The HOV Lane Blog

Casper, Wyoming.  From Cheyenne & Chugwater, I headed North on I-25. The plan was to shoot more material in Northern Wyoming before heading into Montana.

At least, that was the plan until an unexpected snow storm hit. Luckily, my 4-wheel drive Element was able to successfully play an impromptu game of slip n’ slide up I-25. Later that evening, I pulled into Casper just as the Interstate became impassable. North of Casper, the highway was closed. Several tractor trailer trucks had run off the road. I pulled into a truck stop parking lot and prepared for multiple days of car-camping.

Over the next couple of days, 2-3 feet of snow fell down upon my Element, making it a makeshift icehouse. I had taken a shot of the Element the morning after the biggest storm, but all of the images were lost due to an equipment malfunction.  A microdrive failed.  For anyone out there still using Microdrive technology, please go solid-state! I used to carry three 2 GB and one 1 GB microdrive on the road. I have since switched over to packing four 4 GB compact flash cards, which are faster and much more reliable. Even so, I’m hesitant to put more than 4GB of work on one card. As for my microdrive days, I’m happy to report none of the previous microdrive malfunctions destroyed any mission-critical shots.

But, it did leave me with only this photograph from camping through the blizzard in my Element. The most dramatic shots are forever gone.

This shot was taken on the third day, just before the road had finally cleared. By then, I was too far behind schedule and headed South back to catch I-80 into Utah.