Day 2 – Thursday – Continued
With a very light throttle foot and a lot of praying, still within a few miles from the freeway, we had a visual on it. Attributed to what I can only assume was either divine intervention or Mercedes-Benz’s poor calibration of their fuel gauges, we made it to the entrance to the freeway. After making the slowest merge in recorded history, we trekked 10 freeway miles back to the gas station near the factory without running out of fuel! After filling the tank and subtracting that number from the tanks capacity, I deduced that we had only about a third of a gallon remaining. We would have never made it 51 miles had I decided to attempt to reach the next town.

It was at this point in the trip that I seriously contemplated just going home. After some reflection and coffee I felt relieved that we’d made it and the boys said that they were still having a good time, so once again we headed north. This time with a full tank of fuel.

It was a good feeling when we finally passed the point where I’d made the decision to turn around. We stopped in the very small town of Alamo and ate our lunch in the RV. I also rested on the couch for a little bit.

Before this trip I hadn’t ever been to any part of Nevada other than Las Vegas or Boulder City. The scenery while driving up the east side of Nevada was absolutely amazing! The variety of the things you see is just stunning. We saw everything from jagged cliffs, canyons, and snow-covered mountain peaks to lakes and grasslands. It seemed that every time we came around a bend there was a new feast for our eyes.

While driving through a canyon In the middle of nowhere, an F-18 from who-knows-where treated us to a low-altitude fly-by. We were further surprised when a couple minutes later, he flew over us at the same altitude but this time at about 700 MPH. Whooosh!

In the early evening, we stopped to eat at Arby’s in Ely for a nutritious dinner. We reached the RV park in Wendover, Nevada (the nearest place to stay to the salt flats) just before dark. It was cold and a bit breezy. The World Finals aren’t very well attended as evidenced by the mostly empty KOA. I spent the last bit of daylight connecting the RV to power, water, and sewer. I planned to get a good night’s sleep and drive over to the salt flats early the next morning.

It wasn’t long after we were settled in that night that the wind decided to pick up. “Pick up” may not be the right choice of words. “Near tornado” is more descriptive. It soon became bad enough that I began steadying myself with my hands as if I were in a boat while walking in the RV. Then it rained. The rain and the wind kept me up most of the night. At one point I worried about the vertical stability of the RV, but that was probably just the exhaustion talking.