The total miles driven in our rented Subaru Forester clocked in at 4790.9 miles, from our driveway in Knoxville to the car rental return at the Portland International Airport.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Final Pictures Posted
I finally posted the rest of the pictures to our Picasa Web Album. These include pictures from the Redwoods National Park, the Columbia River Gorge, and Portland, OR. Check out the pictures by clicking on the link on the left or going to this address:
Thursday, June 25, 2009
More pictures
Posted new pictures of San Francisco and Napa Valley. I've run out of time and didn't get to caption all of them but will finish updating when we get to Portland. We'll be without Internet and cell phone access while we're in the Redwoods this afternoon, tonight and tomorrow morning. We'll be in Portland Friday night.
Now we need to get on the road!
Now we need to get on the road!
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Yosemite National Park
We're in San Francisco right now getting ready to check out of our hotel (which was nice, but a little too fancy for our taste) and head to see some more sites on our way out to Napa Valley. I had a little time to post some more pictures from Yosemite National Park, where we camped for the 2 nights prior to arriving in San Francisco yesterday. Yosemite was by far our favorite thing so far. It offered some of the most amazing views of mountains we have ever seen. The only bad part was how crowded Yosemite Village and the Valley were. It wasn't too hard to get away from the crowds, however, by going to other sections of the park. The high country and Tuolomne Meadows were especially nice.
I have posted additional pictures to the Picasa album. I don't have time to put any pictures from San Francisco yet, but hopefully I will do that soon. Check the album out by clicking the link on the left or by going here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/twnich/WayfaringStrangers
I have posted additional pictures to the Picasa album. I don't have time to put any pictures from San Francisco yet, but hopefully I will do that soon. Check the album out by clicking the link on the left or by going here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/twnich/WayfaringStrangers
Sunday, June 21, 2009
More Pictures
We finally posted some more pictures and are now caught up with where we are today. We're trying to get out of here on time once again and head to Yosemite National Park so we can get a good camp site (we only have a reservation for one night because that's all that was available at the reservation-only campground.)
Check out the pictures at the Picasa Web Album by using the link on the left, or going to the following site:
http://picasaweb.google.com/twnich/WayfaringStrangers
Check out the pictures at the Picasa Web Album by using the link on the left, or going to the following site:
http://picasaweb.google.com/twnich/WayfaringStrangers
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Bye Bye Disneyland
We're getting ready to head out from Disneyland and see a couple quick sites in Hollywood on our way to the California Coastal highway. Before we got out of here I thought I'd post a few pictures to the picasa album and then get on the road. Sorry there aren't more pictures, but you can see them by clicking the Picasa Web Album link on the left or going to this address:
http://picasaweb.google.com/twnich/WayfaringStrangers
http://picasaweb.google.com/twnich/WayfaringStrangers
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Pictures
I decided I don't really like the way Blogger posts pictures. They are too small and it's a pain to get them in the right position on the page. I figured it'd be easier to upload them to a public Picasa album, so that's what I did. You might notice the pictures in the previous entry have been removed. You can still find them on the Picasa album by going to http://picasaweb.google.com/twnich/WayfaringStrangers. I have uploaded a few new pictures and put captions describing what they are.
Right now we are sitting in the Grand Canyon North Rim campground general store waiting for the rain to let up so we can pack up our tent and head to Los Angeles (more specifically, Anaheim and Disneyland). They have wifi so I thought I'd take the opportunity to upload some photos for your viewing pleasure. The weather here has been chilly (low of 37 degrees last night) and cloudy but no rain until about 7:00 AM this morning. We had some great views of the canyon last night and took lots of pictures which will be coming in the days ahead hopefully.
Also I will place the link to the picasa album to the side bar on the page.
Right now we are sitting in the Grand Canyon North Rim campground general store waiting for the rain to let up so we can pack up our tent and head to Los Angeles (more specifically, Anaheim and Disneyland). They have wifi so I thought I'd take the opportunity to upload some photos for your viewing pleasure. The weather here has been chilly (low of 37 degrees last night) and cloudy but no rain until about 7:00 AM this morning. We had some great views of the canyon last night and took lots of pictures which will be coming in the days ahead hopefully.
Also I will place the link to the picasa album to the side bar on the page.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
People and Places: Part One
I don't have much time before we need to hit the road for the Grand Canyon, but I want to share a few random details before heading out.
For those of you who may not know, I had large sections of my hair dyed turquoise a week before our trip. So, Tim suggested that we conduct a little social experiment while traveling and record the reactions we get from people in different areas. Although my brilliant turquoise has begun to turn the color that blondes get when they swim in chlorine for extended periods of time, I have still gotten several comments, but these are a couple of favorites:
At Angelo's BBQ in Fort Worth, Tim overheard a little girl and her father arguing over the color as I walked to the restroom. He was calling it green, and she said it was turquoise.
