Seattle Arrival, The Drool Cycle, Infuriating Facial Hair, Etc.

We have finished our 3 week journey having ceased driving at our intended destination at about 6.30 PM Pacific Time. It’s a little saddening as our surroundings will be the same every day instead of something new and exciting (except Kansas) everyday. Although, to be fair, Seattle’s offerings should keep us entertained for the next few time increments…and then…!
We do want to get around to see more of the Northwest Coast (Oregon, Washington, British Columbia) and other road trips of shorter length will be undertaken. Our position also puts us in good stead for flights to Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, China, Alaska, and Hawaii. Of course these opportunities will have to wait a while before we can set off on them.
—
Over the course of our switching of the driving responsibilities the passenger would occasionally grasp the luxury of a nap. Oddly enough neither of us would doze off for too long a duration. Once I was out for 10 minutes. I felt dead tired, closed my eyes, and awoke 10 minutes later well-rested, invigorated, and with a little puddle of drool on the neck pillow. This has happened more than once. REM Cycle sleep happens 3 to 4 times over a regular sleep period and normally takes some time to get into. Studies have shown that sleep deprivation can induce the REM cycle to occur more quickly one study even going as far as to describe a method where the body can effectively function on 6 evenly spaced apart naps of 30 minutes a day (that’s 3 total hours) given a dedicated training of the body to accept this cycle. I have not trained my body accept crazy sleep styles and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t undergo REM cycle sleep within a few minutes of shuteye. So we have The Drool Cycle. The mode of sleep where your body loses all ability to effectively operate your mouth and it’s salivary operations so that you begin dribbling like a Harlem Globetrotter. This can occur pretty quickly within the onset of sleep (as told above), but shouldn’t be confused with day-to-day mismouthed salivations. Although another explanation could be that the brain goes into overdrive to come up with a competent excuse for the wet spot connected by a silvery strand to your mouth, but at this point Aubrey and I are well aware of each other’s sialorrhea.
—
I have not shaved since we left Hudson, NH. That’s 3 whole weeks of unshorn face. The description is spotty at best. I can grow a nice chin beard, capable mustache, and visible sideburns. Anything else is maddeningly inoperable. Sure, there’s visible hair growth, but it just looks random hair clippings have become attached to my cheeks and neck. There is more hair on my chin than there is on the rest of my face. So I will be shaving when I build up the strength to lift a razor.
—
We have developed severe cases of insanity and/or mental incapability during the trip.
-We passed a Public Transport Bus in Albuquerque and Aubrey read “Get Relief at Happy Feet” and I heard “Get Really Fat Happy Feet.” They sound exactly the same.
-I misread a Drunk Driver sign as “Report Drunk Beavers; Dial 911″
-Many vans, trucks, buses, etc. have “How Is My Driving? (Phone #)” stickers, but we were at one point behind one with “How Am I Driving?” This nearly killed Aubrey.
-For some reason there was a running theme of us pretending to talk like Rosie Perez from “Do The Right Thing” especially when she mentions Spike Lee’s character, Mookie. Eventually we misspoke and said ‘Wookie’ and now if you replace all instances of Spike Lee with Chewbacca you will have a glorious recreation of the movie.
-One summer my cousin, David, visited my family and he brought a Trance CD. This set my brother and I off on a weird Trance/Techno phase that has since petered out (somewhat). With all the music that was played there were a few of these such CDs heard. You wouldn’t be able to catch me, my brother, or my cousin dead on a dance floor, let alone in a club considering that any of the rhythm that we do have is something akin to rigor mortis. Aubrey bore with me while I relived some moments of my awkward mid-teen years.
—
So here we are.

