The first e-mail to my friends!
Hello all,
You are the lucky folks that I culled out of my address book to receive my little travel journal for John’s Big Adventure 2000. It is so far turning out to be a little more long-winded than I thought it would, so read some of it, read all of it (preferred!), read none of it, or just delete the darn thing right now — suit yourself!
Sat 9/23 – Mill Valley – Sacto – South Lake Tahoe
It’s Saturday morning … well no, actually it’s about 1 PM Saturday afternoon in Mill Valley CA.
I have to be in Indianapolis IN on Thursday night! If I just blasted down the interstate it would be a pretty simple trip — it’s about 2200 miles (it turned out to be 2482 miles !), so six days, 350-400 miles a day, a lot of driving a day but doable — piece of cake!
However, this trip ain’t about blasting down the interstate, so the rest of this mail is about the complicated solution I found to this simple problem! 🙂
Straight out of Richmond CA, there was no blasting up I-80 for me, no sirree! Instead I took I-4 to Pittsburgh and then Route 160 along the Sacramento River up the Delta. I’d never done that before, and it is a delightful, time-wasting drive! Definitely like being somewhere far away that is not California.
Anyway, the pleasant glow of that little jaunt was obliterated by getting stuck in Saturday afternoon traffic hell in the endless burbs of south Sacramento. All I wanted to do was get to US 50! Which I eventually did, and which was its usual scenic but busy self, and I eventually ended up in South Lake Tahoe at about dusk — and guess what? SLT is pretty darn crowded on a beautiful fall Saturday night! My favorite little hideaway motel was a) sold to the Indians since last spring and b) had No Vacancy 🙁 So I got off to a bad start budget-wise by forking over $60 for a pretty average little room in a pretty noisy little motel.
Sun 9/24 SLT – Carson City – Austin – Elko
At least breakfast at the Timber House (east side of the golf course in South Lake) did not disappoint. Buy a Chronicle, pound down a chicken fried steak and a vast quantity of coffee, catch a little football and testosterone at the sports book, then it’s off to the Loneliest Highway — which involved nothing more complicated than staying on Route 50 all day again. I have come to quite love the Nevada desert in the fall, and all the reasons came back to me again today. Buzz through Carson City, past the turn off to Virginia City, through Fallon, past the mini-playa east of Fallon where the locals write their names with rocks in the mud, and then that awesome series of crests and valleys which are the Great Basin in central Nevada (and which were dusted with snow the last time I passed through).
My plan was to make it to Elko and a Forest Service campground in the Ruby Mountains. I got there pretty late though, so I drove out to the Lamomille Valley, watched a pretty darned fine sunset and went back to Elko for more of that quality motel experience.
Ate in a great little Basque restaurant. Basques are pretty wide people, and now I know why! A tureen of chicken soup, pasta, beans, bread, baked potato, 1/2 chicken, pie and coffee for $10.
Mon 9/25 — Elko – Wendover – Salt Lake City – Roosevelt, UT
First half of the day was I-80, blasting across the Bonneville Salt Flats. A day to be glad it’s the fall rather than the summer, it was a delightful, sparkling 65-70 degrees :)).
Between the flats and the edge of the Great Salt Lake I stopped to pee at a deserted, trashed out truck stop and got some nice pictures. If I decide to invest the connect minutes to upload my pics to my geocities site I’ll link y’all up to them!
Even though Utah is the most scenic place I’ve seen in my life, the whole Mormon thing creeps me out every time I cross the state line. Being stuck in rush hour freeway construction hell in Salt Lake City is really no different than freeway traffic hell anywhere else, but the thought of all those shiny happy, baby-makin, god-fearin, all-white Mormons around give it a little extra edge of alienation for me. Although truth be told, they are pretty darned polite in traffic and have never done a mean thing to me!
Park City — last week’s snow was still piled high, but my good weather karma continues to hold (knock on simulated wood). The funniest thing was a settlement of at least 200 homes that I zoomed past, and not a single sedan as far as the eye can see. It was all SUVs and trucks, station wagons, and even a hatchback or two, but I guess we just don’t do sedans up here in in these yuppie mountains.
I eschewed I-80 through Wyoming in favor of the old road, US 34 through northern Colorado. I stopped for an early dinner in Heber City, and stared the whole time at a big fine basketball court at the motel across the street. I could just drive right over there, shoot some hoops, have myself a little cocktail hour and wait for sunset, but nooooo, I have to chunk off some more miles to be in Indy by Thursday.
