We surface at 07:10 and I have felt better. We make the 08:00 meet with seconds to spare and head off to the Original Pancake House for breakfast, a modern airy place with an enormous breakfast menu based almost exclusively around pancakes, crepes (what we call pancakes in the UK) and waffles. Don’t get me wrong, I love being over in the US but…when us English left in 1776 I’d like to think we left the place in good order…then left to your own devices you started putting pancakes and bacon on the same plate. What the heck happened? ;o)
The service is really good as befits the premium price and
quality food. After much research I find bacon and eggs…and pancakes. You can
substitute the pancakes for tomartoes…I get tom-ate-oes instead. Alex, despite
my long and detailed counsel orders the Texican having toyed with the apple
pancakes which topped out at…1890 calories. The Texican arrives…three pancakes
with two fried eggs atop sausage and hash brown and the world’s supply of
jalapenos. He manfully manages the pancakes and eggs but the jalapenos prove
too much and TOO SPICY especially for breakfast.
One thing you notice about Colorado is that people appear
generally more active with lots of walking and cycling evident. This is clearly
beneficial as the population does look much slimmer than elsewhere.
We head north on the I25 into Wyoming and stop in Cheyenne
for supplies at Walmart before continuing north.
The venerable laptop I use for these trips is from 2011 sporting
Windows 7 and despite connecting to my iPhone by USB and trying a mobile hotspot
it just cannot be made to connect to the internet so I’ll have to upload 2 days
worth tonight at the hotel.
We continue on I25 which curves east and we stop at Douglas
for a pit stop. Time to find out if the Hershey Bar still tastes of sick;
doesn’t taste too bad to be fair but it starts to melt in double quick time.
Onward and upwards through Wright and with Gillette in our sights. Wyoming is
living up to its name as the least densely populated state in the contiguous
United States; it’s devoid of people and places, a couple of deer being the
only things of interest for some considerable time. It’s 13:24 and my bum is
getting numb…my turn in the back today.
We eventually arrive at Gillette and stop for a picnic at
the local park, a well kept and green place to eat our lunch. A quick play with
the Frisbee and it’s back on the road north crossing the border into Montana.
I’ve been to every state in tornado alley from Texas to North Dakota and all
those to the east and west of those but Montana has escaped me until now. I’ll
have to check but I think that’s state number 21 for me. We stop in Broadus for
a quick break and had a chat to the lady behind the counter. Thinking she’d be
surprised to meet people from the UK it turns out that the car pulling out when
we came in belonged to UK storm chasers.
There are storms forming to our west. There are also storms
in the far east of Nebraska which were out of reach for us today and it looks
like a small tornado outbreak is taking place. We head west from Broadus to
intercept the storm which kindly goes severe warned then has a rotation marker of
85 knots.
We stop near Ashfield and the weaker, more northerly storm
has sprung up with a striking structure and it’s time for some drone footage
and a few snaps. We turn round and retrace our steps; these storms are moving
across the ground at 40 knots and we are between them trying to get ahead of
them. Both storms are now severe warned, the stronger southerly storm is south
of the road and it will be a while before we can get south of it. A few stops
for snaps (the structure I impressive) and we drop south back to Broadus, then
west then north to get in front before heading east again.
The northerly storm dissipates shortly before the southerly
does the same. But hang on…a change in the radar station and our eyes are not
mistaken…there is a storm firing directly to our front with a huge billowing
updraft. Shortly after it becomes severe warned. We stop at the Stoneville
Saloon for a bathroom break as there isn’t a garage handy. Alex goes in to
whoops and yeehaaas…I can hang on so take some snaps.
I’m not exactly sure where we are as there’s been no mobile
signal for hours. We’re now on a dirt road heading towards Capitol from Albion;
there are deer and turkeys all over, “deer aren’t the smartest” says Alex as
one jumps out in front of us, needing some alert driving to stop it being
turned into minced venison. We bounce into South Dakota and continue north into
North Dakota arriving at the Super 8 at Bowman at 22:30 CDT (being 23:30 MDT)
having been on the go for 14.5 hours.
It’s been a very long and enjoyable chase, and no for the
royal pain of sorting photos, uploading the blog and charging multiple
batteries.
Total miles: 720
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