The interchange between US-40 and I-70 was one of those confusing B shaped deals in which the entrance and exit for a certain direction of travel is on the same side. Apparently with the plethora of Garmins and smart phones today, the ability to read street signs is in serious decline. A semi got between the Satellite and the Gremlin as I left the Pilot, so James didn't see which way I entered, and with two people in the car, and a fifty-fifty shot at getting it right, they promptly took off down I-70 East!

Boone called to warn them, and texted Dale as well, but both were ignored, all while Dad was starting a tirade about it in the Truck with him. Darren blissfully followed Boone without a care in the world.

If you are noticing that I'm switching up my usual 1st person account with some third person reporting, it's because I've chosen to stay more chronologically based, and this section of the trip got convoluted in a hurry, forgive me for taking some liberties.

Rachael and I were easing down I-70 at 3000 rpm, nearing the Illinois state line when Boone first called me and let me know about the Gremlin's mistake.
"Dad says it's fourteen miles to the next turnaround, and Dale said they were going to try to find a cross-over in the median."
"Do we need to pull over and wait?" I asked.
"Naw, just take it easy, and we'll see what happens. He decided.

Dale and James got turned around through the center median 5 miles down the road, and headed back west. Dale told James to step up the speed a bit over what they had comfortably been running before, and promptly began dozing off again, only waking up enough to talk to Boone when he called to check on them.

While Rachael and I forged ahead, Boone and Dad, along with Darren in tow, hit the rest area just 8 miles into Illinois, but were still ahead of James when they got back on the road. A call to Dale the first time, made Boone believe he was only 4 miles behind them, 20 minutes later a second call was more confusing, as he was giving them mile marker numbers that made no sense. Boone's frustration with waiting up for a car that is barely roadworthy and has to stop for fuel every forty miles was wearing on him, and he tried to just ignore the situation and keep moving forward! Click, click, click, the line of dominoes was picking up speed!

My assessment, as I continued down I-70 in the closing darkness, under threatening skies, passing through one lane construction restrictions every 5 or 10 miles, was that I might as well just take it nice, slow, and let them catch up. To that effect I was only running along at 26-2700 RPM and letting all the frustrated truckers blow around me when we entered a good section of road.
We were roughly ten miles from the first checkpoint when I recognized the headlights of the Barnyard Viper gaining on me.

James woke Dale up with concern in his voice, "This thing is starting to surge...so I'm going to pull off for gas."
Dale tried to get his bearings, the garmin on the windshield said they had covered forty miles, and he began to notice the floorboard was unusually hot. "Yeah, probably a good idea".
They pulled into a Mach 1 station off of exit 129 in Casey, Il. with James complaining that the brakes were barely serviceable at this point.

The first checkpoint was Mid-America Motorworks, an automotive mail-order after market supplier for Porsche, Corvette and Volkswagen, just outside Effingham. We would have enjoyed the stop in the daylight better, I'm sure.

Here's what it looked like when Darryl rolled through some 3 hours earlier.

Doesn't sound like you guys were having any luck on this stretch of road.

We arrived at the checkpoint just as Eric Yost and several others were finishing up with their pictures. It seems no matter how lonely you appear to be out on the road, as soon as you get close to these spots, other guys show up. We took quite a while checking the place out, and I asked Boone if we should wait for Dale, but he told me Dale had said to go on, so I went with that.

No sooner did we pull out and start down I-70 again, I got a call from Dale, "This thing got so hot it boiled out the brake fluid!" He informed me.
"How was the water temp?"
"Never has been over 190 the entire trip"
"Is it retarded, and putting all the heat in the exhaust?" I questioned, just bouncing ideas around in my head.
"Could be, not sure, the floorboard was hot, and James said it was surging. So we stopped, fueled up, and had to put fluid in it. Now I'm driving again."
"Where are you at?"
"125 mile marker"
"You are about 25 miles behind us...why did you tell Boone to go on ahead?"
"I never told him that...where did that come from?"
Well, OK, I wasn't going to step on that land mine, so I changed the subject.
"It's only thirty-five miles to the next checkpoint, we'll stop there and check in with you...Answer your phone!" I exclaimed as we cut off the conversation.

It took Dale about five miles of driving on I-70 to figure out what the problem was with the Gremlin. If he could keep it in cruise mode with his foot on the throttle like an egg shell everything seemed to be ok. With all the rolling hills in this part of Illinois, that wasn't possible, and when you rolled into the throttle to pull a hill, the transmission or the convertor would feel like it was in a bind and start slowing the car. When this would happen, if you gave it more throttle to overcome the binding sensation, you could immediately feel heat being generated into the floor pan, and the transmission would begin to momentarily lose drive like you were pushing in a clutch and letting it back out. The only other option was to roll back out of the throttle, and allow the car to lose speed until the problem would free up and return to normal operation. On some of the long hills that meant he was on the shoulder and down to 20-25MPH.
They limped into the first checkpoint just as Eddie's Duster and Luke in the white Maverick were leaving and the Gremlin would barely pull itself up to the fake old time gas station for their pictures.

The three of us had made the relatively easy thirty-five mile drive to the second checkpoint, and the time stamp on the pictures indicate about an hour between the two stops including talking to other drag weekers, getting our cars staged for pictures and such, so we felt pretty good about our progress.

