Zebulon Montgomery Pike Trail to the sources of the Mississippi 1805 — 1806

Day 12: August 22nd, 2002 Pittsburgh — Terre Haute

Last year I had only some cereals before I left which resulted in pretty heavy headaches in the evening. This is way to less food for a whole day on the road driving more than 450 miles. Therefore I make myself a real big breakfast with three eggs and some bread. Nothing can go wrong now!

I pick the remaining stuff and store everything in my little car. In the meantime I have a pretty good system where to store my stuff and I am getting really fast. Last job is to mount my video camera. I am anxious to see how my new carpod will work out. It was expensive though…

I say good bye to Helen and leave for my this years journey. I remember that I still need some water. So I drive up to Cranberry and to Wal Mart. I buy the remaining missing things and then I am really ready to roll.

The entrance to the Interstate has to be on the movie. But there I encounter the first problem: The car pod is much higher which results in an amplification of the car vibrations to my camera. Especially with my tire inbalance due to storage this gets really ugly. I am afraid that most of my movie of today will be more or less useless. But I still record the drive of today. Let’s see how it looks tonight at the motel when cheking the tapes.

I–70, State Line PA and WV

First I take I–79 South to Washington. There I enter I–70 West, which will take me all the way to St. Louis. But first I will cross the state line to West Virginia.

I–70, State Line WV and OH

After a short drive I am already in Ohio. Around Brookville I have to make a brief stop at the gas station. Around a quarter to three I am back on the road.

I–70, OH

While driving and thinking about my car pod I got an idea how to minimize the vibrations. First I planned to buy something which I can squeeze between my camera and the car ceiling to dampen the camera movements. But this is already installed in my car: The sun shield!

I flap the shield down and squeeze my camera in — and now the video is stable. Only if the car is shaking really hard while hitting a bump you can see it in the video. It’s also possible to turn the camera on the car pod, because I can stabilize the camera while holding the car pod handle. Looks like I have found a solution for this problem. Let’s see tonight at the motel how things have worked out.

I–70, State Line OH and IN, Leaving OH

I–70, State Line OH and IN, Entering IN

Relieved I drive on to Indiana. The road looks still identical to last year when I drove to Montana. But only to Indianapolis where I turned northwest last year.

This time I stay on I–70 and take only the Interstate around the city center. Then I drive on to almost the state line of Illinois. I leave the Interstate at Terre Haute and look for my Motel 6 for tonight.

I check in around a quarter to five which is early enough to give me a room downstairs. I still have plenty of time to go through all my video taping of today. As I hoped the video is really good from the time when I used the sun shield.

After going through all my records I drive on to Wal Mart. I want to buy more water because I got the first package completely stored in my cooling box. I also want to look if they have some corn or energy bars. Lucky me this is a Wal Mart with a big “Food Center” which gives me the chance to buy fresh fruits. Beside my water and corn bars I also take a set of apples and oranges.

On my way to the register I think about also taking some Gatorade with me. Now I have to find a spot in my car before I can drive on for dinner. I saw that there is an Outback Steakhouse which will save my evening.

I find the steakhouse after a brief serach. As usual I order my 12 oz Outback Special — exactly what I need after a long day on the road. Around half past nine I leave the restaurant and drive back to my motel. I type in the next GPS positions to be ready for my trip to St. Louis tomorrow. I had plenty of sunshine the whole day. But the forecast for tomorrow doesn’t sound promising. They say there will be thunderstorms tomorrow afternoon, exactly the time when I planned to be Downtown. But we will see…