We traveled across the country with the heat wave. We took I-80 through the salt desert.
It hit a hundred degrees in Salt Lake City that day, where we spent the night with Juan’s friends Dave and Camille and their adorable sons, who were busy with a million summer activities.
In Wyoming, we left I-80 and cut north to South Dakota via WY-26. We stopped at Guernsey State Park for lunch, which was a wonderful detour. The park suffered a fire a few weeks ago and a lot of it was burned, giving it this other-worldly ambiance.
We spent our night at Mount Rushmore in a KOA Kampground. Neither of us had ever been to a KOA before. There must have been space for 500 full campers and another 500 tent sites and was probably 90 percent full. It felt like a pop-up city. They gave us color-coded bags for our trash and recycling and invited us to a pancake breakfast in the morning. It was surprisingly quiet for such a packed place.
We carried on through the grand Midwest. Because we were moving a little more slowly than anticipated (cruising at an easy 61 mph) we had to drive 560 miles the last day, which was not much fun.
It felt like a miracle arriving at my parents’ place after five days of travel, and especially because we left the Interstate to avoid Friday night Milwaukee traffic. We made it to my brother’s bachelor party weekend just as it was reaching critical mass, arriving to a house full of 30-year-old boys eating pizza and drinking beer.
The Pony waited until Saturday to bust a hose. Thankfully we were close to our temporary home base and it was an easy fix. It was hot in Illinois and it hit 100 almost every day the first week. The Pony, like us, needed a rest.
jbuhler