Day 32, April 13, 2009

When I got up this morning it was only 40 degrees out and it was very overcast. I took my time heading out this morning as I planned to stop at the Kansas City, MO FD shops on my way out of town. I loaded up the car and checked out of the motel around 0830 hours. I was surprised at how easy the drive was on the 435 at this time in the morning. Traffic wasn’t very heavy at all. But it started to rain pretty hard as I headed north on the 435. In fact, it was raining so hard that I had missed my turn off onto Front Street to head to the KCMO shops. I had already crossed the Missouri River and didn’t even know that I had.Rather than turn around and head back into town in the driving rain, I decided to continue to make my way north out of town on I-35. The radio traffic in the Kansas City area was very quiet, except for a few medicals and a few traffic accidents. At this point I wanted to make it back in town for the Extra Alarm Association meeting at the Firefighters Hall & Museum at 1930 hours.

When I arrived in the Des Moines area I heard a few runs over the scanner (mostly medicals) as I drove through in a steady rain. It was only 41 degrees in the Des Moines area with rain forecast for rhe entire day. It continued to rain all the way north of Ames, Iowa before the sky started to break up a bit.

I made pretty good time stopping only for rest stops. I noticed that a lot of the rest stops on this trip were now equipped for internet access, which I thought was a nice feature for travelers. I made it up to the Minnesota border by about 1300 hours. The sun finally broke through the clouds as I entered Minnesota, the first time I’d seen the sun since I’d left Dallas (some 900 miles back).

I stopped to get gas and some basic groceries as I came back into the Twin City area. It took me quite some time to unload everything from the car when I finally arrived back home around 1500 hours. It is always nice to get back home after being away for an extended period of time. I had planned on being gone three additional days, but the rains had forced me to head home early.

It was a great trip. I met some great people along my 32-day journey. While I didn’t see a great deal of fire action on this trip, I did witness many departments in action. It seemed like every other fire station that I visited on this trip took a run while I was visiting their quarters. The firefighters were all very kind and helpful and treated me well. I really enjoyed my visit with my brother in Cloverdale, CA. Robert Knowles (“BiotelBob” on Firepics) and I had a great time shooting rigs together in the Dallas area. I wish that I had more time to spend with him. Maybe next trip?

It’s going to take me a number of weeks to update all my various apparatus spreadsheets from this trip. I’ve got motorized apparatus spreadsheets for most of the major cities that I visited on this trip (most going all the way back to early motorization). I also work on apparatus manufacturer spreadsheets by serial number and trade info with other fire apparatus buffs with similar interests.

It’s time to publish our next Extra Alarmer newsletter, so the apparatus lists will have to wait until the newsletter is published before I can spend my spare time updating the apparatus information that I picked up on this trip.

Thanks to everybody for riding along with me on this trip. I hope you enjoyed the daily reports and the photos that I took on my 32-day trip out to the west coast and back. I put over 7,000 miles on my car on the trip and took over 1000 digital photos. For the first time in years, I didn’t take any 35mm slide photos while on this trip.