As we pulled up to the second checkpoint, we noticed a large contingent of Drag Weekers gathered around Gilpin and Maschmeier, and they had the hood off the Camaro working on it. Kevin in the RX7, and Eric Yost were there as well, and right on cue a police officer rolled up as we were watching! Gilpin and I had joked at Indy earlier that we didn't want to see each other at 2:30 in the morning again, well, we were right on schedule! The local Arby's closed at 10:00pm, we rolled though their door at 9:23 and they didn't seem particularly happy to see us.

Dale and James pulled into the Effingham Pilot station, and bought gas, and a case of ATF. They made it another eight miles down the road to a State of Illinois public rest area where Dale, with no jack and only basic hand tools, burnt his arm on the exhaust, but managed to drain the black trans fluid from the powerglide.

Darryl called me while we were eating. He warned me that something wasn't quite right about the route, it was longer than what is on the sheet.
"There were eleven or so of us running in a pack, and only three of us took the turn-off on the route sheet, the others just kept going right down I-70 for St. Louis. After the jaunt they sent us through, I understand why now!"
Then he said he took a wrong turn at the race track and ended up in east St. Louis.
"Wow, that's a scary area, I totally blew two red lights to get back out on the freeway!"
"Did you find the Motel?" I asked.
"Yeah, we are on the third floor, rooms 301 and 303, call me when you get here."

With the benefit of google maps now, the Official Hot Rod Drag Week route sheet told us it was 46 miles from checkpoint 2 to Gateway Intl. Raceway. In truth, it was 65.8 if you drove straight down I-70, and a whopping 81.3 along the route they had chosen. This is a terrible trick to play on road weary hot rodders, far worse than just a simple mistake, it' s bordering on criminal, not as criminal as what Dale did to that rest area, but criminal nonetheless!

We got screwed up there also, directions didnt make sense, got stuck on 70 in bumper to bumper traffic and bailed out onto 40 to bypass it.

Scatpack1,
The kinder, gentler way to say it was, Darryl was our advance scout and motel check-in expert! The heat and humidity really kicked his tail this year, and severely hampered his desire to hang around and wait on us to figure out what we were doing each day!

MPerry,
The Charger's best 60ft. of the week was just 1.720, so he wasn't killing it out of the hole. On a heavy Street car, I think it's better to concentrate on getting the thing moving in the 60-330 interval, than impressive 60 times.

tsanchez,
The second checkpoint to Gateway was the most frustrating part of my whole week! You just get wore down some days, and a molehill turns into a mountain real quick!

Dbl"00"Joe,
I have to warn you, it really is a blast, but it's addictive also!

If you are old enough to remember the Odd Couple, Darryl is the Felix, to my entire family of Oscars!

We headed out of the Arby's and fueled up at a station nearby. Boone had been on the phone with Dale, and commented to me, "They've only went about 15 miles since we've been here at this stop! I don't know what is going on with them!"
"Should we wait for them then?" I questioned.
"You can wait if you want, but I'm not! They need to get their act together and get moving!"

So we jumped back on I-70 for a wondrously easy 17.8 miles until we arrived at exit 45, our motel was basically around exit 10 or so and my spidey sense is telling me to forgo the route, put thirty-five more miles of interstate under me, and put my head on a pillow. Completing the route has always been a driving force in this game (pun intended), so we took the exit, and successfully followed the route through the small town of Greenville Illinois. We arrived on Illinois 140 West at 190.6 miles into the trip.
"Read that to me again Rachael, something isn't right!"
"Turn left for I-255 South, and it says 193.7 next to it", she affirmed again, clearly not happy that I had questioned her ability to read the sheet.
"Look it up on your phone, this is definitely wrong!" I added.
Illinois 140 is a dark, lonely, two lane cow path, and we were looking for a junction with an interstate, not Illinois 255, or US 255, a full blown interstate, so I wasn't worried that we had missed it, I was just wondering how far it really was.

Meanwhile, Boone was dealing with a tired, frustrated, ex-trucker riding shotgun, who kept losing his temper with each turn and each mile! "Why the heck are they running us this far out of route? This is going to be 30 or 40 miles...this is just stupid!" Dad yelled at him, wringing his hands.
"Dad, it's their game, their route, we can't do anything about it."
Fourteen miles later, I passed a small junction with Illinois 160, and Dad got fired up again. "Why didn't he take that? Dave should've turned there, that would've saved us a bunch of miles." Boone's teeth were grating, and he just bit his tongue, arguing at this point would be futile!

Finally I saw the lights of a major Interstate ahead, but Rachael shot me down, "That's I-55, we have to go further for 255", She stated glumly.

Dad really lost it when I drove under I-55, "The 55 and the 255 practically run together in front of the motel, so we're driving another ten miles for nothing! What the heck is he doing!" Dad screamed out the window.
"He's following the route dad", Boone offered. I will refrain from posting Dad's retort, what with this being a family site and all...

I thought the routes and directions were the best so far for DW.Thats not saying much though.

Great story as usual.

I saw the Barnyard Viper and the Gremlin today at the "Mopars in the Park" race. I saw the Gremlin go a few rounds in Super Pro but I never saw the barnyard go down.

I think the Barnyard Viper might be edging the Valiant out as my favorite of the family rides....sorry Billy!

ROFL!
Not quite what he hoped for.

That's awesome Darryl!