First Load Cross Continent – Part 2

First Stuff – Part 2

Remember from part 1 that I was several hundred pounds over weight on the GVWR / Front Axel rating, and that meant unloading the entire truck to reload it with more weight aft and a few hundred pounds put back in storage.

I chose not to do that (largely due to being just too darned tired to face it, and being basically out of time & running low on money in hand due to several hundred more on hotel costs (California inflation) and an $800 “surprise” sales tax on a truck rental…

So that meant avoiding Weigh Stations. This had some very unexpected consequences…

Looking at the “rules” from various web sites, I learned that every single State has a different set of who must stop, what are the weight limits, and how many stations they have. A couple of the worst / most difficult are California (of course) and other “Lefty” States like Colorado (but I didn’t know that yet…) and Arizona. Many just say if you are over 26,000 lbs, get weighed, otherwise just drive on past. The “Rules” by State page I was using said Colorado was one of those. Turns out that was wrong… Again with unexpected consequences…

A surprise was Florida. It has Ag Inspection stations all over the place, so while they are less worried about weight, you do get tagged if you look like you might be moving agricultural products (Box Truck, Pickup with Trailer, RV, etc.)

Getting out of California was aided by the fact that some of their sites are asymmetrical, so, for example, I-80 has a station near Truckie / Lake Tahoe. But it is only looking at folks coming into the State (west bound) not leaving (east bound). Most of the other roads over the Sierra Nevada and I-80 have a station nearer the valley floor that checks East Bound, so my problem was to find a road to a point just past that station and then go over the mountains. Which is what I did. There are several options there, including a climb up hwy 50, then take 49 over to I-80, then exit via the freeway. That’s not the one I did, as when I arrived at hwy 49, it looked a bit crowded for a big truck (20 foot box, about 28 foot overall).

I just continued on hwy 50 over the Sierra Nevada. It is a somewhat winding mountain road, but most of it is better than it was 50 years ago. At the very top, as you drop into South Shore, there’s a cliff hanging section of highway, but it has rock “guardrails” and some turnouts available.

While a little bit “exciting” it wasn’t too bad. I was a bit worried that a truck which can not complete a U Turn from a left turn lane into 2 lanes going the other way might have a turning radius too wide, but it worked out OK even if close. Hanging on a cliff a couple of thousand feet above the valley took some nerve, but I’d done that road before, and it was only going to be one time and just a few miles. Thoughts that were oddly to be refuted a couple of States later.

Crossing Nevada, which is a “Don’t Care about weight” State (mostly) I decided to stay on hwy-50 as it is called “The Lonliest Road In America” and I figured that might be a good idea for avoiding their sporadic / occasional “pop up” inspection stations that the page warned about. This was a very good decision.

I stopped at a Casino at the Start Of Nowhere (Fallon) for dinner. It was OK, but not great. I was reminded that all casinos smell of tobacco… But they are open at nearly 9 PM. Then it was out into the great High Desert. One fills up fully before starting out as there are long hundreds-ish of miles between gas stations. I drove through the night, with a short nap in the middle of nowhere. Looking up at the night sky from the high desert in complete darkness is an amazing thing.

One one occasion I just stopped in the middle of the road. It was about 20 minutes between cars, so I knew I could fire it up and get moving again, if needed, as the headlights would show up many minutes in advance of the car. Another time I got fully off the road on a wide patch of gravel. Shutting down, I got out and just stared up. A moonless night, the sky was a carpet of starts with a wide swath of the Milky Way from edge to edge. I was very surprised at the lack of any lights on the horizon. Seems that if the only town “nearby” is 100+ miles away and they have shut down for the night, there isn’t any sky-glow.

After a few minutes, I realized I could see the terrain and surroundings just from the starlight. Not bright, not with great detail, but enough to walk around and make out bushes and such. No need for any flashlights or other lighting.

Somewhere in there I had about a 2 hour nap. Pulled over on some dirt siding.

There’s a couple of small towns as you cross Nevada. When you get to one it is a good idea to buy gas… I got gas at the 2nd one (as I’d worked out the MPG, range, etc. and THEN discovered the Truck had that built into the computer display…) Somewhere in the middle there was a climb up a small mountain on a narrow and winding section. Not bad, but required a bit of attention.

For anyone wanting to actually see what some of this road is like, here’s a video. Eva Zu Beck is Polish, and spends her time touring the entire world doing adventures and living in her truck. I strongly recommend looking at her list of places visited and things done. Makes my “adventure” seem more tame than it felt at the time. When she is on gravel, that is NOT highway 50, that’s a road off to the side.

