Asheville to St. Louis...and back. What could possibly go wrong?
I finally have some time now to put together a little mini trip report of our little adventure moving my buddy back from St. Louis to Asheville, NC. Back at school from break now and there's no snow worth here mentioning but enough to keep me from doing anything in the worst snow vehicle ever made. And no, it's not the Jeep.
This is the story of a couple good friends that decided to go camping and off-roading with the contents of a small apartment aboard. That turned out to be the least adventurous part of the trip.
The trip started out uneventful enough. Its hard to drive through the gorge on I-40 without hopping off at my usual favorite spot, but I had a 9.5 hour road trip ahead of me and needed to pound the miles on. Before I left I repositioned my tow strap so I could access the reclining lever, and that was the best decision I made the entire trip. I would have loved to have cruise control, especially with I being a manual it has no dead pedal, so you kinda sit kinda funky and your back kinda hurts after a while, but hey, its no GT car. I hate electronics anyways. I made it a point to stop at every welcome center and grab a map. The rest of the trip was broken up by fuel stops, because not many things stop that Jeep except a gas station. I think I filled up 3 times on the way up there, and at one of the stops I saw this sketchy outfit that was using wrecked cars to tow wrecked cars.....I got out of there in a hurry before one of those suckers let go.... The biggest obstacle on the way up there was the lack of a heater. It really wasn't even that cold, the temperature was barely below freezing. As such I didn't really bother layering up real good or anything, but it was the exposure that got me. With the complete lack of a heater, freezing temps sitting down not moving for over 9 hours got pretty dangerous, and I absolutely froze my cojones off. I've only been that cold one other time in my life. When I got to his place around dark I just shivered in front of the fireplace for a half an hour. The sunset that night was gorgeous though, the deepest reds and purples I've ever seen, and it lasted forever.
The next day we had reserved for packing everything up and poking around St. Louis, as I had never been. I was eager to get downtown and see the arch, but my buddy wanted to show me this other place first, so we loaded his dog in the back of his Tacoma and headed over to a local park. Turns out it was an old lime quarry and you could see the remains of the baking and transportation process in the short time we had to explore the area. There were also a ton of caves around the area, some of which I would presume were fairly big because they had walkways leading in but they were fenced off.
You can fit a surprising bit of junk in an old Toyota pickup and a little Jeep.
We then dropped the dog off and headed off to go see the city. We didn't have much time because we had to pick up his sister around 5, but we cruised downtown and saw the ballpark and the state capitol building, along with some other neat buildings, like the now abandoned VFW building along the interstate. My great uncle was an architect and I've always loved old buildings. We parked downtown and headed out to the arc. There was construction all underneath and around it, and the tours to the top were closed as such, so that was kind of a bummer, but we still got to walk right up to one side so that was really cool. It's hard to believe looking at it that the arch is as tall as it is wide, mostly it just looks really really big. If this trip did nothing else for me, I got to see a really neat city that I likely otherwise never would have visited.
Here's where things got nasty. We hopped back in the truck after poking around town to head back and pick up his sister from school. We left around 4 o'clock from downtown as a slight drizzle was falling. We took a wrong turn getting back on the interstate, so we got off and were navigating our way back to get on the proper ramp and we stopped for a light, except we didn't stop. The abs intervened pretty violently but did nothing to slow our slide into the middle of the intersection. Luckily the intersection was empty. We gave eachother the oh ******* look and got ourselves out of the intersection and underneath an overpass to evaluate the situation. The weather forecast said to expect freezing rain to develop overnight, but based on the sheet that was already on the road behind us we called b.s. on that, and the thermometer on the truck told us we weren't crazy. We decided sheer traffic flow on the freeway would keep the ice melted and cautiously rejoined traffic. We made slow but steady progress for about 5 miles before traffic slowed to a crawl before grinding to a halt. Progress was made in feet. Save the clutch. Wait for a traffic to inch forward. slowly let the clutch out and the tires bite. Idle 50 ft. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. After a couple hours had passed but not a couple miles we decided to try for a secondary. We inched our way over to the other side of the freeway to find the far right land empty. Score. We hopped over and promptly slid right towards the guardrail. Choice words were said before our slide was halted once again. Saved by the rumble strips. Our saving grace then provided the necessary traction for the rear wheels to crab up the ramp one divot at a time until we reached the top and the exit ramp only to find it shut down. All the accidents were happening on the exit ramps as cars slid down them and they had them all shut down and work crews out shoveling salt onto the road by hand. The car in front of us snuck through a gap and the crew waved at them and they didn't crash and die, so we snuck through after them. We took a poor exit choice however, and there was no way back onto the interstate were previously on, nor were there any through roads. We scouted ahead on foot and found the road lined with cars with no headlights or brake lights on, camping it out for the night. If we didn't want to do the same, we would have to find another way out. We ended up backtracking ton the interstate back towards the city and finding a route home on the salted secondaries. Why they didn't salt the primaries I don't really know, but we were just happy to get back in one piece. Total time was a little over 5 hours to travel 23 miles.
That night we made another command decision. We had to get the Jeep heater working or we couldn't leave until the temps stayed above freezing. No heat was more than me just being cold. It was no defrost in icy conditions. The return line for the heater was ice cold, so we flushed the heater core as best we could in the freezing cold and bled the system as best we could too.
When dad replaced the cooling system years and years ago we put water in it instead of coolant. It rusted out pretty quick, and I think that's a big reason the core clogged so bad, but what's done is done. We got the heat going enough to defrost and even produce warm air up to the second speed, so tomorrow when the roads were clear we would begin our journey back.
It appears I may have overestimated the factory hard top strength, I guess I've been spoiled from seeing all Jeff's awesome fiberglass work. The most it would need to support would be an Old Town Discovery 146 Canoe but for out here it would be a kayak a couple feet shorter. Gobi looks like an awesome product, I'm glad its working out for you. Nothing is off the table right now, just trying to get as many opinions and options and experiences as possible and weigh it all out. Thanks for sharing!