Route 1: The Neverending Hairpin

We set off from San Simeon on Tuesday unwittingly about to embark on the most ridiculous expanse of road imaginable. At this point Route 1 and Highway 101 are separated by an array of insurmountable hills and mountains and so we wouldn’t be able to reach a level or straight road until we passed through Monterey and San Francisco. The California coastline is remarkable and coupled with the cliffs and mountains that run along it make it that much more impressive. There are a few small towns and even a sprinkling of random houses along the way. Big Sur is also on this portion of the route, a location beloved by writers such as Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller, and also by surfers. The road is a bit up and down and employs a few weaves, but for the most part is an easy drive…besides the rock and mudslides and erosion affecting the southbound lane (sometimes it becomes one lane as workers rebuild sections). Reaching the Carmel-Monterey area (home of Pebble Beach for you golfers) the road becomes easier and safer and leads you through San Francisco to the Golden Gate Bridge (toll free northbound, at least the day we went).
A few miles after crossing the bridge we followed Route 1 off from 101 and discovered what an unremitting pile of turning it becomes. You basically have to drive from the east side of the northern peninsula to the west side and for the beginning you drive up…and then discover that going down to the coast is about the single most insane adventure ever. It winds, weaves, serpentines, slithers, hairpins, and all those other bizarre movements that roads make. By the time you’ve gotten the 3-4 miles across the peninsula you’ve changed direction 20-50 times and driven 32 miles (these are rough estimates). Then you move on and resume your old favorite of driving north along the coast. This of course starts off easing you through more uberwinding for a few too many more miles. You pass the Bolinas Lagoon, which is just a large puddle and actually get to enjoy some normal (straightish) roads for a bit. But then! Winding roads, straightish, winding, and so on. You aren’t exactly along the coast for a bunch of this as you go inland and past some lagoons and enclosed bays for a bit, but when you do return to the coast you are definitely aware of it. Pretty much when you begin incessantly going in and out of hairpins you have returned to the coast. Oh, and you can see the sea again. By sea I mean ocean. The Pacific Ocean. We’ve been driving alongside the Pacific Ocean, which is kind of really awesome.
Anyway, I drove this route on Tuesday up to Fort Bragg and Aubrey got to experience a little of the madness as she finished off our section of California coastal Route 1 on Wednesday. So we each got to experience the madness from the driver and passenger seat. I found that from the passenger seat , as you travel up the hillsides (really enormous hills or maybe they are mountains) you are thinking “This will hurt more” and as you go down them you get the reassurance of increasing safety. That is of course due to the fact that at any point in time you are inches away from a sharp drop into a valley. Sure, there are trees in the not-so-gentle slope, but they can hardly hold a car. As a driver, all I can recall thinking is “JUST BUILD A FREAKING BRIDGE!” You drive down from height X, turn at a hairpin, and then drive up to reach height X…a bridge would solve this and at a cost only to California taxpayers.
So, in summation: Route 1 is the world’s most insanely convoluted and complex Möbius strip (yes, the roads do curve in three dimensions and seemingly back to somewhere you just came from).
We did take time out of our trip today to travel the Avenue of the Giants (conveniently located alongside our planned route), which is a road allowing you to travel through forests of redwood trees. It’s a 31 mile stretch along Route 1/101 that passes a handful of small towns (i.e. food when necessary) and campgrounds as you feel incredibly diminished in sight of these unending towers. Walking through parts of the forest is like existing in another world as they are kept in excellent condition and are quite serene. And, yes, I did pee on one…it is mine now.

Welcome to Hollywood, Fatty!

So, on Friday night Mike and I showed up in Los Angeles to visit a friend for the weekend.  First, we stayed in Barstow, California Thursday night, which is not that far out from the Los Angeles Megalopolis.  I think that to get to our destination we needed to drive 100 miles.  However, we decided to drive the rest of Route 66, which ended anticlimacticly with us driving by the Santa Monica Pier in the dark while it was raining.  Los Angeles is beautiful 95% of the time, but when we show up, it’s raining.  Go figure.

From the Santa Monica Pier, we turn around, and proceed back to our friend’s house, which is about 5 miles from there, at most, and it takes us about an hour, in the glorious and famous LA traffic.  I guess on the plus side we got the full experience.

Yesterday was nicer.  We slept in, hung out around the house, and then went for a driving tour of Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and Burbank, coming back on Mulholland Drive, which was pretty awesome.  Lee told us that although it sucks a little that it was raining when we got there, it was actually a good thing, because we were able to see a lot further from the hills, as the rain washed the smog out of the sky.

One thing that I expected, but was still a little surprised by is the number of weight-loss advertisements that are everywhere.  At home, I would see the occasional billboard for some weight loss pill or another, but here within the span of about 5 minutes I saw 10 ads for lap bands, which are the things you get surgically put around your stomach so you can’t eat as much.  It’s just strange.  Also, I don’t want you to worry that this mindset is having an effect on me: last night for dinner we had sausages and twice-baked potatoes. 

Today it is sunny and beautiful, and it is nice to take a few days off of driving before we head up the coast tomorrow.  We are expecting at our current pace that we should show up in Seattle at the end of the week.  Huzzah!

