Road Trip!

Utah Salt-flats - about as flat as you can get

11/9/11

I’m sitting in an auto glass shop in Santa Cruz waiting for them to finish replacing my cracked windshield of my “Nubaru” that I acquired specifically for my road trip in October.  The lady said it was going to take all day.  Argh!  No other means of transportation to get back to the house that I’m sharing with a couple of other people.  But, what the hell, it gives me an opportunity to plunk out this little intermediate blog about my road trip that I haven’t had an opportunity to do before (update:actually, they were able finish by noon, so I finished this blog later that day).

Zombie badger at Bill & Bird's rental in NH

Black Canyon in Colorado

My idea was that instead of flying to Boston and renting a car to drive up to New Hampshire, I would buy a car in Bend (no sales tax, plus my “mailing address” is at Rick and Chris’s house), drive to Santa Cruz for Andy and Allison’s big Fall party, then drive to the east coast.  Driving cross-country was always something that I wanted to do but never got around doing…it has always been on my bucket list on things to do.

Looking down at the rapids of Gunnison River

Initially I was going to try and find a used Subaru (or VW Jetta diesel, if I could find one), but there was nothing good available without a lot of waiting, searching, and time.  So, even though I swore I wouldn’t do it again, I bought a new car. And since I’ve lately been into retro things, I got one with a stick shift. So far, I don’t regret the stick shift, but I’m glad I’m not commuting in heavy traffic to go to work. :>)

My road trip took about 3 weeks.  I took the northern route going east, and the southern route going west.  Highway 80 was the main way going east (with lots of diversions off the beaten path), and Highway 40 (Route 66) was the main way going west (also with diversions).

Wind generators aplenty in Utah going into the Rockies

Instead of boring everyone about my road trip, I thought I’d spell out some of the highlights and my observations, in roughly chronological order.

Music:  during my old college years when I and a bunch of friends would take road trips in my old VW van and creep from Colorado to LA listening to old Stones albums and anything that we could get a tape to listen.  So before the trip started, I collected a bunch of digital tracks of familiar (to me) 60’s and 70’s music on my iPod so I could listen to them, as well as all of my varied jazz collection.  Between this and catching NPR on the radio in various parts of the country kept me well entertained and energized.

Lots and lots and lots of corn fields

Corn: most of the open fields that were not desert or high altitudes were fields and fields of corn. It’s easy to see that this is the US’s main cash crop, what with all of the higher percentages of ethanol that we’re seeing in our gas nowadays.

Looking west from the continental divide - middle of the Rockies

Wind generators: I was very happy to see that, in most places that were wide open, or had a lot of winds, there were more wind generators than I have ever seen before.  To me, wind generators are not an eyesore, if only because they represented a much cleaner source of energy than the local propane or coal-driven energy plant. I used to buy wind generators for West Marine (electrical department); the style very much reflected what I was seeing on the road, except the ones on the road were 4-5 stories high, and each blade would be 30-40 feet long.  Yikes!

Gas prices:  talk about variation - from almost $4/gallon in California to almost as low as $3/gallon in the east coast.  You have to wonder why!  My Nubaru is not like my old Prius – instead of 45-50g/mile, I averaged about 28 to 30.  I’m spoiled.

Looking at Colorado Springs from Pike's Peak

Switch-backs on Pike's Peak

Continental Divide:  the Rockies are really amazing.  I went to Colorado College for a couple of years, and I don’t remember grasping the subtlety of this mountain range.  It’s not dramatic craggy mountains like I see in Alaska or even the Sierras.  It’s just this giant, rounded ridge that gets higher and higher towards the middle with relatively unassuming peaks around it.  It’s only until you realize that you’re 10,000 feet up that you realize that you’re in a mountain range.  Despite it being undramatic, the Rockies were undeniably beautiful.  When I was driving south of Hwy 80 on two lane highways I was reminded of the trips that I used to do driving to Breckinridge (playing music for ski tickets and room & board) during the winter in my old Scout, and the wide open snowy valleys with a minimal amount of trees and giant, fenced ranches.  It felt like that now, except instead of the fields covered with snow, it was a beautiful green and yellow grass.

