Or why we find some conventions harder than others to get to…
Chattacon is as far as Atlanta, when you’re considering driving from where we are, in Spokane…and there aren’t roads between Here and some of There.
We’re going to be looking at Kansas City, which is not much closer, but maybe easier to reach. We’re not sure.
And of course my brother has moved back to OKC, where we have a lot of friends. OKC is easier than Dallas, where he was.
Curiously enough, it’s a fast trip from here to San Diego, but not so much so to Chattanooga or Atlanta or even Oklahoma City. It has to do with the dearth of good highways and resources.
If we go from here to San Diego, it’s an easy overnight in Winnemucca, Nevada, and on down behind the Sierra, in a day. If we go from here east, we’re good and easy going to Chicago via I-90, but there are a lot of right-angle turns instead of diagonals, which adds time and miles, and I-80, while an amazing trip during bird migration season (it’s on the Flyway) is not an easy route, lacking good stops at the points we need them, outside of staying in cities, which we don’t like to do: in one case we had an indication there was a motel, but you had to ask at the gas station up on I-80, and then somebody there would leave the gas station, and guide you to the motel some distance off-route, check you in, take your money, wishing you a good night, and there you are, no amenities, no telly, no supper, no breakfast, and no prospect of any in the vicinity: you sleep, you get up and move on, and there’s still no breakfast…that sort of lack of facilities.
So we know if you’re going that route, pack food, or plan to spend city prices.
And when you do get over to what should be I-35 south, it isn’t—in a dispute with the feds, Kansas has built its own extension, but it’s not quite what you expect at all times, in the way you can drive the federal system and kind of know what you can hope to have. Not so on this one. The last time we did it, they’d built barriers between us and any facilities we wanted in Wichita KS, and it was a heckuva long trek past Wichita to Stillwater OK, where we ended up staying, well off I-35. We were blind tired from that one.
There should be another interstate going down from I-90 to I-80 and down to I-40…hell, there OUGHT to be an I-70, and there is—it is, in fact, the oldest of the interstates, but in need—at least the last time we drove it—of some fixing. It heads the right direction, but flat and straight—not so much and facilities, again, we didn’t find at the times we needed them: maybe they work better if you start from KC or St Louis. And from the south, if you’d really like to drive to Joplin, say, and up to KC, instead of to St. Louis, the roads at least 10 years ago, the last time we tried it, will shake your teeth out, and there’s another long stretch of no-facilities. Same if you go south toward Arkansas, until you run into the complex around the country music center, and all of a sudden you’ve got roads, and mega-resorts and things clearly designed to part you from your money…
There are some black holes if you look at the interstate system: Texas has one, and the American West has some, where it regards mountains and deserts. And heaven knows whether they’ve EVER gotten that construction near Tupelo finished. It looked promising as a route to the south off 40. But as our interstates stand, there are great big holes, not always of transport, but real gaps in service, and detouring around them is a pita.
You get the same problem of connections trying to navigate between 40 and 80 in the west, or, Heaven help you, trying to get from below Dallas up to 40— Carlsbad, south of Roswell, is in the middle of a highway Bermuda Triangle.
And heaven help you if you need to get from the Grand Canyon up to 80. We tried that in the dark, ended up in a spur of a road in the pitch dark at the edge of a cliff in Cedar Breaks National Monument, and had to backtrack when we were tired and still motel-less. http://www.nps.gov/cebr/index.htm was the cliff. This was pre-GPS. So we haven’t done that again.
Colorado is really two states, one on one side of the Rockies, the other hard to reach from there—which you would kind of expect; and Utah has a central valley, getting into which can be interesting. There are routes through from Colorado, and the northern one ends up in Vernal, UT, where there are dinosaurs in reach. But once you’re in Vernal, you have to do some maneuvering to avoid going back to where you’ve been, if you’re trying to get to points north or south.
That’s generally the same trouble on the southern crossing of the Divide. There are wonderful things to see, but there’s often a quandary of how far do we have to backtrack, and, Can we do this as a loop?