Las Vegas: Excuse Me While I Whip This Out

You all know the stereotypes, the movies, the songs, the condemnations, and some of you have even actually been there. We were only there for about 20 hours, but all those things are pretty much true, if only for the fact that so much can happen due to the sheer amount of people passing through. But enough of serious observation.
Las Vegas is a depressingly magical place. The recent James Cameron movie, Avatar, released a spat of depression cases for fans who felt remorse at the fact that there is nowhere similar in beauty to the movie’s alien planet, Pandora, and in a way this is applicable to Las Vegas. You will not find a city so dedicated to one human obsession in the most insanely ostentatious manner. Sure there are casinos all over Nevada and on Indian Reservations, but they really don’t compare. Despite all the stories of the obsessed or addicts losing their life’s savings you really can’t go wrong if you limit yourself and take in a show or two.
Then there is the larger picture. Vegas is sprawled across a massive expanse of desert (not to mention many other cities throughout NM, AZ, and CA) and uses an obscene amount of water. Probably every single casino operates some variety of fountains, which includes the biggies at the Mirage, Bellagio, and Treasure Island (to name a few). Most of the cars I saw and every single one of the the many stretch limousines were grotesquely sparkling clean (in sharp contrast to our still dirty VW), which, coupled with the sand and dust that surrounds the city, points to a thriving car wash market. There are efforts being made to relieve the aquatic strain that the city creates, but the damage has already been done (again, not by LV alone) as the Colorado River’s current delta is a mere fraction of what it used to be and has crippled what was once a lush section of Mexico. Electricity consumption is also a massive drain on the system and it doesn’t take a genius to realize that Vegas is an enormous bajillion watt lightbulb. Oh, and while there are just about way too many homeless and needy patrolling the world (even in Vegas) we’ve got tens of thousands of tourists chucking millions of dollars away each day and returning to their overly cushy hotel rooms. But hey, it’s not like these problems aren’t being addressed. There are measures being taken to ease the strain the city creates on water and power usage and the charity…some people win big and donate and there are many charities that operate in Sin City.
Vegas is also superlatively fun. Besides mindlessly gambling there are a litany of shows to watch including most of what Cirque Du Soleil offers (seriously, there are about 6 shows on offer). Prostitution is legal and not too subtly advertised (those aren’t newspaper racks…boob racks!), so if that’s your thing…congrats? You can walk along the strip and watch people work their way down a shopping list of bad decisions. Case in point: we passed a drunk man (bottle in brown paper bag, slurring spanish) get talked into a store selling tickets to shows and events…why not top off a night of drinking with a $50-$150 ticket to a show you won’t remember/enjoy (or get thrown out of)? Don’t have enough money? You can pretty much find any means necessary to pawn belongings or cash paychecks…probably even getting rid of one of those unnecessary kidneys (cutting down on the alcohol will help you in the long run anyway). The Strip consists of Food, Room, Gambling, and Money-Acquisition…and ladies…of the night. Three out of five ain’t bad.
It is a thoroughly enjoyable place and outside of the main drag there are other things to do. The weather is pleasant and probably slightly unbearable during the summer, but it wouldn’t be a bad place to live. Although the gambling environment and some of the people it attracts (popped collars, faux hawks, someone who looks like they just spent more than your life’s earnings on plastic surgery) would probably turn me into an excessively bitter and cynical person…don’t get me wrong, I am already slightly bitter and cynical (thank you, Mets and Islanders), but Vegas would just catapult me over the wall. A weekend visit would be awesome.
As we drove onto the strip Aubrey came to the realization that we could see Zumanity (Zoo Manatee?)…and so we did. It is one of Cirque Du Soleil’s many shows and is for “adults only.” Just some language…and man-asses, lady-butts, and upper halves. Suggestive phrasing. It was phenomenal. (Oh, Mike, you pervert) No, really, regardless of the countless nipples and near-unwanted phallus sightings (not “I nearly didn’t want to see it” but “I nearly saw it and didn’t want to”), the show is this crazy, awesome spectacle. Imagine that characters from The Matrix got together with a handful from mythology and had the world’s most bizarre orgy…
Wheee!
After the show we were pretty worn out (numerous days of driving and sight-seeing also helped) and didn’t really get into gambling. We played the penny slots for a bit and I was actually doing pretty well (up 106%…so $1.06) before I lost interest/Aubrey decided I should place the maximum bet of 90. We didn’t have the time or fortitude to get into anything else. I would have like to see how long I could go before losing all my chips in poker, but that could possibly take too long (I have won, but usually at the expense of people who were drunker than me – me being sober) and some of the slot style machines just look way too convoluted…like US Tax Code size manual convoluted. We decided that we should make a weekend trip and stay in a casino room sometime. Those $1 BJ signs at Sahara caught my eye. That’s BlackJack…they also offer $1 shots, beer, and hot dogs (not combined).
Oddlight: The Pirate show at Treasure Island Casino, in which we unwittingly walked out to pyrotechnics heating our faces off. This consists of a female crew on one ship, comprised of women with a skill set between that of a stripper and that of a singer/actress, pole dancing on the rigging while a male crew on the other ship, comprised of male actors whose sole abilities are pirate accent and speech (the women can’t do this for some reason), act piratey.
Highlight: Watching the fountain show outside the Bellagio. The iconic and idyllic scene in the 2001 Ocean’s Eleven with DeBussy’s Clair de Lune played through my head. I was really hoping that Clair de Lune would play, but instead the speakers were pumping out that insufferable Shania Twain song. She almost ruined it for me.
So anyway, we went to Las Vegas and did next to no gambling.
WAIT, WHAT THE HELL! BALLS!