In the elevator at the Holiday Inn in Sweetwater, Texas, an older gentleman who was in town for his great grandson's wedding realized the color when I turned to face him. He gasped and let out an audible "ohhhh" and then reached out to touch it.
We have had conversations with several others along the way, but a few stand out.
I don't know if it's a pre-requisite for concierges at moderately-priced hotels to be naturally cheerful, but we have met two so far that lit up the room the second we stepped into the lobby and made us feel as if we were home for the evening. The first was a woman at the Airport Fairfield in Nashville whose name I didn't catch. She asked us if we were in town for "Fanfair". Neither of us have any idea what Fanfair is, but we told her our story, and in doing so, found out that she was from Southern California and has only been in Tennessee for 5 years. She told us what must have been a funny story (Tim laughed) about traveling across the country with a Japanese exchange student, but I was distracted by the absurd whiteness of her teeth, so I missed the punchline.
The other concierge was a woman at the Sweetwater Holiday Inn named Regina, who seemed genuinely happy to be greeting the 12am - 7am crowd. She offered us free snacks and bottled water.
Another woman who made an impression was our waitress at the High Noon Saloon in Albuquerque. Apart from the Carlsbad Caverns themselves, this was my favorite stop so far. The old town in Albuquerque is a hub for local Native American and Mexican culture. Every structure is original Adobe (most almost 250 years old), and there is art everywhere. The town is nicely populated, meaning we saw a lot of people but they were evenly dispersed, and not crowded, giving the town a very peaceful feel. Anyway, our waitress was from Arizona and had that really tan, almost leathery look, she wore a silver buffalo around her neck. She found out we were traveling to the Grand Canyon next, and in a soft, very New Age-y voice, enthusiastically recommended that we stop in Sedona. "I don't want to get into depth about it but it's just really cool, " she told us, "There are really great vortexes there." We politely nodded.
I'll wait until we post the pictures to describe our experience at Carlsbad Caverns, but I'm loving New Mexcio now that we have crossed the monotony of the plains into the mountains and the plateau in this region. The terrain in the West is strikingly untame. It seems different than the landscape back home in the sense that there are much larger stretches of land unspoiled by human beings. It is truly vast and makes me marvel at its Artist.
For those of you who may not know, I had large sections of my hair dyed turquoise a week before our trip. So, Tim suggested that we conduct a little social experiment while traveling and record the reactions we get from people in different areas. Although my brilliant turquoise has begun to turn the color that blondes get when they swim in chlorine for extended periods of time, I have still gotten several comments, but these are a couple of favorites:
At Angelo's BBQ in Fort Worth, Tim overheard a little girl and her father arguing over the color as I walked to the restroom. He was calling it green, and she said it was turquoise.
In the elevator at the Holiday Inn in Sweetwater, Texas, an older gentleman who was in town for his great grandson's wedding realized the color when I turned to face him. He gasped and let out an audible "ohhhh" and then reached out to touch it.
We have had conversations with several others along the way, but a few stand out.
I don't know if it's a pre-requisite for concierges at moderately-priced hotels to be naturally cheerful, but we have met two so far that lit up the room the second we stepped into the lobby and made us feel as if we were home for the evening. The first was a woman at the Airport Fairfield in Nashville whose name I didn't catch. She asked us if we were in town for "Fanfair". Neither of us have any idea what Fanfair is, but we told her our story, and in doing so, found out that she was from Southern California and has only been in Tennessee for 5 years. She told us what must have been a funny story (Tim laughed) about traveling across the country with a Japanese exchange student, but I was distracted by the absurd whiteness of her teeth, so I missed the punchline.
The other concierge was a woman at the Sweetwater Holiday Inn named Regina, who seemed genuinely happy to be greeting the 12am - 7am crowd. She offered us free snacks and bottled water.
Another woman who made an impression was our waitress at the High Noon Saloon in Albuquerque. Apart from the Carlsbad Caverns themselves, this was my favorite stop so far. The old town in Albuquerque is a hub for local Native American and Mexican culture. Every structure is original Adobe (most almost 250 years old), and there is art everywhere. The town is nicely populated, meaning we saw a lot of people but they were evenly dispersed, and not crowded, giving the town a very peaceful feel. Anyway, our waitress was from Arizona and had that really tan, almost leathery look, she wore a silver buffalo around her neck. She found out we were traveling to the Grand Canyon next, and in a soft, very New Age-y voice, enthusiastically recommended that we stop in Sedona. "I don't want to get into depth about it but it's just really cool, " she told us, "There are really great vortexes there." We politely nodded.
