White Knuckle Snow Ride!

I spent the night on 2/23/17 just outside of Pocatello.  The first photo was taken at about 7:00am.  Light snow was falling but a lot heavier snow fall was on the way.  I checked the Idaho road reports for I-15 from Pocatello to Ogden.  It indicated that travel through about 35 miles south of Pocatello was moving very slowly and the road was littered with cars and trucks that had skidded off the road.  It appeared that if I could get over the set of hills near Inkom the snow was lighter and the ice on the road would begin to clear once I got into Utah.

By now it had begun snowing more heavily.  I could opt to sit it out a little longer as the snow was projected to lighten up by 4:30PM, but the temperature was sitting at 22 degrees, so the snow that was falling was beginning to accumulate.

I noticed that the driver of the big rig that pulled in and stayed overnight was checking out his rig and getting ready to pull out.  I asked him which direction he was headed and he said he was headed to LA but would probably stop in Las Vegas.  I asked what he was hearing about the roads and it pretty much confirmed what i had read that if we could just get over the grade about 30 miles south, the road would begin to clear with pockets of snow and ice along the way.  So, I decided to tie things down and to hit the road as well.  The second pictures shows how well the road had cleared once we got into Utah.  By the time I got to Ogden, traffic was moving at about 70mph.  Traffic was pretty light.

I pulled into Las Vegas (Thousand Trails RV Resort off of boulder Hwy) around 6:30PM after leaving Pocatello around 8:30AM.  So what should have taken about 8hrs took me about 10 hrs.  I checked-in after hours but I pressed the button on the call box and the staff met me at the gate and helped me get settled.  Unfortunately they didn’t have a pull through spot, so I had the experience of backing in this 38′ motorhome.  I had to do it without the back-up camera because it was caked with dirt from all the wet snow that had been swirling around the rig.  I had to hop out of the rig a couple of times to make sure I was avoiding neighboring rigs, parked cars and picnic tables.  good new is i got it into the generous spot, driving blind and in the dark.  Who knows, I may wake up in the morning only to find I’m in the wrong spot.  I hope not.

Tomorrow, I’ll dead-head back to the SF Bay area and I hope to arrive home in about 8-1/2  hours.  I’ll try to get an early start to beat the traffic in and out of Vegas.  It pains me to see how dirty this beautiful new motorhome is from all the wet snow I had to drive through.  Oh well, we’ll get it home and get it cleaned up.  We’ll have to begin to plan our first real road trip in the rig.

See you later!