The Grandest Canyon

We’ve made several choices in the past few days that I”m really happy about.  First, we decided to hoof it to Flagstaff so that we could go to the Grand Canyon from there, and second, we decided to stay in Flagstaff for a second night, so that we could take our time at the canyon, and really relax and enjoy ourselves.  Also, we made the choice to go to Las vegas from there, and the decision to buy tickets to Zumanity, a risque Cirque du Soliel show there.  All good choices.  Mike will update in a little bit about Las Vegas, and I get to talk about the Grand Canyon!

Things like the Grand Canyon turn me into a child.  I am so amazed by the world around me sometimes that it’s borderline overwhelming, and this is a perfect example.  It was my turn to drive up to the National Park and back, and I was almost bouncing out of my seat the entire hour and a half or so that it took to get there.  The terrain in that area of Arizona is also very unusual.  Between Flagstaff and the southern gate of the park, you drive through forests, over mountains, and through deserts, all in about 85 miles.   At times, there were snow drifts 6 or 7 feet high, and at other times there was no snow, and desert/brush plants.  Very interesting.

When we got to the park, we bypassed the IMAX movie at the visitor center, and went straight to the edge of the canyon.  As I was still bouncing, Mike was probably getting irritated with my excitement.  Even though I had seen pictures, and pretty much knew what to expect, I was still amazed when we first got to the edge.  The space is so huge, beautiful, colorful, peaceful, and transcendent.  It looks like nothing else on earth.  So we started taking picture after picture, as is our style, as well as everyone else who visits there.  At one point, I was waiting for these Korean boys to finish taking their pictures so I could walk by to the end of the viewing platform, when one of them turned to me and asked “Excuse me, can we have a picture with you?”  Clearly not wanting to deny them that privilege, I agreed.  Next thing I know, I am standing between two korean guys, while another one snaps pictures, and their entire tour group beams happily at our little bonding moment.  I look over and see Mike laughing, and when it’s all done, I ask him, “did you get a picture of that?”  Did he?  Of course not.  For the record, that is also why I had to buy a picture of myself kissing the Blarney Stone in Ireland, because he didn’t think he needed to take a picture.  Silly guy.

We alternated driving through the park and gazing into the canyon, which made for a really pleasant afternoon.  At one of the parking lots, I was enjoying the fact that we seemed like the car with the most distant license plates.  Most were from Arizona, Nevada, or California.  Then I saw one from Alaska.  Hm…  They had to drive further… Then I saw one from Hawaii.  Well, we’re really not even in contention anymore.

The ride home was almost as amazing as driving through the park, because the views are so amazing.  When we did get back to our hotel, we relaxed for a little bit, then walked across the street to the Galaxy Diner, a route 66 and Classic Movies themed diner, which served excellent diner fare food.  I had a chicken-fried chicken meal which was outstanding, and Mike gorged himself on breakfast food.  I think when all was said and done, he ate 4 pancakes, 2 eggs, 4 slices of bacon, and 2 biscuits with gravy.  In his defense, he ate the biscuits for breakfast the next morning.  He was excited because he loves breakfast food, but is not generally awake when breakfast happens for normal people.  Ah well.