One thing you don’t hear much about is Mormon cuisine. The entire west is a bit of a food downer for someone spoiled by the Bay Area, but in Mormon Country I always I always seem to end up getting served by a chubby little blonde handing me soggy potatoes and overcooked eggs with some sour, stingy old cuss behind the cash register counting every penny of the take.
Tues 9/26 — Roosevelt – Steamboat Springs – Rocky Mt Nat Park – Estes Park, CO
I made it to Roosevelt, Utah after dark. Next morning in the daylight, it turns out to be your basic cow town in a wide dusty green valley. The map said most of the valley is a Ute Indian reservation, but I didn’t see many Utes around.
Colorado is an insanely beautiful place, but I gotta say that I do not like the ski towns very much. Steamboat Springs is in a beautiful setting — ski slopes about as far from downtown as Tenderfoot Trail in MV. Maybe I’m just crabby because I was in too much of a hurry to stop and check out the local waterfall and the spring fed public baths, but there were just too many self satisfied white people SUV-ing around for my taste — gee, that also sounds like Mill Valley! 🙂
The road follows the Yampa River for another 30 miles or so and the whole way was sprinkled with fly fishermen. Now THAT is something I can see myself doing!
The up side of having to make the miles every day is that I have managed to see the sun set from a couple of pretty spectacular places. Today I ended up on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park about 6-ish, and decided to go for Estes Park on the other side as my destination for the night. By appropriate dawdling, I ended up watching the sun slip behind the adjoining range from the ridge road at about 12,000 feet! Then I coasted down the hill watching the pinks and purples turn to blues, ten to grays (and eventually fade to black…) wahoo!
Wed 9/27 — Estes Park, CO – Louisville, NE – Glenwood, IA
Estes Park was just too busy for its own good. Rooms were really expensive, so I went for a cheapo, and got what I paid for. The mattress and pillows were nearly unsleepable (new word!). It was really hard to get comfortable to dose off in the first place, then I came to, stone cold awake at about 5AM. Tried and failed to sleep again, so I turned it into a good thing. I packed my beautiful truck, got going and saw sunrise on the Rockies — the high peaks slowly turning to pink — not bad!!
Getting on the road that time of day puts one in the middle of the Colorado morning rush — all these people leaning into to traffic to get to their j-o-bs made me even gladder to be on vacation. I’d seen it before, but the abruptness of the end of the Rockies and the beginning of the endless plains never ceases to amaze. One minute I’m whizzing down the curvy little 2 lane road from Estes to Loveland, towering cliffs on both sides, and the next minute BOOM! I’m in the wide open spaces, where I can see the horizon curve away like the middle of the ocean. Eastern Colorado is cattle country. One stockyard right next to the road was about two miles long; pretty depressing even for a committed carnivore such as myself. And the smell! If it’s not the actual cows, it’s the cow shit spread on the just harvested fields for as far as the eye can see. Sort of like driving through Petaluma on a summer day, for 400 miles!
Then it was Nebraska, Nebraska, and more Nebraska. Oh yeah, today at breakfast was when I did a casual inspection of my tires to find that they are guess what?? Yes indeedy Firestone Expeditions 😐
Thurs 9/28 Glenwood – Champaign, IL – Indianapolis, IN
Nothing much to say about this day. I drove 560 miles yesterday, I’ll do 590 today. This is seeming suspiciously more like work than fun at this moment. I’m spending my whole f—ing life in the cab of this f—ing truck!
The only vaguely cool thing that happened today, other than the fact that it eventually ended, was some kid in a little car outside Champaign started waving frantically at me going 80 down the freeway. After he was ahead he slowed down for me to pass and held up a sign the had scrawled saying “I’m from Marin Co!”
I guess he was a homesick kid at the U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I don’t have any Marin stickers on the outside of the truck so I guess he saw my Santa Rosa Toyota license plate holder and kind of freaked. I think we both felt like pulling over and having a big hug! But we were both truckin’ on down the interstate.
The fall colors aren’t much happening yet, but I sure saw a lot of heavy duty farming going on. It’s harvest time,, and I saw a bunch of those big assed threshers or whatever they are harvesting the corn and the soybeans (turns out they rotate those two crops alternate years to replenish the nitrogen). It was actually pretty interesting to watch (at 65 mph ):
more later…..