Eventually you reach a bit of Utah and then Colorado. Parts of this is overlayed on I-70 and those parts were easy if a bit boring. I was very surprised to see that the Rail Line that paralleled I-70 and was one of the big Passenger Train routes for vistas, was now a ripped out dirt road / trail. It looks like transcontinental rail is being concentrated along the snow free I-10 alignment. (In Texas a similar situation showed up too with a rail easement now a dirt track along I-40). In the Sierra Nevada they moved the track that was next to I-80, so it is possible these rail segments were just moved, too, and not ended.

Utah was another “no worries” State. Then I crossed into Colorado, thinking everything would be Just Fine as The Page said under 26,000 lbs was a free ride. Crossing the border in the early morning light, a sign said: Any vehicle over 10,000 lbs OR with a trailer must enter the weigh station. Oh Dear. I was about 15,000 lbs in a 14,500 truck.

Lucky for me, the station was closed…

So I found an exit fairly quickly and decided to study the map of stations just a little bit. I’d planned to just go straight through to Denver, turn south on I-25 into New Mexico, and then cross into Texas at El Paso. Well that was off the table.

Now my carefully planned out route, with station locations and such, was void, and I was going “Seat Of My Pants” with paper AAA Maps. Best made plans, gang aft agley…

That’s when I made my Big Mistake. Looking at the options, I decided to head due south on the West side of the Rockies and into the corner of New Mexico. A couple of roads headed there, but one looked shortest, and on the map, the 1 or 2 inch line looked fairly straight. It was numbered as a bypass road of Hwy-50, with 550 (3 digit usually is a bypass with the last two being the major highway number and the first digit the bypass nunber on that highway). Great! A simple straight bypass major highway. I was wrong. That was a deceptive “straight” as the very tight turns were inside the width of the line on the map…

Turns out 550 is also known as the “Million Dollar Highway” and climbs to somewhere around 11,000 feet with 3 mountain passes on a VERY winding mountain road, with 10 mph switchbacks and no guard rails, as 2 narrow lanes with a steep mountain on one side and a sheer drop off of hundreds to thousands of feet on the other. Oh, and as I was climbing the mountains, most of the time I was on the sheer drop cliff side…

But I didn’t know this abut 550 at the time…

Driving along 550, it wasn’t really bad… at first. I did reaach a town (Ouray) that had a sign up saying “Winding mountain road and low clearance ahead – 13′ 5″ advise trucks take alternate route through Telluride”. Here’s where I made my next big mistake. I thought “They must mean Semi-Trucks as they are 14 foot clearance, not trucks like this one. I’m already on a winding mountain road, so that’s OK, and I have an 11 foot clearance”. Besides, the alternate route would add a lot of miles, time and cost (as I would end up paying about $1.30 / mile for any overage and I was pretty sure I was going to go over the allotment…) When I saw the small black bear run across the road as I entered the town, that ought to have been a clue about how remote all this was.

So I stayed on hwy 550.

Now once you get to the climb / narrow / cliff part, you realize there isn’t really any way to turn around a truck that needs 4 lanes for a U turn and where backing up is mirrors only / blind straight back and to the sides. There were a couple of smaller local roads branched off to some houses, but they looked like I’d get trapped on them and need to back up back to the cliff road if anything went wrong. Feeling commited, as I’d already climbed about 1000 to 2000 feet up the mountain face and could see that ‘warning city’ lights below me… I decided to just press on.

Then things got worse.

I was acutely aware than I had about 7000 pounds on the tires that were likely right on the edge of the road, and was not at all sure it was sound enough to hold that weight. It being about midnight (did I mention all this was happening in the dead of night and pitch black?) I decided to “take my 1/2 of the road out of the middle”. IMHO that’s the only thing that got me over this mountain climb with any safety. I only met 2 oncoming cars on the whole thing (finishing at about 3 AM… or maybe 4…) and their headlights showed up well in advance. One arrived just as I was at a nice “pull out” area, so I did.

During this climb, and more so on the downside on the backside, there were numerous deer, and another bear. The deer were often in the middle of the road, and while some would run away or try to climb the mountain, others would just stand there. Needless to say the whole drive was done at about 20 MPH or slower; at least until I got to some posted 40 MPH straighter segments on the downside. (There I risked going 30…) One deer decided to run along the mountain side of the road about 20 feet in front of my bumper, occasionally trying to climb the rock / mountain face and failing, until it came to a lower angle treed area. This added its own element of risk and randomness.

