I woke up to dreary drizzle. I used the public bathroom at the state park, surprised to discover there was no door, it wasn’t missing, but never intended to be there. Weird. Back in the van for breakfast of oats, I consulted my map. With such foul weather, I started thinking I wasn’t going to get many kicks on Route 66, so thought I might stick to the highways and try beeline it across the country.

Within minutes of being on the highway, it started to rain properly. I was behind a truck at the time and I soon discovered it was not just rain, but freezing rain, so within seconds my windscreen was covered in a sheet of ice that made it absolutely impossible to see. My wipers did nothing so I indicated and moved very slowly over to the shoulder once I’d wiped off some speed. It was the worst conditions I’ve ever driven in, I couldn’t see a thing in front of me. If there had have been another car pulled over like me, I would have hit them for sure. Once I’d stopped and put my hazards on, I considered my options, which weren’t all that many. My washer bottle was frozen (no anti-freeze in it) and while I could get out and scrape the ice off, I’m sure it would come right back. I tried putting my dash vents on full blast and my wipers on full speed. Eventually the ice started to scrape away and it was clear enough to get going again.

Without heat in the engine, the vents were blowing cold air, so I rugged up a bit before carrying on and kept the wipers on and that was just good enough to keep me going. Then the road started to get icy and I had a huge moment when I touched a white line, which put my heart in my mouth. A few hundred meters down the road, everyone slowed considerably with their hazards on because there was a car on the grass that had rolled onto its side, probably from a moment similar to mine. This was terrible! People were sliding around everywhere from the lightest touches of the throttle. I kept my eyes forward and my wheels straight and managed to get through. The conditions didn’d worsen, but they didn’t get much better, there were icy patches everywhere.

I had morning tea at a Macca’s, not paying for anything, just using their Wifi for some blog posts. When I got to Oklahoma City, I ran some errands, stopping in at Staples to print some forms for the DMV, then going to the post office to mail them to California. It was a good excuse to get out of the car for a bit, even though it was still very cold and rainy. It was depressing after the blue skies and canyon trails of yesterday. After Oklahoma City, I didn’t really stop until I got to Arkansas.

I was on the phone to Dad when I crossed the border and we’d both never heard of Arkansas. When I checked my lonely planet guide later, I discovered that it wasn’t pronounced “Ar-kan-sas” like we’d been saying, but “Are-kan-saw” which sounded more familiar. Derr.

I made camp at a rest stop near a town called Ozark and found a nice quiet spot out of everyone’s way. I put my rain bags up when it started really coming down, needing to make quite a few adjustments to make sure they would hold up for the night. After a day of just driving, I was surprisingly exhausted.