Driving is great. If you’ve never seen Meteor Crater, you should. Carlsbad. Marvel Cave. Mammoth. Great Sand Dunes. Bryce Canyon. The Redwoods. Yellowstone. And the Rockies and the Uinta range…
If any of you are planning a driving trip in the West, we are full of information…we have generally been there or contemplated being there. We love doing it, but we have our favorite routes…and our less favorite ones.
Sorry, I don’t know what happened.
But the old highways are a great joy to travel if you have the time.
Kansas City – yaa! Yes, I-70 and I-80 can be a long, dreary haul. Last time we did it in a pickup truck with a cab cover so one of us could lay down and nap while the other drove. Almost makes flying worth it.
Difficulty in traveling by road never occurred to me. Around the East Coast it seems like the interstates are taking over our world.
The only major drive I have done at all recently was from Florida when my sister was still alive. Lots of choices with over scenic roads. When I was little we drove east from Ohio and Michigan several times. I know my mother did it at least once when she was the only driver. I think that’s why my older brother got his license as soon as he could…..so my mother could have a helper. My father would come later in the summer and help with the drive back.
I decided to light out on old 66 (sometimes I-40) and retrace the Great Family Trip from the 1960’s, this time with Jane…it was great. Changed, oh, so changed. And doing Monarch Pass or likely Loveland now is a breeze compared to the old days, when cars were in the old days too. Coming down from Monarch, we lost our brakes, and I was sitting co-pilot with Dad, Mum and David in the back seat. He was an expert driver (it was the old 57 Caddy that betrayed us, not his driving) and advised us he might have to scrape selected boulders and walls on the way down to keep our speed within steering capability. He did all kinds of tricks, swerving on the hairpins, running a wheel on gravel, etc, and we didn’t have to resort to that…but we sure took a quiet walk-around when we got down off that mess. Also to find out what was the matter with the brakes. I remember almost getting to pan for gold while we fixed the Caddy’s carburator (another fail! on that car) —she gave up the ghost this time in, yes, a ghost town…but there was a character of a mechanic! You have to go off the beaten track to get to places like that.
CJ: Have you ever landed in a small plane at Salida CO. This is the closest airport to Monarch Pass and the landing strip runs up hill. One end is 7 stories higher than the other. You land uphill, of course, and with a flatlander co-pilot sitting right seat they become severe white knuckle fliers because it looks like you are going to go nose first INTO the runway, not ONTO the runway.
Taking off downhill is also interesting; jump off the end of the runway and the smokestack to your right is higher than you are. You then spend quite some while circling the valley to get enough altitude to get over the hump to Pueblo.
We had a lot of good times skiing at Monarch. It was (still is?) a great little area with very consistent snow.
Ever flown into San Diego? One looks up at windows in hotels distressingly close on the south side.
Oh yes, been there, done that!
Or, I think it’s San Jose, where the Piper Cubs use a strip that is embraced by the airliner’s runways…
I have also. San Jose is actually like that, and was even before it was expanded. (There used to be a field at the north end, because there were fewer and shorter runways.)
…and I was sitting co-pilot with Dad, Mum and David in the back seat. He was an expert driver…
To me, this makes it sound like David was driving from the back seat.
I guess camping through those areas makes it easier (I drive a pickup and can sleep very comfortably in the back)
Any chance you and Jane will ever make it back to Norwescon?
Definite possibility. It’s expensive, as cons go, and large, but there’ll be a day we decide to do it.
I always stay at the hotel (costumes, plus my brother comes up from California), and I know you can’t stay with the Bigelows, but we might be able to arrange for you to borrow my house for a few days. If you can figure out who I am, of course (I’m not trying to be secretive, just cautious).
no, CJ was sitting co-pilot with her dad. the comma indicates that David and their mother was in the back seat. had CJ followed the “Chicago Book of Style”, it would have sounded like she was in back with her mother and brother. Sorry, I learned that a comma separates the objects in a sentence, despite what certain publishers, editors, and other so-called grammarians would have you believe. I looked it up in my old grammar book, and I know we’ve had this discussion elsewhere……I’ll just drop it.
Thank you Joe, but I didn’t say that was what she said, I said it sounded like…
Like the Billings MT airport, where they fling airliners off a cliff for launch…you’re either at speed enough for lift or you have a problem!