For anyone wanting to take a look at this road, here’s a video. I think it goes from Silverton to Ouray, while I went the other way, so the steep climb out of Ouray comes toward the end, also I was on the “outside” next to the cliff drop off almost all of the climb, while he’s near the mountain, but you get the general feel of the place.

I did, eventually, make it out and back down several thousand feet to flatter and straighter roads. This came with its own complications. Now I was in a fairly remote area of Colorado trying to get to New Mexico. At one point, the “highway” I was on passed through some minor city and proceeded to switch back up the cliff surrounding the flat land that was occupied by the city. Of course, again their was no guardrail. But this time I was on a 2 lane highway at about an hour after sunrise with lots of traffic both ways…

Eventually this road took me to where I wanted to be. A long stretch of highway that was all on Navaho Indian Land. This ended at the I-40 freeway, the old Route 66 that is still there in some places. Approaching the New Mexico / Texas border, Google Maps showed an exit Weigh Station, but it looked in poor repair. There was what looked like it might be old 66 bypass next to it on the backside. I thought it looked closed, but decided to explore a bit first.

This was actually some fun. There’s a marked Route 66 Historic Section off ramp, that has you make a right turn for 66. Turn left (toward the weigh station) and in a couple of blocks it is a gravel road where paved 66 has been ripped up and it is just gravel to farm houses. This went right past the back of the weight station, that was, in fact abandoned. At that point I ought to have gotten back on the freeway, but was bored and wanted to explore.

The Short Form is that about 5 or 10 miles down the gravel road you come to a very old rickety looking bridge placarded for “8 Tons” (or 16,000 pounds). I hoped it was accurate… The opportunities to turn around ranged from “no way” to “you might not get stuck”, so I crossed it. We’re talking old wood on top of old telephone pole like things with gravel on it. About a mile further down was a farm driveway with another such bridge in the distance, I took that opportunity to turn around and return to I-40. I likely could have plotted some kind of all gravel bypass, but by then the clock and hunger were reminding me not to play so much ;-)

I-40 had no weigh station East, just West, and took me into Texas where I had No Worries about mountains or weigh stations. Things were then fairly easy the rest of the way to Florida. With just ONE exception…

I crossed Texas from Amarillo down to I-20. Exiting Texas I crossed into Louisiana and then went diagonally across the State on Highway 49. There was a storm… Storm warnings were in effect at my last stop. A Highway Patrol SUV passed me, flashers on, at about 50 mph. This was about 9 PM and dark. At one point, wipers going at full extent, I was down to about 30 to 40 MPH on the freeway, depending on visibility. A big SUV (Cadillac I think) whipped past me at about 60. Wind was gusting and at times it was grim. Visibility was maybe 100 yards. Which made it all the more exciting when the SUV, about 90 yards in front of me, went all sideways, then wobbled back to sideways the other way, then eventually wobbled back to forward… and proceeded to do about 45 MPH after that.

Being a bit Awake from all this, and a bit “energized”, I decided to turn on the radio for, hopefully, a bit of calming music. What did I have come right out of the speakers as soon as it was on?

“Hail Mary Full Of Grace!… The LORD is with thee!” I think: “OMG! The Truck is saying Hail Marys! It must be BAAAAD!”

Turns out that the frequency that had been news in Texas was a Catholic Evening Mass in Louisiana. This was on a Sunday, don’tcha know… I have never had my car say “Hail Marys” at me before, but I can tell you it is WAY spooky! About 10 miles down the road I took an off ramp and fueled up. After about 30 minutes of fuel and snacks, Mass ended, the sky cleared, and in a few more miles I was on I-10. The next two bits of nothing (80 miles & 50 miles-ish, IIRC) for Mississippi & Alabama were relatively smooth.

In Florida, they have a few “weigh stations” and a whole lot of “Agriculture Inspection Stations” that often have a scale too. I’d carefully plotted my way around the weigh station on entry to the State, and took minor highways toward home. This managed to avoid all the weight stations on the freeways and almost all of the agriculture inspection stations. Turns out there was one, in the absolute middle of nowhere, in a minor town that barely showed up on the map (and was not listed on the web site listing stations…)

I got there at about dinner time. Maybe a bit later. Stopping for a while to ponder the map, I found a path past the station. BUT it would add a couple of hours when I really really wanted to be home the same day and not the next day. I was very tired, needing a lot of sleep, and really really wanting to sleep in a bed not a truck cab. The choice was between not making it without another night in the truck, or hoping the inspection station was not a weigh station. This particular one was just a small shack in the middle of the highway through this small town, with a single lane that split off the highway and had a stop in front of a window. So I took it.

