Day 12 for those competitors who began their journey at Anchorage in Alaska.
Day one for Stephen and Corgi departing from Leavenworth destination Walla Walla in Washington State, via Cave B winery Estate for lunch and an afternoon break at the Country Mercantile for tea, drink or ice cream.
Three regularity’s and one planned diversion.
The first event seemed straight forward. A 16 km regularity with the first section average speed of 35km for 5 km then45km until the control at the completion.
Gave the car in front a 1 minute head start as is required but after a short while we had caught up the car in front in short order we tailed them in their dust on a very rough country road, until they suddenly sped up at the 5 km mark and we didn’t see them again. We thought that the 35km speed was far too fast for the road conditions on the first stage any way and considered that we had no chance in this first event.
Then the penny dropped!!! Our GPS was switched on miles per hour instead of Kms😵💫 so that was the end of that and lost points.
The next regularity was a little more complex and although we had changed the mph to kph, we hadn’t gotten up to scratch with the regularity methodology. So once more a lost cause for making points.
At the afternoon tea break, a quick interview with those in the know, gave us some more lessons of how to go about conforming to the regulations.
“We is learnin”
The planned diversion was a lot more exciting. A speed test, on a short dusty rough road wit a sharp downhill hairpin at the end
I think we did ok. we got around in one sweep, counter to many others, we discovered later.
The last regularity was a lot better but the results are yet to be published.
This was a very quick learning curve for the first day, a lot of time has elapsed since our last rally in 2019. There was and is a lot to catch up on.
We’re on a two night layover in Walla Walla. Planned as part of the overall rally. We just happened to slot in to a layover stay.
We had a good reintroduction to the rally world and the many competitors that we had met on previous rally’s.
Betty performed so well and was in her element on the long hot stretches of tarmac on there American highways and handling the rough with ease. She’s a great car. So many admirers. She’s a great way the start up a conversation with whoever passes by when we’re filling up or parked up.
Had dinner at an organised RTG event for the evening.
It’s quite difficult to take photos of the action whilst partaking in active events.
Getting back on that road Sunday to Boise in Idaho. This trek is some 499kms. Quite a hike for one day. There’s also a time zone change en route.
So it’ll be interesting.
gravel travel 