I once left San Bernardino around 1700, for reason that will become clear, and stopped in St George, UT, at 2400. Next day I started around 0900 and stopped that evening around 2030 in Helena, MT. (The notable thing I recall about the “motel” in Helena was they shoehorned a “shower” into the bathroom in which I could not place both hands over my solar plexus unless I stood diagonally!)
The songwriter/singer John Stewart (who was in The Kingston Trio) did a long series of research trips on “The Mother Road” – Rte 66. I drove from my hometown in W.C. Ohio back to San Diego, along with my wife, and our two Silky Terriers, starting on I-75 South to I-70 West, and then when we stopped for the night in western Missouri in a terrific downpour, we then hopped northwest up to I-80 across Iowa and Nebraska. I had never seen an interstate as bad as I-80 in high summer, not even the Pennsylvania Turnpike was this bad. We left I-80 in Cheyenne, and headed down I-15 toward SLC, spent the night in Provo (beautiful view of the mountains), and made a wrong turn somewhere and ended up driving through Zion National Park. From there, to the Grand Canyon South Rim, down to Flagstaff for the hotel (don’t ask why…), back up to the Grand Canyon North Rim, which we didn’t leave until late that afternoon. Drove across Hoover Dam at 15mph, and I hated every foot of that drive. I don’t like dams in general, and driving across one just seems to be asking for trouble. We bypassed Lost Wages, but could see it to the south (sorry, Spence, this was 1989), and headed across the Mojave Desert at night. It was a Friday, and I remember that it seemed as though someone had opened the squirrel cage and all the nuts got out heading from Los Angeles to Los Vegas. Northbound I-15 was jammed from the time we crossed the state line into California. Then some lunatic in a Chevy Impala kept tailgating me to the point where I couldn’t see his headlights, then he’d pass me really fast, and a few minutes later, I’d catch up to him as he’d slow way down. I’d go around him, and the same thing would start again. I think it happened at least 3 or 4 times, until I got to the agricultural inspection station and reported his license number. I never saw him again, thankfully. The drive from San Bernardino to Riverside seemed like an eternity (how many light-years?), we stopped and got gas at one of the few gas stations open that late, and then drove the rest of the way to San Diego. I found out later, that was the same night that Sam Kinnison was killed near Los Vegas.
We had a flight out of St. Louis on American Airlines, on our way to San Francisco and then back to Guam, the plane must have been at its legal load limit, because the pilot took every foot of runway before he lifted us up, and as we got off the ground, the wide white warning stripes at the end of the runway zipped under us. He also got the landing gear up in a hurry, too, and I didn’t think we’d ever get up to altitude. I don’t much care for flying, mainly because I don’t like being in an aluminum tube with 300 other people at 35,000 feet. If something goes wrong with my car, I can pull over to the side of the road (except in the mountains), but with a commercial airliner, you don’t glide very well, and there’s no conveniently placed skyhooks to hold the plane up until service comes along to help you.
Lol!
That’s tight.
I love strange little motels, however. I’ve seen some weird ones.
Washington, PA, on I-70, we found a place for $21.95 per night back in May 2000, my assigned parking spot was on the other side of the building, clear at the back of an unlit cul-de-sac. The walls were peeling, there was paint coming off the cinder blocks, and I was almost afraid of the shower and the bed (who knows what’s under there?). Never again……..
One of our local airlines flies in and out of Kalaupapa, the former
leperHansen’s Disease colony. It is on a peninsula at the foot of a 3000′ cliff on Molokai. A pilot was ferrying his plane back to Honolulu, and set it down there so hard he blew both tires on the Caravan. He had to wait for replacement tires to be brought over and installed before continuing, and I don’t doubt his pay was docked at a minimum!The story of Kalaupapa is a sad and strange one.
That would do it. Ow!
Frontier Airlines had a persistent tire problem on the Billings to Denver run. I recall looking at a tire, which was burned to the thread in patches about a handspan apart, and they were running out of room on that tire for more burns. I recall asking myself whether, perhaps, they relied on the greater weight of the last remaining unburned patch to rotate the tire to that patch for touchdown…
It at least did not blow…
My parents drove from New York City in 1934. Across the plains it was basically dirt road -follow the tire tracks. Caused some worry when some of tracks diverged from the others – no signage of course. That days drive was long – hoping for some sort of habitation with a place to stop. Towards sunset they spotted what they thought was buildings ahead. After a bit they turned out to be bison. Finally reached a ‘motel’ well into the night. From the sounds through the very thin walls they realised that it was the regional bordello!
