Pictures from JP Aerospace's DSS3/Oklahoma flight

Day 1: Monday, March 18, 2002

This was our first day on the drive to Oklahoma. It served as the shakedown cruise for the rest of the trip. We stopped more often than we should have and only barely made it to Arizona on the first day. But it set the bar for improvement of the pace on following days.

I got out of San Jose later than I hoped - last-minute preparations hadn't been finished the previous day. I got out of town at 9:30AM. I got to our rendezvous point in Santa Nella on I-5 in an hour. It was a relief to find that they were only a few minutes behind me, instead of waiting for me.

The group coming from Sacramento had gotten out at 8AM but had to stop twice to adjust the load on the trailer. The sawhorses had been placed on top of the DSS arm frames and bounced enough to cause some damage. At Santa Nella, I took all the sawhorses into my truck. Everything was repairable with the supplies and spare parts we brought, and no more damage occurred for the rest of the trip.

Al also moved as planned from John Sr's car to my truck. We now had two drivers per vehicle.

We took a bit of a long lunch at Hwy 58 exit off I-5, waiting for snow to be cleared from the Tehachapi pass. We proceeded to Bakersfield still not sure if the road was open. But it was open when we got there. We got through to Mojave without problems.

After sunset on Hwy 58 north of Edwards AFB, we stopped for fuel and snacks at a mini-mart at the US395 junction. For the rest of the evening we crossed the Mojave Desert in the dark. In Barstow, we hopped from Hwy 58 to I-15 and onto the beginning of I-40, the road that would take us all the way to Oklahoma.

The only excitement on the drive happenned during this stretch. Soon after hitting a bump on the road, I thought I saw sparks coming from under the trailer. As I was getting on the Ham Radio to call JP and Norm, there were more. And they were getting worse. They pulled over promptly. Fortunately, we were at a mountain pass with wide shoulders and plenty of room to pull off the road. It turned out to be simple - the bump in the road knocked a chain partly off the trailer and it was dragging on the road. The chain was secured and we continued.

As we approached Needles (which is on the Arizona border), John Sr suggested stopping at some of the cheap hotel rooms at the casinos in Laughlin NV. We were just south of the tip of Nevada - Laughlin and Bullhead City AZ were visible from I-40 as it descended from the mountains into Needles. We took the Old River Road up along the Colorado River to Laughlin, which took us north through the southern pointy-tip of Nevada. Nevada was not a state we planned to go through on this trip. Though we've had a lot of visits to the state before since our usual launch site is at the Black Rock Desert in far-northwestern Nevada near the corner with Oregon and California. Now we went through another corner of it.

But the plan fell apart. We arrived at 10PM. Even for all the high-rise casino hotels, Laughlin was completely full. It took an hour of wasted time checking one place after another, and phoning still others each time. We gave up and crossed the river to Bullhead City AZ. But with the time zone difference crossing the state line, 11PM became midnight - not a good time to still be looking for rooms. But we found enough rooms. We described the place as a "roach motel". We tarped over the DSS trailer, especially since there were two pawn shops across the street. We made sure to be gone before those places opened in the morning.

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