USA East to West / part 2

RICHMOND - MINNESOTA

Me and Ania arrived to Richmond to pick up the car which I'll drive to Seattle. Opposite part of United States. Trip is about to start! From Richmond to Seattle. From East to West. Im so excited! It took 14 hours to get to Chicago. We stopped only for gas, toilet and quick food. 

Road was quite borring. A bit busy. But that was my first long drive ever so no matter what was the road I was happy :) WOW! I've been driving car only a year in Poland and now Im going to drive through all States! This is something amazing for me. 

We arrived to Chicago at night. Slept in our friend flat and in the morning we packed more Ania's stuff in second car. That day we also had to finish the details of my driving license. To drive in states I should have international driving licence which I could only get in Poland or through private agency in Chicago which could take as ages. Because we couldn't wait so long we found another solution which is probably also good. We translated my driving licence in a sworn translator and we had to pick translation up on the way from Richmond to Seattle. We got everything. We were ready to go forward! I don't wanna talk about weather condition in Chicago…

…but there was a heavy rain before we left Chicago. We barely could see anything but we really wanted to get to Seattle as soon as possible. 

After few hours rain changed to snow. Heavy snow. That was terrible and scary. Dark, lots of snow, very slippery and dangerous. At night when we saw a few cars in the ditches we decided to slow down to 20miles/h (30km/h). I was following Ania and we were all the time on the phone talking together about what we see or maybe rather what we can't see. We've booked hotel before we left Chicago but conditions on the way were so terrible that we decide to find another hotel on the way somewhere closer and don't risk to drive so far in this weather because it became worst. But we where in deep black hole and we couldn't find any motel, hotel and even gas station on the way. So we had no choice and we had to drive another few hours with 20m/h. We passed Wisconsin state and slept in Minnesota before Minneapolis city. We arrived to motel exhausted around 2am. Cute, traditional small american motel.

In the morning everything was covered in snow. It was a very nice view. Especially that two days ago we had spring in Richmond. It was so cold that we just jumped in our cars and moved forward in search of food!

Korean food, american coffee and english tea. Ready to go on!

We passed close to Minneapolis heading south in South Dakota direction. Sun was up, sky was bule and everything looked beautiful. We even stopped to take few pictures of the streets. How lovely. We felt great!

Because streets were covered with snow we couldn't drive fast.  We riched highway after two hours. But they looked same as streets around Minneapolis. All white and slippery! Cars were driving so slow that I could walk faster. But what we could do…? Nothing but driving like them. Of course there were idiots which drove faster than us and those cars finally ended in the ditches. It was extremely dangerous. Again you couldn't go faster than 20m/h. That was crazy. Roads were not cleared of snow or sprinkled with salt or sand. Accident every few miles. 

We spend couple of hours in traffic staying in place without moving just 60km far from our motel which we left in the morning. Beautiful but annoying and dangerous. Crazy like hell!

Short movie from Minnesota roads:

We've made 86miles (140km) and we reached junction of two highways when we saw the sign "ROAD CLOSED" Wrrr! This is not possible! It was 4pm and police just closed all highways in all direction. You could only take local roads which where also not cleared of snow. 

We where driving around gas stations and restaurants close to this junction thinking if we should take a local road and stuck somewhere in hell far from civilisation or maybe we should stay here over night. But decision was easy. After we find out that local roads are also difficult to drive we decided to take a hotel. It wasn't easy to find free place in hotel because all people driving highway were forced to stop at the same junction. Some of the cars were waiting on the streets at the entrance to highway since few hours. More and more cars were coming to to this location.

We didn't drive this day to long. We made only 86miles and we were a bit upset about that. Not for long. We both crazy and we'r always having fun. Even in frozen hell :)

Read another part of our road trip here.