We woke up from our campsite in Utah to the loud sound of hounds baying across the meadow on Saturday morning. What they were looking for was a mystery to us, but there had to be 4-6 of them running all around. I thought the my neighbor’s dog was noisy!
After getting on the road at about 8:30am, we headed South towards the Provo area. We saw some really pretty scenery and stopped for a bit to jump in a lake at Flaming Gorge. When we were nearing the Springville area, Scott and I made a quick decision to scrap the last day and last camping area and just head home to try and surprise our wives. Although this added an additional driving load, we were up for the challenge. We talked about how we would probably be getting a call from our wives who were watching the GPS tracker telling us that we were lost and that we needed to pull over for directions. Virtual back seat driving!
We started to make tracks up to Salt Lake where we caught the 15 and off to the Beltway to I-80. We had some communication issues en route, but Scott’s hand signals got us on the right path. Coming across the salt flats, we encountered some strong winds. Enough for us to drop our speed down to the 60MPH range and I remember looking forward and seeing Scott leaning his bike over pretty drastically to counter the wind. We thought we were pretty hard core when we got to Wendover, but we quickly learned that the worst was still to come.
Just outside of Wendover, with the temperature peaking above 100 degrees, we noticed some storm systems over head. We also saw that there was some precipitation coming down. As we drew closer, we reluctantly realized that we wouldn’t be able to avoid it. We pulled over and suited up for the weather. When we got back on the road, we caught some rain, but the worst of it by far was the wind gusts that were far worse than we had experienced through the salt flats. Some nearly to the point of pushing us all of the way through the lane and off to the rumble strip. We slowed down and continued. When it was all over, we were super hot in our weather gear so we pulled over and stripped it off.
When we got to Winnemucca, we grabbed a snack and headed out into the dark knowing that there was another storm brewing in the distance. We thought that 80 would curve north of where the storm was, but we were wrong. It was here that we got hit by the hardest wind gust of them all. I remember leaning into the wind gusts doing about 60MPH when I noticed the lights of the oncoming traffic go dim. I quickly yelled to Scott that we were going to get hit by a huge gust when all of the sudden a gust carrying a ton of sand hit us from the left side. I let off the accelerator and gave some soft but steady brakes to quickly get my speed down while getting pushed into the rumble strip. I then quickly looked up to check my mirrors for Scott… The radio was silent… Then as quickly as he had disappeared, I saw him emerge from that dark cloud. He was nearly pushed to the dirt, but came out alright. We made it through the storm and continued on in a light wind.
About 20 miles East of Winnemucca I noticed a funny sensation when I changed lanes. A half a mile later I pulled over and realized that my rear tire was very low. I decided to try to get a bit further, but I only made about a quarter mile before I was on the rim. Game over.
We then called Scott’s parents and without a quip, Aleah and Zach Angus arrived to the rescue in record time. The remaining 100 miles of the destination were completed in the backseat of a comfortable F350 with our bikes strapped to the trailer behind us. We arrived at home at around 2am on Sunday morning.