The next day we left Flagstaff, and decided to head to Las Vegas for a night since we have until Friday to get to Los Angeles to visit Mike’s friend.  We drove through a lot more desert, and over the hoover dam in order to get there.  A great deal of construction was going on near the Dam, so it took a while to get there, but it was nice because it was about 60 degrees and was sunny and we were in good moods.  Anyhoo, then we got to Vegas, and I’ll let Mike take care of that one…

Some quick thoughts…

- An adventure is not an adventure without a few changes in plans.  We had originally planned on going to the Grand Canyon Wednesday or Thursday, but when we found out it was going to snow from Tuesday night to Wednesday, we decided to book it to Flagstaff, Arizona so we could go straight there this morning.  Which means that over the past 2 days, we’ve driven something like 770 miles.  But that’s cool.  Now we’re here, and we don’t have to be in LA until Friday, so we can take it easy the next couple days.

- I realized something bizarre while we were doing laundry yesterday.  Yesterday was February 1st.  We left for Europe 10 months ago yesterday, and when you count in camping trips, family visits, and this trip, we have been living out of suitcases for over 6 of the past 10 months.  Which made me really happy that I have someone in my life to share this madness, who can match my expectations for what I want out of my life, and enjoys it.  <3  I couldn’t be happier.

- Arizona has an aversion to public toilets, and likes to tease weary travelers.  To this end, they will put up signage for gas stations, and they will be all lit up, but then when you pull up, there is nothing on the shelves, nobody inside, like a scene out of a horror movie.  I don’t want any part of that.  Finally we found a real one, which is lucky, because I was ready to make Mike pull over to the side of the road.

-Albuquerque is a really cute place.  It was the first place that we saw large numbers of adobe houses with cacti out front.  Awesome.  Also, the guy who gave us our oil change told us that to get real new mexican food, we should go past town and to one of the reservations, because the New Mexican food in Albuquerque was to “american.”  I told him we were from NH, and so anything here would probably be better than the southwestern food we get up there.

-For the record, I don’t hate Kansas as much as Mike did.  I thought it was pretty.  Pretty boring, Pretty flat, Pretty smelly at times, but also just regular-type pretty.  There is an area we drove through called the Gypsum Hills, which had these beautiful red cliffs, hills, and buttes.  All in all, I didn’t think Kansas was so bad.

-Now, the panhandle of Oklahoma is a different story.  That area was so eerily flat that you couldn’t see far enough to see where the flat ended.  Miles and Miles and Miles of flat farm land, periodically dotted by some tine factory town that springs up.  northern Texas is the same way.  A whole lot of not much.  Maybe this has to do with the fact that Mike was driving through Kansas and I drove through these states…

- Long hours of driving in a car without other people to talk to is slowly driving us mad.  More on this later, we need to get going to the Canyon!!!

