The Silver Streak E-mail ListArchive Files[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index] [SilverStreak] 5 days on the road Silver Streaking
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
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