Holidays 2019 Cross Country Roadtrip Planning

Yeah, if there's western snow forecast, I'm going to divert south to I-10. I'm not fully confident in these tires to be mountain pass ready.
 
Day 1 down. 670ish miles. 715am to 1135pm.

In my defense I did stop a lot during the daylight portion.

Grabbing a nap at a rest stop on I-40 in NC.
 
Be safe!

You could run into some nastiness coming across the West over the next several days. It looks the worst in No. AZ will be on Tuesday, but there is a decent chance of more snow through Thursday from there all the way up into UT. It doesn't look like road-closing amounts are predicted, but I-40, highway 89, and 64 all have potential to be nasty. 89 into Flagstaff probably has better snow control than 64 past the Grand Canyon. Once you get down the hill West of Flagstaff the elevation drops a lot so it should clear up fairly quickly, if the weather is bad.
 
I'm actually running about half a day ahead, which sounds like I'll be needing it.

6 hours of sleep. Not bad sleep all things considered, too.

Secret is an eye mask (leftover from a JetBlue redeye), Sennheiser noise cancelling headphones (playing nothing, but with the NC turned on) and a weighted twin blanket. Basically start the car, put the heater on full, heat seats on, blast it until it's warm, shut down the car when it gets there.

When you wake up because it's cold, repeat.
 
Was supposed to end today in eastern TN. Am actually at the Missouri welcome center.

Which is just as well, because TN are apparently assholes. About an hour ago I parked at their rest stop for 10 minutes and got ready to sleep and a security guard informed me that you can't sleep there unless you're a trucker.

Telling him I'm a trucker didn't change his mind.

1289 miles on the clock so far.

NC and the eastern half of TN are absolutely pathological if you're trying to travel east/west off interstates.

It took until 2pm (from 630) just to get to the NC/TN line. Another 6 hours to get to the head end of US412, halfway across TN.

Once I hit 412, it was 3 hours of driving (I stopped to buy a phone charger and take a shower) to Missouri.

It looks like it may be possible to make New Mexico by tomorrow night, rather than the planned Tulsa.
 
Reading all these town names... my brain is playing Route 66 now.
 
You may run headlong into that snow around Flagstaff then.
Likely. Looks like it's snowing there now (or will be soon). They're predicting 3-5" today and tomorrow. That should be manageable on I-40. I don't know about highway 89. That's a LOT more rural so plows being out isn't as predictable.
 
Interesting thing is that the truck stops in TN also feature signage warning off sleeping in passenger cars. I suspect someone in the state government owns hotels.

Almost NM. Got to Boise City OK before the endless dead straight repetitive road started making hallucinations. Am badly parked betwixt trucks at the Loves now, as God intended truck stops to work.

BRZ is idling especially poorly. Hunting BAD when yhe A/C compressor cycles. Always has, but it's worse here. Maybe altitude? I had to kill the A/C to keep it stable enough I'm willing to sleep.
 
Attached is more or less the planned route for the 24th and 25th. Will see what the snow situation is like when I hit Springer, and I'll either keep to that madness or invent something new south of 40.
 

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That took vastly longer than it should have because I kept stopping to take pictures.

There was snow today but only above 7000ft and it never became an issue on the roads.

Though... See where I took a right turn near Albuquerque? That was just before sunset.

After that point I have NO idea what kind of terrain I was driving through except that it had tons of elevation changes, the roads were nearly perfectly straight, I couldn't see anything at all in the darkness beyond the road berm/ditch.

For the whole stretch of that north of 40, Google was telling me to drive on Unknown Road, I never saw a car, light, or sign of civilization, I kept popping in and out of total whiteout snowfall and fog, the mile markers were in kilometers and it waa genuinely a kind of out of body experience.

Same general idea south of 40, too, except with the occasional car.
 

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Generalized plan for tomorrow. NWS was saying this morning that all the weather would be North of here. It's flurrying outside right now...

No sense worrying about it, because there are only two ways off this fuckin mountain: drive 2 hours back into NM, or press forward into AZ, and there's an AZDOT base in this town. Sure as shit didn't see one anywhere near the NM side.

Two car faults today: Early in the day the catalyst code popped. There were misfire counts on all 4 cylinders so it may be time for plugs. Reset that and it stayed away.

The fog light circuit also totally stopped working for several hours when I needed them most. They later reappeared.
 

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Looks like you are going to try and take some of the roads I did a month ago. They had AZ 260 shutdown both directions out of Heber-Overgaard and US 60 west from Show Low. Messed up my entire day. Oh and they don't plow US 191 south from Alpine. I made it two miles up before I decided it was time to turn around, because I wouldn't make it out alive.

It was all amazing scenery though. Like to go back sometime when the weather wasn't plotting to kill me.
 
So every road that goes even vaguely in a direction I may want to go is subject to closure. Awesome. As of now everything is showing passable.

Hoping some single plow truck drivers went for the quadruple holiday overtime.
 
In Show Low now. Just hit snow. It's not coming down so that's nice.

Will attempt 260. Traffic shows green out to heber-overgaard and then gets orange and spotty. YOLO.
 
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