Kansas: The Why Am I Here State

So that’s a clue into how much we like Kansas. We left Joplin around 11 and had no trouble getting out of the hotel parking lot. After checking the Oklahoma and Kansas road conditions online (information superhighway joke?) we decided to stick to Kansas and keep ourselves out of a state screwed over by ice. We did manage to get on Kansas’ portion of Route 66 but turned around after 100 yards. The main roads were all pretty much clear and 66 is unfortunately no longer a main road.
We entered Kansas and pass through Galena and Baxter City (tiny tiny places) before finding a road to take us across most of southern KS about 5-20 miles north of the OK border. This helped us discover the true identity of “The Sunflower State.” Boredom. There is literally nothing for miles everywhere. You drive 10 miles and are suddenly in danger of losing your mind. Not to mention an odor that occurs close to some towns. We stopped in Coffeyville to pick up lunch/breakfast and then drive 50 ft. to play with the windshield wipers and buy some more Washer fluid from an Auto Zone. Putting it lightly: Kansas smells like butt. Human butt…and yes, that is a disgusting comparison, but there is no other way to describe this horrible smell…and no, I’m not a expert on butt-smell (I want to get as fart away from here as possible), it’s just an educated guess.
Wichita is Kansas’ largest city at just under 375,000. A few other places are in the 100Ks and then it drops off. There are professional sports teams located in Kansas City, but most of them are located in the Missouri side. The MLS’s Kansas City Wizards (formerly Wiz, but changed due to trademark issues and not urine jokes) are the only top-tier professional team to play in Kansas…on the KS side of Kansas City. There is only on national park (Cimmaron Nation Grassland) and it is located all the way in the southwestern corner, presumably so that out of state visitors can spend as little time in Kansas as possible. It is possible that other states are as boring as Kansas and I imagine they could be North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and maybe even Oklahoma (what the hell is a Sooner…ah privileged individuals land grabbing from Native Americans…Reservations…permission of the US President, Grover Cleveland…Oklahoma: The Land-Whore State). No coincidence that they run north to south straight down the middle of the continental US.
I imagine that Kansas manages to save money by never having to spend on tourism. If they have a hot-line it probably just connects you to St. Louis, MO…or their tourist packages consist of bus tickets to Denver, CO. As a result they can spend extra money on things like roads…which, at least for the ones we traveled, are in excellent shape (unless it has something to do with how little traffic they see). Hey, I said something positive about Kansas.
Enough of one positive thing. Let’s Kansas Bash. Population of 2.8 million in an area of 82,277 square miles. As a comparison, New Hampshire has 1.325 million in an area of 9,350 square miles. NH isn’t the most densely populated state and especially so in it’s northern half. Kansas is just way beyond sparsely populated (ok, Wyoming is even worse, but at least it has Yellowstone). For a visual, go into an elementary school and bring a pair of scissors and a bag of candy. Find a classroom and in said classroom find a large pull down map of the USA. Start cutting out the states of Kansas and…say Connecticut and Rhode Island…maybe another…Indiana. If the kids try to get in your way just stiff arm them in the face (you’ve already trespassed). Take the bag of candy and chuck it against the opposite wall as hard as possible so that it bursts, the ensuing candy shower should get the children out of their seats. Now, commandeer any one of those little desks…if no one has come to take you away by now you probably have a few more minutes. Lay the states out on the desk in front of you and compare them…ridiculous, isn’t it? Kansas is HUGE. Peak in the desk, if there is a snack decide if you like it and depending on that decision, eat it. Find some tape and use it to reconnect CT, RI, and IN to their brothers and sisters…they have places of note and interest. Chuck KS in the garbage and don’t struggle with the police too much.
Or use the Internet.
We spent most of the drive surrounded by enormous fields or unused land, motoring along with only a few other vehicles seen every hour, and repeatedly commenting on the hawks, cows, birds, and oil derricks (Nodding Donkey). The hawks are oddly plentiful and sometimes perch on road mile markers (thinking “That’s the fastest cow I’ve ever seen” as we pass by), the cows have an embarrassment of riches in terms of acreage (one Rhode Island per cow), and the oil derricks are…Nodding Donkeys. Ah, the birds…those freaking birds. They are everywhere…specifically everywhere by the side of the road between the white line and where the grass beside the shoulder drops down. Driving a distance of ten miles will probably allow you to pass hundreds (of Alfred Hitchcock aficionados) of these little turds and your oncoming car causes them to scatter and there would always be at least one that flies across your car and then back to stay with the flock. We must have passed thousands of the things and invariably you’re going to hit one (that we did…only once, hooray). You can’t really brake or swerve to avoid them, because you would have to do so every half mile and that would get you no where or in the grill of a truck. The only thing you can do is cringe, croak “Urgg,” and hope that the one flying directly at the windshield isn’t going to join it’s friend that just got death-waffled on the car grill. I can only imagine what was going through that bird’s tiny brain as it fluttered towards the faces of two horrified travelers and narrowly missed becoming a feathery pizza sauce.
Looking at the post title I just realized that it could be misconstrued at philosophical. It isn’t. Kansas doesn’t come close to inspiring any philosophical inclinations whatsoever…and if it does…you’re on something (is boredom a drug?). Numerous times I wished we had just went with the icebound Oklahoma, but that may just have been half as boring and twice as dangerous (is twice “not dangerous” “not not dangerous”?). As boring as Kansas is during the day (except for random bird death excitement) it just becomes incredibly creepy at night, because then there is just nothing to see…just the road in your headlights.
We stopped for a place to stay in Kansas (oh my god, we’re still in Kansas?! Fudge hammer! Get me out of here! Dorothy…find me a tornado.) and settled upon the town of Liberal a few miles north of the OK border. There are about a bajillion roadside inns, motels, and hotels here and we picked the one that had an indoor-outdoor style (think roadside motel surrounded by walls and a roof, weird concept) based on amenities and price. Ok, price, pretty much everything offers free internet and a bed, which is all we need. We could have stayed at the Holiday Inn for twice as much as we paid for the Liberal Inn Hotel (of Redundancy) or 66% more than we would have paid for our backup options (Days Inn, Super 8). Just what is the Holiday Inn offering? The other two have free breakfast (which we don’t require) and the last Days Inn we stayed at had a “Funzone,” which was an enormous pool (of water) abetted by an area of pool tables (billiards) and arcade games (1980′s Star Wars game anyone?)…and that was a cheap room also. The Holiday Inn is either trying to end itself or it supplies each guest with their own personal Nodding Donkey.
The final highlight is the semi-pro baseball team of Liberal…the Bee Jays. I have a reason to return to Kansas.

