Welcome To The 1000 Club

We finally made it! 1000! Over the weekend we went for a drive and wow, what a drive it turned out to be. We ended up finding 11 for the day and we hiked close to 8 miles. We went for a hike along Como Lake which is South of Missoula about 50 miles. That was a 6 mile hike, round trip, to a waterfall that had ice frozen around it. That was a neat sight and we liked the flat hike out too the falls. While we were at the falls we started finding a few ticks crawling around on our coats - great, ticks are beginning to show up and there is still snow on the ground. Perhaps the ticks are a better than encountering a bear or moose along the trail so I guess we will deal with what we encounter. Speaking of bears, we are in need of some bear spray. I think after we get back from our trip we will be investing in a can or two - just in case.

Later in the day we did some caching in the mountains. That turned out to be a real treat. We knew a cache was up on the mountain above us so we drove up to the trailhead to see if we could get to the cache in a relatively quick manner. When we drove up there we discovered that everyone was under several feet of snow and so it seemed like a bad idea to hike up to the cache. As we were turning around the car found the edge of the packed snow and slid into the soft snow on the edge of the parking area. Oops! Even though the Canoubaru is all-wheel-drive it couldn't get out of the snow because it was buried up to the axle on the left side. Well, we carry shovels in the vehicles in the winter and it's a good thing. This is the second time we have gotten the car stuck while geocaching around deep snow!

I dug around the car and then dug under the car for a few minutes, in the mean time Laura took some pictures of our predicament and then crawled into the driver seat and rolled the window down to receive my instructions to get the car out. There was a large rock a few feet in front of the car so we didn't want to slide into it. Laura does very well when she drives the car around town, but I think I need to teach her about being stuck...

After I had worked up a good sweat and had a large area cleared for the car to drive out of the snow I told Laura to drive it out. Laura scooted the car forward and killed it - it's a manual transmission. So I told her "Give it some gas." So she started the car up again and this time the car scooted forward and moved forward but died once again. However, this time I saw the car slide deeper into the snow and knew I would have to dig out more snow. She looked at me from the driver seat as I stood next to the car and I informed her "You gotta give it some gas, let me do it." Maybe a little harsh, but I was tired of digging and didn't want to bury the right side of the car up the axles either. I knew that would be big trouble. After digging awhile longer, I jumped in the car and got it rocking before I punched the gas and drove it out of the hole.

I attribute my ability to dig a car out of snow to my friend Andy. It seems when we were in high school we found our way into more snow drifts than we did drive on the road.

Thinking of driving down the road, it's only eleven days until Laura and I hit the road for our spring break trip. The first day we are planning on leaving early in the morning and driving south on highway 93 all the way through Idaho to Wells, Nevada. From there we are going to take I-80 to Winnemucca, Nevada to stay the night. That will be our biggest day of the entire trip, about 650 miles. Yes, Winnemucca is the town you hear about from Johnny Cash in his song I've Been Everywhere. It starts out "I was toting my pack along the dusty Winnemucca road. When along came a semi with a high and canvas covered load. 'If you're going to Winnemucca mack, with me you can ride..." We haven't exactly been everywhere, but we are slowly getting there, and after this trip we will be a little closer. My next blog I'll tell you about day two. Until again

-=Nolan=-