad tracks and starting the longer day on Tuesday. So, we will test the gear tomorrow and make sure that it works. I need the ECOFlow to run pretty much everything, so hopefully it will work properly. It always worked fine on the Hayduke, so we are hopeful that we figured out the problem! PHEW. We went and had a glass of Cabernet at the bar! I’m going to hit the jacuzzi later. The outdoor pool seems less inviting today as we are still having sprinkles and it’s kind of cold. The jacuzzi is indoors!
We plan to have dinner here later. Should be nice. What a two-days adventure! Tomorrow, the real hike begins.
Yeti met a couple of young rock climbers while we were having a glass of wine & some guacamole & chips before coming back to write this. Shawn & Isabell. They live in the Sandiego area. We had fun talking to them. They had climbed at places Yeti has like Joshua Tree, Taquitz, Suicide, etc & knew some of the climbers Yeti has climbed with,