Misery, the snow-me state…

Today was miserable.  Still is, kinda.

To follow on from Mike’s commentary yesterday, we want to follow Route 66 as much as we can, but we also are realistic.  We decided that we would drive old Route 66 during daylight hours, when we can actually see stuff, and then drive for about an hour after it gets dark down the main highways, to find a place to stay for the night.  That was all fine and dandy last night, when we were passing through St. Louis and the weather was lovely, but not so much today.

We left the motel (which was about 30 minutes west of St Louis) this morning at 11 am, and started following the Route 66 signs.  The signs appear and disappear at irregular intervals, giving us some beautiful views of the Ozarks as well as an uncomfortable sense that we may or may not have been going the right way.  Then we looked closer at some of the other signs and realized, after about an hour of driving, that we were now about 10 minutes west of St Louis, and heading east.  so we did the only reasonable thing, and stopped at Hardee’s for lunch.  Refueled, we headed westward once again, skirting Route 44 on old Route 66, happily reading billboards and watching the thermometer hover slightly above and below 20 degrees Fahrenheit. The highlight of the day was stopping at Meramec Caverns to check out the gift shop, and taking our pictures in front of the world’s largest rocking chair (apparently if we come back August 1st, we can sit in it).

Around the time we got to the chair, it started to snow.  Stubbornly, we continued driving down the back roads, sometimes very slowly.  However, our hopes were to get to Kansas today, so eventually we abandoned that idea.  Ahead we pressed, slowly and sadly in the increasing snow.  Mike called ahead to a few motels to find one with internet (which is how I’m writing this for you) so we set the tom tom, and headed onwards.

We take the exit: 1.8 miles to our room for the night.

Final turn: Uh oh.  This road hasn’t been plowed yet.  And this place is at the top of a hill.  And we have a station wagon full of stuff.  So I hop in the driver’s seat after a dozen or so failed attempts to get into the parking lot, and we eventually receive the help of not one, not two, but three random strangers, and probably 5 pounds of rock salt, we finally were parked. So we bring our things inside.

But we haven’t eaten yet.  So I walk down the hill to the ATM, then go into the office and buy us each a Maruchan Instant Lunch brand noodle soup, and that will have to do tonight.  Luckily we still had a couple cookies, some apples, and a few other snacks, but it is not a nice end for the past few hours.  For the record, we alternate driving days, and I have been driving every time we have to drive in snow.  Grumble grumble grumble.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better, but Route 66 goes from here through Oklahoma and Texas, and as of this morning, about 50 miles of the highways between Oklahoma City and Amarillo was closed due to ice and snow.  I think they’re open now, but I’m not too excited.  Oh well, we’ll see!

Finding Route 66

We have just spent our first day driving without a set destination. We moved from Joliet, Illinois all the way to Eureka, Missouri, but first we should fill you in on the previous day.

We left Aubrey’s Aunt and Uncle’s house just outside Cleveland, Ohio and set off for Chicago, Illinois around midday. Driving through northern Ohio and Indiana is kind of really uneventful. Besides, you know, seeing the Oscar-Mayer Weinermobile! Unfortunately it was on the side of the road with a tow truck obstructing our oncoming view, so by the time we realized what had fallen into our laps it was too late to snap a picture. The weather spent most of the time increasing it’s ability to snow and when we reached Chicago it seemed as if the Sears Tower just vanished into the clouds forming a conduit to the gods of Olympus.

We spent a few hours with our college friend, Sarah, and her beau, Kellen, having a scrumptious pizza and getting each other up to speed on the events of our lives. Ugh, couples pizza dinner with friendly banter discussing our lives…we’re so…grown-up.

Oh right, crossing from Indiana into Illinois made us time travelers as we fell behind by one hour. This of course led to the requisite Doctor Who references. Speaking of which, whilst driving through NY we passed a port-a-potty in a work zone and on our approach I could have sworn it was the TARDIS, even stopping mid-sentence to Aubrey to say “…wait, is that the TARDIS? Oh, it’s only a port-a-potty.” You may now make all your Professor What jokes now.