Some wedding trip.
I love it!
I recall driving through areas which were still ‘open range,’ meaning no fences and you watched out for cows. All fenced, now.
I recall driving hairpins high in New Mexico mountains where washouts made defining the roadway interesting…leaning out the window and saying, “Dad, we’re getting onto the bad spots, there.” All paved now.
I recall learning to drive and with the underpowered cars of the day learning how to gauge when to put a little gas to it at the bottom of the hill so you wouldn’t pull hard before you topped the next hill…likely nobody thinks of that now but truckers.
I recall pumping gas from a farm pump, and putting it through a filter as it went in, which was a real good idea…
Thing’s probably a parlor relic in a restaurant now…
Or cranking the tractor to get it started. They didn’t want us kids anywhere near that operation: you could easily get your arm broken if you and that crank tangled.
Pushbutton now, and some are air conditioned.
Tractors: air-conditioned with CD players (or maybe an iPod dock) and GPS units. It’s easier for the person driving; they have some entertainment, and with the headlights they can work late at night.
…learning how to gauge when to put a little gas to it at the bottom of the hill so you wouldn’t pull hard before you topped the next hill…likely nobody thinks of that now but truckers.
:waving hand: I do, I do. I wish more people noticed that (even in today’s cars) they slowed down as they go up hills.
I think the idea was, not just that the car would slow down going up a hill, but that if you weren’t going fast enough at the bottom you’d have difficulty getting to the top.
In my car, some freeway grades tare easier to take at 70 MPH than at 60. At 60, to not lose speed, the engine actually has to go around faster than at 70. With a steeper hill, or underpowered engine, it’d be a lot worse.
It does also make it a lot more annoying when the person in front of you slows down.
I was unclear. Yes, I also learned to give the car gas at the bottom of a hill to make sure you don’t slow too much going up (parts of SR 26 just outside Colfax spring to mind; I still do it there).
My other sentence referred to the fact that these days, since people have forgotten (or never knew) that you needed to goose it to get up the hill, they drive like the entire world is flat and, subsequently, slow down terribly as they reach the top. Annoying, but not quite as annoying as those who assume that now they’ve crested the hill they must be going too fast, and slow down even further.
FWIW, that’s because our standard internal combustion engine design produces horsepower dependent upon engine RPM. You can either go faster, or downshift, to get the power you need from the revving engine to do the work of “lifting” the vehicle. That’s NOT true to the same extent with, for example, Mazda’s rotary engine. A colleague, when I worked at UCLA in the 70’s, bought an RX-7 and let me drive it. With my car, a Sunbeam Alpine, 1725cc four-banger, one had to be aware of “shift points”. But with his I could be moving slowly in 1st and dump it into 3rd and it pulled right up; a bit slower than if I’d used 2nd, but the engine gave no impression of choking on the too-high gear.
An old section of Route 66 goes by Meteor Crater. It’s in bad shape by now, and part of it has been gated off by the ranch that owns the crater land. Maybe a quarter mile to the left on the old road (as you face the crater) is the much-abused remnants of an adobe and stone building. This was the original Meteor Crater Museum, and has a special spot in the heart for us extraterrestrial rockhounds.
Another section of Route 66 goes through the town of Oatman, just on the AZ side of the AZ-NV border. Burros, left behind by prospectors, have become established in the area and think nothing of clogging up the main road in town, looking for handouts. Route 66 is about 20 miles of contorted lane and a half in that area, past old mines both large and small, closed and still operating. On the far side of the pass is a wide spot in the road called Cold Springs, which used to be the only reliable water source, gasoline, and rest stop for miles. The gas station has been restored by its current proprietor, and still has 2 old glass-topped gas pumps.
Oops — a couple of errors on my part:
Not “Meteor Crater Museum”, but “American Meteorite Museum”. It also was the crater museum, but that was not its official name.
Not “Cold Springs”, but “Cool Springs”.