I'll wait until we post the pictures to describe our experience at Carlsbad Caverns, but I'm loving New Mexcio now that we have crossed the monotony of the plains into the mountains and the plateau in this region. The terrain in the West is strikingly untame. It seems different than the landscape back home in the sense that there are much larger stretches of land unspoiled by human beings. It is truly vast and makes me marvel at its Artist.
First Round of Pictures
Finally I am posting some pictures of our travels so far. I don't have time to write up a whole lot since we are eager to get on the road and get to the Grand Canyon (where I just found it is only going to be 60 degrees, and will get down to 37 tonight at the North Rim, where we are camping tonight...good thing we bought those new low-temperature sleeping bags!)
Here we are ready to depart our house in our Subaru Forester on Friday night:
Driving across the Mississippi River:
(that's the Mississippi River over Jessie's shoulder)Saw some Arkansas locals on the Interstate:
(actually I think that might be a North Carolina license plate, but I thought it was a crazy vehicle!)Then we hit Texas:
Made a pit stop at Gilley's in Dallas, which is where they filmed the movie "Urban Cowboy." Jessie wanted to go ride the mechanical bull (it's not the one John Travolta rode in the movie) and get a picture of the mechanical bull from the movie (which is on display inside, apparently), but it was Saturday night and there was some kind of concert going on there, and they wouldn't let us park for free so we could run inside. We decided it wasn't worth $10 to park for 15 minutes so we snapped a picture and headed on to Fort Worth (where we stopped for some awesome barbeque at Angelo's).
On Sunday morning we woke up and realized we were in wind turbine country:
We kept driving across Texas to New Mexico:
Then we arrived at Carlsbad Caverns (technically it was Whites City, NM) where we setup camp in the 100 degree heat:
And Jessie couldn't resist the urge:
Then we went up to Carlsbad Caverns National Park to check out some scenery and the visitors center:
That's all for now, we need to get on the road. More to come.
Confessions of a Minor Obsessive Compulsive
Tonight we're resting up for day 5 of our journey at the Best Western Red Rock Inn in Gallup, New Mexico. Following the advice of our good friend Ginny, we've been listening to David Sedaris's newest book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames on mp3 while driving. In a portion of the book he calls The Smoking Section, Sedaris tells the story of how he quit smoking cold turkey after three decades ultimately because he travels often, and all of the decent hotels in the world no longer allow it. He tells some grotesque but hilarious anecdotes about the cheap hotels he was reduced to staying in before he decided to quit. The Best Western Red Rock Inn isn't nearly as bad as the hotels in the book, but it's the kind of hotel that brings to mind a shameful secret I've been keeping. I'm a hotel snob. I will sleep on the ground in the middle of nowhere with no showers or toilets, but I am uncomfortable staying in cheap hotels. When an occasion such as this one calls for a thrifty stop for the night, I wear my flip flops in the shower, use my own bath towel rather than the ones the hotel provides, and thoroughly inspect the bed for weird stains or insects before climbing in. I'm not proud of this. I know that I'm a spoiled American, and to the majority of people in this world, the accomodations here would seem luxurious. And it's not the hunter green carpet or the peeling wallpaper I'm uncomfortable with; Maybe it's the mysterious hair I saw on the sink, in the floor, and in the shower when we first arrived. My snobbery has to do with a standard of cleanliness and the idea that anyone could have stayed here in the past, and frankly, nature's dirt is much more appealing to me.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
On the Road Again (Part Dos)
So it's 9:46 am, and I'm trying to take advantage of the extra time we have built into today's schedule to make some contributions to our blog. But it seems that I've lost the battle with my ADD today as Tim paces around informing me that we need to hit the road.
For now, I'll just say that reading Francis Chan's book Crazy Love has inspired me to make an effort to become proactive about meeting new people, so not only will I be chronicling our journey with details of places, but also our encounters with the people we meet along the way. I'm doing this in the spirit of another book I love - A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins. Of course, he was walking across the country, and we're driving a Subaru Forester, but you get the idea.
For now, I'll just say that reading Francis Chan's book Crazy Love has inspired me to make an effort to become proactive about meeting new people, so not only will I be chronicling our journey with details of places, but also our encounters with the people we meet along the way. I'm doing this in the spirit of another book I love - A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins. Of course, he was walking across the country, and we're driving a Subaru Forester, but you get the idea.
