I Wouldn't Walk 500 Miles....

Dec 16

Dec 16 I Wouldn't Walk 500 Miles....

but I would drive 3000. There’s not a whole lot to write about 3 solid days of driving that took us from Yosemite to Tahoe, Tahoe to Twin Falls and Twin Falls to Bozeman without resorting to facts and figures so this is mostly a photo dump post. However, this wouldn’t be your familiar update without SOME data so…..so far we’ve driven 1680 miles or just over half. The three day stretch was 1068 miles (1700km) or a third of our total driving and 90% of which was on snowy roads below zero. By the way, American truck drivers are certifiably crazy: they literally drive down snow covered highways at or over the 80mph (130km/hr) speed limit.

Some learnings for anyone wanting to do a similar snowy road trip:

Hire an AWD or 4WD and make sure they put snow tyres on - we went for a BMW X7 mainly because we have a luxurious amount of luggage to fit however it’s been an amazing car for the conditions and we’ve felt very safe
Get the pre-mixed window washer from a gas station: the windscreen collects all the salt and grit flicked up by other vehicles and gets very dirty very quickly. Ordinary water will freeze in your window washer reservoir leaving you with no other option to stop and do a wash/scrape manoeuvre
On the topic of wind washing, once the temperature gets to 18F everything freezes. Including any water residue on the window wipers. Which exacerbates the whole window screen situation. So make sure you clean the window wipers.
Buy a scraper. And not just any scraper but one with the longest arm you can find and one that has a brush. Trust me - you’ll find the brush part way more useful than you think.
Get a car with heated seats. Literally amazing.