Looking up at Pikes Peak - notice the yellow leaves

Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Colorado: obviously not as breathtaking as the Grand Canyon, it still represented a more intimate connection on how the earth is shaped by water, as well as by plate pressures and glaciers.  It is also more dramatic at how steep the cliffs are. What was cool about it was that I could see the Gunnison River, a well-known and difficult river rafting/kayaking challenge, flow underneath my feet very clearly.  It’s also interesting to note that in both the Grand and Black Canyon, getting there requires going up several thousand feet.  It’s like building a big sand mound on the beach and taking a stick to create a deep path through it, the stick being trillions of gallons of water flow a year creating a deeper and deeper gouge. 

Pikes Peak Lake

Pikes Peak:  I’ve been up it once before, when I was going to Colorado College – I and some friends took my old VW van and went up it’s steep, switchback road all the way to the top at 14,000 feet.  The old van barely made it up, having to keep it in 1^st gear the last quarter of the trip.  Going up with the Nubaru was easier, but I still often had to put it in 1^st gear to come out of one of its many hairpin turns.  On top, the view is breath taking – easy to do when you’re that high.  My breath was taken as soon as I started walking around, feeling my heart beat a little harder, and taking slower steps and having to breathe deeper.  I felt like an old man up there.  Hmmm…

Mist and rainbows at Niagara Falls

6 million cubic feet per minute!

Colorado College:  Colorado Springs has grown unbelievably from a relatively small town to a metropolis as big as Pasadena, it felt like.  There were lots of traffic, the freeway going north and south had grown lanes, and suburbia looked like it has spread out quite some distance, both north and south.  I hadn’t checked it out, but I bet that there is little difference in housing between Colorado Springs and its neighbor to the south Pueblo.  The college, however, was the same…same buildings, beautifully manicured lawns, and same trees shading the streets.  The college still has the block system that they started just after I left the school.  In retrospect, I regret having left that college as it would have been nice to experience taking one class over a 3 week time, concentrating only on that class.  Well, I’m sure (surf) that I (surf) had my (surf) reasons…

Many rivers head to Niagara Falls

Niagara on top

On the Canada side

Hand made just for the Adirondaks

Niagara Falls: easily the most awesome display of water flow that I’ve ever seen, including waterfalls in Alaska. It literally dumps the water from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, the two lakes separated by a super wide river that seemed to come from everywhere. The Lake Ontario basin, sculpted by glaciers a kajillion years ago, looked like a giant drain sucking in all of this water, making a lot of noise.  I happened to be there on a nice sunny day, so the mist coming up, creating myriads of rainbows, brought in a whole lot more colors beside the greenery surrounding the waterfalls.  The combined water flowing into Lake Ontario is more than any other waterfall in the world (6 million cubic feet every minute!).  It was impossible to take pictures showing the whole grand concept.  One of these days, I’ll have to figure out how to take large landscape pictures – but you should check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_Falls.  On the U.S side, there was a ton of tourists looking – almost all of them were from China, Korea, or Japan, although some from Europe.  I also drove across the bridge to the Canada side (the border guard gave me a big hassle because I didn’t have any license plate on my Nubaru).  On the other side, the mist from the waterfalls inundated the streets of the town next to the waterfalls, making the streets all wet, and people wearing waterproof ponchos. 

Lake Placid

Typical Maine lobster boat on the hard

Upper state New York: I have pushed through New York City plenty of times, mostly going down the coast from Boston to Annapolis on various boat-show related activities and trying to figure out how to get past the ever-present traffic gridlock.  But I have never truly visited the beauty of New England during the fall; it is inspiring. There was certainly an orange and yellow color scheme going on there, especially while traveling through the Adirondack Mountains in the northeastern part of New York state.  Although the elevation on the road didn’t go a whole lot past 3000 feet (5,300 is its highest mountain peak), the mountain range is north enough to get a fair amount of snow during the winter.  Lake Placid hosted the winter Olympics in 1932 and in 1980, so all of the motels and hotels had some sort of reference to the Olympics, especially hockey, where in 1980 the US team beat the USSR team for the gold medal.  It’s also well known for the skiing (at least on the East Coast), but I have to think that the masses of wannabe skiers coming up from NY City to ski would make the place uninhabitable. 

House where Joel and Robyn got married

Maine: was as expected, beautiful, but hard to really explore on the road.  I would have much preferred to be out on the waters discovering the plentiful nooks and crannies not accessible by road.  That could well be a goal on my bucket list in the future.  I stayed a couple of nights at Bar Harbor, which was overrun by tourists all coming from…are you ready?...cruise ships!!  Gagh!  I can’t get away from them!

