Skinny in USAThe Lorna Diaries

St Louis (pronounced Lewis) to Aspen and beyond!

By March 31, 2012No Comments

Waking up in a nondescript State Park, we feel ready to embark on the next 1000 miles to Aspen. It’s a leisurely drive, with a much longer stop at a Walmart Supermarket than planned. Dan Gray buys himself a gun while the rest of us run around getting supplies and surprise birthday party bits.

Get off my lawn

A long drive occurs but we still don’t seem to be anywhere close to our target of 700 miles as advised by Rusted Root’s wonderful and wise tour manager Larry. Hmm…we have a party to organise. We really want to get settled but Dan Gray is insistent that we stop, eat, then start driving again. We pull up to a beautiful state park and the next couple of hours are filled with birthday fun…swimming in the lake –

Tash and Mule recreate The Gaff vid

shooting –

Trespassers will be shot... with BB pellets

starting a fire –

Fire starters

steak, beer and a colourful piniata. Brilliant.

Viva Piniata

Then we set off again (whoops, forgetting to unplug the RV from the electrics – our plug looks ok so we carry on). We drive into the night and negotiate our way around another national park and set up for the night. Sleep.

Up again…unplug this time and off we go. With something like 700 miles to do today we’re feeling a little more urgency than the day before. We should just about make it in time for sound check. We don’t stop hardly at all. Lunch is on the move. We start to enter the rocky mountains which are definitely impressive and the temperature starts to drop. The long straight highway turns to small windy roads. The last couple of hundred miles feel like days…we’re hungry and we run out of water.

Max on his last legs

Not long now….30 miles. There’s a sign that asks how long we are…Dan Hep shouts ‘How long are we?, How long are we?’ I call ‘30ft…why?’ ‘Dunno’….Then it appears, a road block saying ‘Road Closed’ and behind it a thick layer of snow covering the road 2ft high.

Mule and Tash inspect the obstacle

Arggghhhhh! Slight panic whilst Bonny (sat-nav) recalculates and some relief when she says we’ll make the gig – just another 157 miles to go. She didn’t let us down though. After an even more windy road along the edge of cliffs…(this is the stuff horror movies are made of)…we arrive. Larry has set everything up and off we go! Gig. Done!

Skinny Live in Aspen

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A bit of food and then Dan Gray drives again off into the night. Not fun. Can’t see a thing – other than a deer at the edge of the road. Thank goodness it wasn’t suicidal. Park up in a rest area for 4 hours sleep. Well done Dan – knocked off a few hours of travelling for tomorrow. West Yellowstone…here we come.

Mileage: 242282.4 Distance travelled: 1285