We missed the old road and the burros! They’d have been fatter when we left. We came in on the new route…
My maternal grandfather traveled from Green County, Missouri, where he was born, to Greene County, Ohio by horse-drawn wagon. This was in the early part of the 20th century. His mother was full-blooded Native American, but I have no idea from which tribe. I can’t get into the genealogy records for that library, as you need a card, and they don’t give them to furriners from Ohio.
There is (still) open range in Colorado. Often it is National Forest. I was following a car down a well-graded dirt road at 7000′ when the car encountered a large herd of cows moving across the road. The driver of the car got impatient and started honking the horn. Now open range cows are wintered on the plains where they fertilize hay fields. They are also given hay from a vehicle, usually a pickup. A worker in the back of the pickup throws hay out while the worker in the cab drives a large circle honking the horn all the while. Well those cows heard the horn and gathered around the car and would not move. I was laughing so hard I was crying. Took a long time for the disappointed cows to leave and I bet that driver to this day doesn’t know what was going on.
Ah, Vernal, Utah. Back when I was a roadie in 1968 I was driving back to San Francisco from denver with The Electric Flag’s equipment-which included a Hammond B-3 and 4 Leslies-when the water pump gave up. In 1968 it was tough to fly band gear out of Vernal, trust me. It was even hard to get a water pump. No cell phones, management in New York, gig on Thursday, big problems.
I don’t know how I made it out of the 60s alive.
I did, didn’t I?
Phil Brown
Our memory of Vernal is, well, vernal—a motel where all the balconies and walks were decorated with huge overflowing pots of white and purple and pink petunias: the owner had a pot system he was trying to patent and sell, and those flowers were absolutely gorgeous: it was like staying on a Rose Parade float…but the window screens were not real good. Jane’s Efanor popped a screen and went right out a window.
We were right after him. He was strolling down the balcony, admiring the flowers…
I grew up with road trips. We lived near Bakersfield but had family in Boise and Edmonton, with my dad’s sister in Spokane for several years, followed by Salt Lake and then the Phoenix area about the time I was ready for college. The bulk of the family was back in Quebec. Every few years we’d fly back to Quebec or I’d get sent back for the summer, but usually we did the western route going up thru Reno and Winnemuca to Boise, then Spokane up thru Revelstoke and on to Edmontom via Banff. A couple of times we shifted over to go thru Yellowstone and the Tetons. The Highway To The Sun was novel — neither dad or I do heights well and driving up it with nothing but air on one side (no guardrails) and with large chunks of our side missing (suddenly one lane with a Winnabego coming downhill) did not make for fun. I did that stretch laying down, dad had a death grip on the wheel and mom enjoyed the view. I can remember 1967 when we drove back to Quebec to visit literally everybody and do Expo 67. We also did a lot of sightseeing — Niagara, Ottawa, DC, Mt. Vernon and Monticello and then back home thru Kentucky and Oklahoma where mom turned on the heater and not the AC one very hot and humid night. I remember we had this thick book from AAA that had the route all planned out and included all the approved motels on the back of the maps. I honestly don’t remember the routes except going into Glacier. But I dearly loved those trips and miss them.
Ah, yes, I’ve been on the “Columbia Reach” road from Revelstoke to Banff. Rogers Pass was impractical in the day.
We live so close to this it’s one of those must-dos!
I’m not sure the old road around still goes through. I’ve looked on maps a time or two when it looked like it had been broken–in the days before Google Earth! 😉 It’s something like 3 times farther from Point A to Point B, so it probably got so little use they stopped maintaining it.
Yes, I-70 was one of the first interstates started, and it was also the very last one finished. Won awards for environmental sensitivity for the stretch through Glenwood canyon, once it was finally finished in the 70’s. Also cost more per mile than any other stretch of the original interstate system. There are only three year round highways across the continental divide in Colorado, US 50 in the south, CO 14 in the north and I-70 in the middle; only I-70 is a 4 lane highway. There are other “roads” that cross the divide, but they are all closed in the winter, and some require high clearance 4WD vehicles even in the summer. Trail Ridge Road (US 34) through Rocky Mountain National park is one of the prettier road trips to take; but beware the high altitude as it goes over 12,000 ft above sea level. Due to the late snows this year it won’t be open til sometime in June, they try to finish the snow plowing and open it for Memorial Day weekend, but won’t make it this year.