Well, it did have a small one axel scale area at the exit. A cement pad with steel trim of about 9 or 10 feet wide and about 4 feet long…

After playing “20 Questions” with the officer in the box (Cop In A Box?) with things like “Any plants?” and “What is in the truck” with my answers of “Nope” and “Furniture” (followed by a Folksy narrative about the house I just bought…) I was cleared to go. Now I have no idea if they were actually looking at the scale reading, or if they bothered to look at the GVWR printed in large letters on the side of the truck, but… I chose to put the drivers side wheels in the space with the gutter and about a foot of concrete before the scale edge started. This will have cut my weight anywhere from 1/2 to maybe only 3/4 if one of the dual rear wheels ended up on the scale (which I think it did). But the bottom line is I passed without incident.

From that point on, it was a straight shot on mostly 2 lane highways to home. Bed came at about 2 AM. The next day was unloading the truck and turning it in. I was over miles by about $200, which was really not much to worry about. Especially in the context of a $9000 rental fee and several $Hundreds of gas. I was getting about 11 to 12 MPG a lot of the time, and it’s about 2800 miles the straightest way, so figure about 3300 the way I went. Figure maybe 300 gallons, or about $900 for fuel.

Was it worth it?

Most likely: not really. Now I did bring a LOT of irreplacable books, and my seed archive that would have died in the hot storage unit had I left it through summer. At $3 / packet and hundreds of packets, that would be an expensive replacement. But still less than $10,000. I have not yet unpacked all the books. (Need to assemble some bookcases first). But I really needed to get this one load “done”. It did let me empty one of the 2 storage units I had at the time of selling the house. That’s about $2,000 a year saved. So call it about $3500 “saved” between the seed archive and the rental cost of one unit. The books I can’t estimate. Many are no longer in print, so there’s that. Some kitchen gear made it in that trip, so the kitchen has been better equiped. Plus some furniture (tables, chairs, dressers) and tool boxes (so home repair has been a bit easier).

Still, I could have bought an adequate home tool box for $100, and kitchen stuff is not that expensive (though I already have 3 cast iron skillets and really don’t need a 4th since they last forever.) P.G. was, to some extent, correct when he said to sell or give away all you can and just buy new. However, having the spousal dresser that she has had her whole life and is very sentimental about, and the dinette set that I grew up with, both have a certain emtional quality that is not replaceable.

Now the intent had been that I’d just be moving all this in a trailer I owned pulled by the Mercedes ML, which had “issues” due to the Hind Brain being corroded due to the passenger side rear tail light missing a gasket. So something had to be done. This run got us “over the hump” to a functional home with some things we cared about.

FWIW, I’ve since found some videos of an 18 Wheeler heavy semi-truck / trailer going over the Million Dollar Highway. He explains it is for Expert Drivers Only. NO Novices. I’d agree, even though I did it as a novice… it took a LOT of concentration, but the edge of the road can take the weight, so that was a concern I didn’t need to have.

Now the ML has been fixed (for the 4th or 5th time?… but “This time for sure!” since we found the gasket issue and I’ve tested it with hose and downpouring rain) and I’ve solved the issue of trailer lights not working. We’ll find out for sure when I buy a trailer and make the first run to pick up the rest of my stuff.

So “watch this space” for future adventures!

Part of what will be interesting is navigating the weigh stations with a trailer. Most states don’t care about small fish; but some do. I’ll still be getting a weight done before I head out, but I’m not going to weigh the car and trailer separately. This means I might end up with a bit over trailer GVWR and not know it. We’ll see how it goes. I can tow up to 7200 lbs, and the trailers I’m looking at are rated about that too. A Lot of the heaviest stuff (books, by far) came in the truck. There’s still some lighter weight furniture to move (and I’ll likely take it early). Though there are still more boxes of books and some other heavy things to go. My floor jack, air socket wrench and sockets, boxes of papers (though many will be sorted and tossed on site… didn’t have time to sort everything at the time of closing of the sale). I’m likely to be weight limited, not volume limited, still.

One things that’s certain, though: I’m not going to be taking 550 again…

Advertisement