Day 8,9, and 10 Princeton-Owensville-Iola-…

Alright new update!

we are currently in Wichita, Ks updloading from a Dillons/starbucks with their wifi.

We hit the ground running making up our 250 mile goal easily from Princeton to Owensville, MIssouri.And kept up the pace on day nine going from Owensville thru St Louis and onto Iola Kansas. We would have had our updates last night but the Hotel in Iola didn’t have the wireless internet they promised.

But we got off down the road and it was HOT. in El Dorado it hit 102 degrees. the temp gauges stayed under 190 in my jeep, and once we slowed the pace down to a nice 50mph evan’s dropped to the same temp and kept it safe all the way to wichita.

we did have a casualty along the way, somewhere after El Dorado my batter box (that i made) dropped out of the wheelwell and hit my rear driver’s side tire at 55mph and make a hideous squealing sound as it tore at the rubber of my NDT.

this resulted in a 40ft long black mark in the highway as i labored the brakes trying to slow down. we used a strap to hold it up off the tire and relocated my battery to get down the road.

Luckily we ran into a Mark Scott who had a sweet lifted Blazer that was a work in progress but he has another one that he says is his nice one. the one we saw was pretty sweet though, with a 400block, SM465 tranny, probably an NP 205 or D300 Tcase and a 14bolt rear w. 44 front. i liked the shifter with the Low under one.

but he led us to a friend of his, Tony Sacket who gas welded my battery box back into place, and in less than a half hour we had it all back to normal, just missing a little paint as a souviner, and a reminder for me to do a better job welding next time.

thanks again to Tony and Scott, you saved the day and now i won’t have a questionable looking battery sitting on my wheel well for the rest of the trip.

so after this update we’ll head to Dodge city for the night. check out some photos and possibly some video below:

 

sketchy east St. Louis, Illinios

 

Finially at the arch in St. Louis, Missouri

 

Arch 1

 

Arch 2

 

This is a Patton tank outside Iberia, Missouri

Battery box welds breaking outside El Dorado, Ks.

Batterybox hitting the rear tire, this happened at speed and burned the paint off

Scott’s Blazer

Tony Welding the box back on, still holding!

some videos from earlier on this week:

 

 

we are here in Dodge City now, after 4 hours of driving through the night. then we showed up at the Best Western hotel that we had reservaitions at and they claimed to have never heard of us, despite the fact that we had a confirmation number…go figure. but we found another place so it’s not so bad. tomorrow we’ll check out the city then head to Sublette and finially on to colorado, finially!.

-Paul