Ohhh, living on the west side of the coastal range is an interesting adventure in roads… They’ve dramatically improved in the past 20 years though, so many of the recent immigrants from outside haven’t seen it when we’re STUCK. Highway 101 is THE ONLY ROAD in and out, other than a few logging roads that may or may not still be there (it changes from year to year and season to season) so if we have a bad winter and it slides it can mean a 6 hour trip to get to the next civilization 30 miles up the coast. About 15 miles south of town is the quickest way to go east, but that road goes out at least 2 or 3 times a year due to rock slides. Right now its construction season, so they’ve got areas where you have to wait for the stop light to change so your lane can get through. There is only one going each direction. Makes it challenging when the motor-homes try to take THEIR lane out of the middle because they don’t like the rocks or trees. Redwoods and rocks with the white line painted on them does sort of scare the poor sods!
Along the north coast 101 goes out a couple times a decade from landslides even recently. (And I’m not talking about flooded-out in Tillamook! 😉 )
Yep Paul, same on the south coast. The major slides still happen, its the 2 or 3 or 4 day outages they seem to have gotten under control. The month long road outages still happen! We had a couple weeks a just a few years ago where we had to go 2 to 3 hours south to get ANYWHERE because 199 AND 101 north of us was out.
Makes life interesting sometimes.
In WA in winter, there’s one safe rule: stay on I-90 and expect some delays in storms. Our other passes are either not open or iffy.
We went over the Cascades for Rustycon one January (I think it was Rustycon) and our little Subaru just kept trucking at a sedate but firm pace, amid a line of sensible people doing the same, while people driving Yukons and Sequoias decided to buck the line and go fast. You’d drive, oh, about the length of two football fields, reach a curve, and there they’d be, belly-up in a ditch, not damaged, well, much, but not going to get there faster than we were. It’d be one thing if it was just ONE Yukon or Sequoia, but they just kept doing it, with the same result. What part of ‘big cars don’t make you non-skid’ don’t they get? Worst thing you can have in the winter is a big empty truck, and a big empty SUV is not much ahead of that.
We’d have worried more, but the WHP or WSDOT or somebody was out in force and was going to get them out sooner or later.
Noted this morning, BTW, that somebody routed a super-mega-load semi onto I-5 between Mt. Vernon and Burlington WA, and the bridge failed. They’re saying everybody got out ok, but there’s a traffic diversion for you. Hope the driver’s ok.
Yes, when it’s sitting in your garage that big heavy thing is gonna stay planted. But when it’s in motion, Newton ain’t gonna give ye any love baby: “Objects in motion tend to stay in motion”! [emphasis mine]
What part of ‘big cars don’t make you non-skid’ don’t they get?
My father was fond of saying “four-wheel drive doesn’t mean four-wheel stop.”
The driver of the semi clipped one of the uprights on the bridge and caused the bridge collapse. It had nothing to do with load weight. In the Seattle area, local news covered this event all afternoon and evening. Two vehicles ended up in the water with 3 occupants between them, no serious injuries, and the truck driver is cooperating with law enforcement. Glad I rarely drive north of Marysville!
Hey everyone! I have 3 things or so. 1, Hey Joe! yep you passed through Las Vegas before I moved down here. 2, @CJ that little trip in Cedar Breaks reminds me of the first time I drove down from there to Cedar City below. I was driving a UHaul and pulling a trailer with a full sized car on it. The breaks on the trailer burned out and the driverside tire burned completely off. That is one steep grade! For years afterward when we’d drive up or down that road, we’d look for the groove in the road our rim left. And 4, my step dad lives outside of Vernal, Utah so we’ve driven the loop from there through Heber City and down to Provo. Quite a nice looking drive. But, do it in the daylight so your knuckles won’t be so white!
Scenic but scary: California 1 between the Russian River and Fort Ross. Twisty in places, and much of it has verticals on both sides. (The fort itself is mostly reconstructed, but the original was built by Russian ships’ carpenters. It doesn’t have stairs, it has ladders.)