On the Road Again
Holiday Inn Express
Sweetwater, Texas
As most of you already know, Tim and I are movie fanatics. That being said, we have a little ritual we like to observe beginning a few weeks before any big trip. We search for films that somehow pertain to the places we will be visiting and watch one every week or so leading up to the date of our departure. For this trip, we loaded up our Netflix queue with titles that were either filmed in the west or involved road trips across the country - movies like Thelma and Louise, Sideways, and Easy Rider. The latter was supposed to be the quintessential American road trip film - a classic. We found it to be strange, even for us, and decided it was intended to be viewed while under the influence of at least a mild narcotic. But a few of the images in Easy Rider stuck with me: the disturbing scene in which a band of bigoted rednecks brutally murders a man simply because they were uncomfortable with his hippie lifestyle, the opening credits in which Peter Fonda sets out on his red, white, and blue Harley as Born to be Wild plays in the foreground, and the image of the other random actor beside him cruising down the open road through the desert wearing a cowboy hat. It was this last image that influenced my decision to buy my first cowboy hat ever a couple of weeks before our trip. I pictured myself driving that stretch of desert highway wearing my new iconic accessory, the wind whipping around me through the open windows of our rental car. What didn't occur to me is that cowboy hats aren't particularly aerodynamic, and the minute we hit the interstate going 70-80 miles per hour, I was clinging to my hat with both hands and stubbornly refusing to roll the windows up.
Sweetwater, Texas
As most of you already know, Tim and I are movie fanatics. That being said, we have a little ritual we like to observe beginning a few weeks before any big trip. We search for films that somehow pertain to the places we will be visiting and watch one every week or so leading up to the date of our departure. For this trip, we loaded up our Netflix queue with titles that were either filmed in the west or involved road trips across the country - movies like Thelma and Louise, Sideways, and Easy Rider. The latter was supposed to be the quintessential American road trip film - a classic. We found it to be strange, even for us, and decided it was intended to be viewed while under the influence of at least a mild narcotic. But a few of the images in Easy Rider stuck with me: the disturbing scene in which a band of bigoted rednecks brutally murders a man simply because they were uncomfortable with his hippie lifestyle, the opening credits in which Peter Fonda sets out on his red, white, and blue Harley as Born to be Wild plays in the foreground, and the image of the other random actor beside him cruising down the open road through the desert wearing a cowboy hat. It was this last image that influenced my decision to buy my first cowboy hat ever a couple of weeks before our trip. I pictured myself driving that stretch of desert highway wearing my new iconic accessory, the wind whipping around me through the open windows of our rental car. What didn't occur to me is that cowboy hats aren't particularly aerodynamic, and the minute we hit the interstate going 70-80 miles per hour, I was clinging to my hat with both hands and stubbornly refusing to roll the windows up.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Nashville
Well, we arrived in Nashville at around 9:30 PM (that's central time for all you crazy east coast folks!) We're pretty tired from a long day of work, prep, packing, and a little driving, plus that Cracker Barrel dinner full of carbs is weighing us down, so not much to update tonight. More information and maybe a few pictures will be coming soon.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
The Plan
I've got most of my clothes packed and thought I would take a few minutes and fill everyone in on the order of places we'll be stopping. The first leg will be short, just to get a jump start on the journey. We'll be leaving tomorrow night (Friday, June 12) after I get home from work, change clothes, and make sure everything is loaded up, and will stop for the night at the Fairfield Inn near the Nashville, TN airport. The next morning, we'll head through Memphis, Little Rock, and across Texas (through Dallas and Fort Worth) and stop again for the night at a hotel in Sweetwater, TX. After that, we'll be hitting the following locations in this order:
- Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico
- Gallup, New Mexico (overnight in a hotel on historic Route 66)
- The Grand Canyon (North Rim), Arizona
- Anaheim and Los Angeles, CA (Disneyland!)
- Big Sur area, California
- Yosemite National Park, CA
- San Francisco, CA
- Napa Valley, CA
- Redwoods National Park, CA
- Portland, OR and the Columbia River Gorge
And all points in between! (Yes, I convinced Jessie to stop long enough in Roswell, NM so I can get a picture of a real live extra-terrestrial or a real UFO!)
The AAA TripTik
For those of you who aren't familiar with AAA, they have a service called "TripTiks" that is basically Mapquest directions on steroids. It includes all kinds of information about current construction zones, bridge and road tolls, and interesting information about "scenic byways", some of which we will be taking along our trip out west. It includes turn by turn maps in addition to a summary of the directions on the first several pages.
So tonight I finally put together our complete AAA TripTik, basically showing the route we will take from hotel to hotel to campground to hotel. It's in an Adobe PDF file so if I'm able to figure out how, I will post it on this blog for your viewing pleasure. I just wanted to post a couple of quick facts about our trip according to the TripTik, which is 122 pages long(!)
Total Distance: 4211.5 miles (6777.6 km)
Total Estimated Time: 68 hrs., 12 mins.
More information to come...
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