The Road Trip Home

I was so happy to get on the road, but didn’t start driving until about 10:30 PM. I stopped and filled up the car and put some air in the tires, then headed off. I drove for a few hours that night and made it to Cape Girardeau, MO before calling it a night and stayed at a Super 8 Motel. I don’t know if it was stress or what, but I only could sleep for about 4 hours before I was wide awake. I hit the road on Saturday morning at about 7 AM and drove for 18 hours. It was great seeing so many places of the country that I had never seen before, but because no DeLoreans have cruise control, my right leg was so dead and started aching so much that I had to start stopping every 140 miles or so to get out and stretch my legs. Here’s a picture I snapped during one of my leg-stretching stops somewhere near the west side of Missouri:

I can’t tell you how many times I saw people pointing at the car as I drove by, or how many people got out cameras to take pictures as I passed them on the freeway. Filling up with gas was always a show though. Not a whole lot of people came up to talk to me, but those that did were generally very nice and intrigued by the car. Many that didn’t come to talk to me would just stare at the car as they walked by. Most of the time I was relieved when I wasn’t approached because I just wanted to get back on the road and home as soon as I could. During one stop for fuel, a lady asked if she could take a picture of the car because her son didn’t believe that the car in Back to the Future was real and she wanted to prove him wrong. During that same fuel stop, a couple of older guys came to talk to me about the car. One of them asked me if they were rare, and I replied that they were “a dime a dozen,” which made him laugh.

Later on in the drive I stopped for fuel in Nebraska. After filling up, I started walking inside to grab a drink and empty my bladder when a kid pulled up in a car and asked if he could take a picture of the car. I told him that would be fine, and I walked inside. To my surprise, the kid had followed me inside to ask me if he could take a picture with the door open. It both surprised and annoyed me that he would be so bold as to follow me around, but I went outside and let him take pictures with the door open.

The car itself performed flawlessly the entire drive, rain or shine. Since the AC didn’t work, I was glad that it wasn’t hot weather and the wind through the windows cooled me down fine. I drove well into the night on Saturday and finally stopped in Rawlins, WY at 1 AM and crashed at another Super 8 Motel. It was a crappy location, but I somehow managed to get a room right above where I parked the car. I remember looking down out the window and thinking how great the car looked parked outside and realized why it was getting so much attention: it’s a great looking car! For some reason, I couldn’t fall asleep again and I only ended up sleeping about 5 hours that night. I hit the road later that morning and started driving the rest of the way home.

Here is a map of the route I took on my drive home. I wanted to stick to the interstate in case of a break down. It took approximately 25 hours of road time and 1613 miles. Ouch.

The west side of Wyoming is super hilly and windy and Interstate 80 is in terrible disrepair on that section, which made the car feel like it was wandering all over the road. Luckily it was just because of the road and wind. The only times it rained on me the entire trip were at the very beginning in Missouri and at the very end in Ogden, UT. My wife was driving home from her Mom’s house that Sunday morning as I was coming into Ogden and I pulled over to wait for her to catch up so she could drive with me the rest of the way.

When she saw the car, she was surprised at how dark the car looked, but it was because it was sopping wet in the rain and it wasn’t shining like it does in the sun. Since cleaning it and driving it in the sun, she has since changed her mind on it being dark. After I pulled into the garage a little after noon, I was so relieved to have made it in one piece with no break downs. My wife and I wanted the car to be a surprise to our family and we hadn’t told anyone that we had bought it. Because it was raining the day I got home, we didn’t take it anywhere like we had planned. Instead it stayed in the garage for a few days since I needed to take a break from driving it. My wife actually didn’t ride in it until the middle of the week until we took it for a quick spin around town and to show a coworker of mine.