[SilverStreak] 5 days on the road Silver Streaking

[<joepatwink@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I thought I would toss our trip out there to Silver Streak land. We went from 
Worland, WY?to Eastern Nebraska for a three day family reunion. We then drove 
to North Central South Dakota (Aberdeen) to see an old college friend and finally 
home. Total distance was?1,946 miles on the truck, there was about 40 miles 
without the trailer hooked on?included in that.
? We left North Central Wyoming about? 8:30 Wednesday morning pulling our 1969 
19 foot Sabre on Hwy 20, going south and then east. We just purchased a 2004 
3/4 ton, 360 gas engine pickup and it pulled the trailer much easier than our old, 
worn out 1990 Suburban. We got 12.4 MPG over the whole trip according to the l
ittle screen in the dash, I don't?know how accurate those things are.??The truck 
always wanted to shift down into 3rd gear on hills when you use cruise, so I took 
it off cruise on the hilly parts of the trip. The larger hills between Shoshone 
and Casper, WY was the first place we saw it shifting down all the time. Gas in WY 
was about 3.73. From Casper WY to E. Nebr we followed I-80. There are quite a few 
hills in western and eastern Nebraska but the middle 200 miles are in the Platte 
river valley and very flat. Gas with ethanol was cheaper, but your gas mileage is 
worse so it has to be at least 4 cents per gallon cheaper to justify buying it. We 
were chased by a s!
 torm front with a F2 tornado in it across 100 miles of Nebraska. The tornado hit 
Kearney, NE less than an hour after we passed through. We listened to the radio and 
watched for blocked roads but everything worked out fine for us. We camped on my 
brothers farm near Lincoln, NE for three days, it rained a little every day. To go 
to Aberdeen we took Highway 81 north through Nebraska and S. D. to I-90, then went 
west on I-90 to HWY 281 and took it north. This area is a glacial plane, dotted with 
prairie potholes full of water and waterfowl. Very flat. Very, very, flat. Rooster 
pheasants were posted along the road, sometimes five to a mile, advertising their 
charms for the ladies. Gas in Aberdeen was 3.88. When we headed west on HWY 212 it 
was foggy and green. The fog slowly lifted and the flat prairie turned into low hills. 
We gassed up in Eagle Butte, SD and it was 4.09, the only gas over 4 bucks a gallon. 
We came into the Black Hills,?turned onto?I-90 at Spearfish and cruised!
  west into the sagebrush hills of eastern WY. We left the inte!
 rstate and crossed the Bighorn Mountains on HWY 16. The mountains are still full of 
snow and the creeks roar in flood. You will not find a place to camp over 7,000 foot, 
the roads are blocked off to keep people from tearing them up. We drove?down the 
mountain and?into the BigHorn Basin and home?accompanied by?sunlight and light winds. 
? Joe