Joel and Robyn’s marriage: beautiful ceremony with thought-provoking marriage declarations, magnificent yet quirky house on a prime waterfront New Hampshire property, lots of friends and relatives with a reviewing of old relations and discovery of new – all that and more merged to become a very memorable event.  I’m really glad I came.  Thank you Robyn and Joel for inviting me!

Apropos name at the marriage property

North Texas suburb

Motels and hotels: been there, done that.  I don’t have any desire to go to any more motels and hotels.  Despite giant differences in pricing, they smell the same; they almost always look the same and always with some kind of forced air pushing in.  Say, here’s an idea: tow a small teardrop mini trailer and use it for camping.  They are relatively cheap if you buy used, they don’t weigh more than 800-1000 pounds, and my Nubaru (jeeze, I’m going to have to call it a Subaru now, it’s got more than 10,000 miles on it now) can tow one easily.  While I was driving I noticed that there were a lot of camping spots, some in absolutely gorgeous surroundings. With more time to do exploring, I could spend a whole summer visiting different places in US, Canada or even Mexico and not have to spend another god-awful night in some stinky motel.  Hmm…it’s something to think about.

Grand Canyon

Religion: I noticed driving the southern route back to California that there were numerous roadside signs advertising different religious groups.  My friend Andy reminded me that the “bible-belt” takes up a huge part of the US, especially on the south side.  It was certainly evident even driving the highways, especially the mega-chapels that I saw driving through Tennessee and Arkansas.  Wow!  Big mansions, only differentiated from other giant mansions by having a steeple placed in some part of the structure, were dotted along the highway. “Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and see all of the people”.  I could only envision a lot of money pouring in from lots of people supporting these rich organizations.  While driving through a city, I would scan my radio for NPR and hit bunches of religious stations, all with some sort of hell & damnation theme and quotes from the bible. Without making any “politically incorrect” personal observations (I’ll leave that up to Bill Mayer), I would simply say that social culture sure varies wildly from state to state.

Rest Stops:  these varied wildly from state to state.  I thought that California rest stops were pretty fancy until I saw some of the northern ones that had a travel center, restaurants, gas stations, etc.  I guess it’s how much money a state is willing to spend on that kind of stuff.  With the economy in the tank for the states as well as the U.S., those kinds of things will be bypassed I’m sure.

Me, after staring at the Grand Canyon all day...

Grand Canyon: this was the 3^rd time in my life that I visited it.  It’s worth it every time; but the grandeur of the place is so great that you often don’t see any of the smaller details that can be missed if you don’t sit down and stare out - which is what I did this time.  I was at the canyon almost the whole day, hiking around from viewpoint to viewpoint, but mostly finding a good comfortable spot, sitting on my ass and staring – trying to see small details.  Thankfully the weather was beautiful, and I left with a strong color sense of orange/brown in my head.  Perhaps one of these days I will go down the Colorado River to see the Grand Canyon from below.  I wonder if it will be just as majestic.

Missed opportunities: on my way back to California, I was “smelling the barn”, looking forward to playing music with friends or on gigs, so I bypassed a few places that I thought about visiting, but am now looking forward to visiting if ever I got the chance to travel again:  New York for the jazz clubs, New Orleans for the same reason, Oak Creek Canyon in Arizona where my mom took us 3 boys to visit on a familial road trip during one summer – and basically taking some more time to smell the roses. Also, it would be fun to have a kayak or paddleboard with me, while visiting the various waterways that I saw.

California desert driving

Now I’m in Santa Cruz, sharing a house with another couple, and soon to move to a small studio, only a few steps away from Pleasure Point.  It’s been tough getting back to surfing, trying to acclimate my muscles and joints (bad shoulders) and my sore ribs, as well as getting up fast enough on the board to not wipe out all of the time.  But playing music has been fun, and I already have at least 3 gigs a week, so that’s been exciting.  Fortunately (or unfortunately) my travel bug is still alive and well, and I may go on another trip – maybe to New Zealand as I threatened to do in my earlier blogs.  I haven’t figured it out that far.  I still have a lot of projects that need getting done here, including a complete health checkup.

Blue Bossa is still up in Wrangell, awaiting my return.  The guy who is taking care of it says the only problem is the cover on the stern – since it’s not fitting very well up there, it collects water in the pockets formed by the misfit, and when it gets cold, will turn into ice.  He has to pop out the water or ice every time he visits the boat. But everything else is fine.  I may fly up there after Christmas to see for myself and run the engine, but the flight costs are pretty high.  We’ll see.