Our past day had us setting off from our Joliet Super 8 and seeking the mysterious Route 66. America’s most famous road is no longer the major thoroughfare it once was and in most (all?) states it passes through it has been superceded by a newer highway. In the case of Illinois I-55 is the new guy. Of course you can still travel the old boy, but the signposting goes from frequent to confusing. Not to mention there are different instances of 66 so you’ll find dual, brown “Old(e) Route 66″ signs with different year periods pointing you in different directions. Pick one and roll with it…until it ceases guiding you (GPS saves!). Anyway the road was broken from its two-lanes each way and reduced to one lane each way to save on costs. To further save on costs, instead of actually fixing the road (by parking your asphalt dump truck across one of the lanes) you’ll find a yellow warning sign making you aware of “Rough Roads.”

I had visions of 66 being this old road (it is old and is also a road, success so far) that zips peacefully through expanses of fields and random swathes of mom-and-pops and kitschy diners and restaurants (sort of right). Route 66 manages to pass through the middle of many Illinois towns causing the speed limits to drop and rise quite frequently. I-55 curves around town centers and keeps traffic moving swiftly. 66′s general path was a good one and as a result 66 and 55 spend a lot of time running directly next to each other. Sure, to mix it up 66 will hop from one side of 55 to the other because…well, it’s a bizarrely insane route. So you’ll get a nice view of endless fields on one side and a pleasant reminder of how slow you’re going on the other. When you reach a town you spend time cutting through housing to get from one section of 66 to another or passing by small businesses, most of which are neither mom-and-pops nor kitschy diners. Passing through the small cities like Bloomington-Normal or Springfield you spend an even greater deal of time following the 66 signs in odd directions because straightforwardness is next to something besides what these towns can accomplish.

I bring you to Pontiac, Illinois, home of Illinois’ Route 66 museum. Here we stopped primarily with the hope that we’d get a map to more accurately reign us into Route 66′s odd movement (map, yes; help, kind of?). We walked through and the old lady running shop that day spent almost all of our 45 minutes there chasing us around talking our ears off about assorted miscellany tied into 66′s Illinois history. We eventually managed to leave (ok, she was really nice and helpful) and then made the light assumption of thinking the return to 66 would be easy. Our only real choice is to follow the signs to get us to old R66 and so we start with this. We reach a turn where a small inkling of a thought crosses both of our minds that “if we go straight, shouldn’t that take us to 66?” But instead we follow the signs until we reach an intersection that we recognize as one we went through to get to the museum having originally turned off of 66. And the sign is pointing us not in the direction that we now know we should go. We turn the correct way, return to 66, and then discover that had we gone straight where we had that inkling we would have reached 66 five minutes earlier and further along it. The only conclusion that we could come up with is that Pontiac is so boring that the inhabitants have resorted to trapping travelers in a loop so that they have to stop and ask for directions giving said inhabitants a chance to talk to someone (or badger them about Route 66 history).

This signage difficulty occurs in other towns/cities also and the best bet really is to either ignore the signs completely and wing it or find I-55 and wait for 66 to return to it’s side. Or you could just drive 55, it’s much faster.

Cliche!

And by that, I mean “Cleveland Rocks!”

Completely honestly, I mean that.  I have fallen in love with this great little city while we’ve been here for the past 24 hours.  We haven’t had too much time to wander around, but we really enjoyed the wandering that we did.  We are staying with my aunt and uncle in Lakewood, just west of Cleveland, and today we took the bus in, had lunch with my uncle, and wandered a bit.  There are so many beautiful buildings, and Lake Erie is very nice (though windy).  We would have enjoyed ourselves even more if it hadn’t been well below freezing for the whole day.  Nevertheless, we managed to keep warm in the public library, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Gift Store (because we didn’t want to pay $22 per person to go in), the Arcade and Terminal Tower, which are both shopping areas with hotels attached.  I’m getting sleepy now, so let’s be serious, what you really want to see is some pictures.  Here’s some Clevelandy fun!

Glittery Glassy Shopping Joy circa 1890!    (the Arcade)

Found these cute little guys by the Library

Mike is posing with the War Memorial

Mike Rocks Superbly

Me, not so much...

By the waterfront... caught the landing of his jump for joy

Terminal Tower is SO pretty!

My aunt and uncle took us out for a great dinner tonight at a locally run mexican restaurant Momocho.  (The goat cheese guacamole is to die for, and the mexican wrestling theme is pretty great.)  They have been so welcoming, and are sad to see us move on tomorrow.  Unfortunately, we are rolling stones, as it were.

For the record, according to googlemaps, we have so far driven about 845 miles, through 9 states (PA twice, and Delaware barely counts, but it does).  Tomorrow we head to Chicago and beyond, and the excitement continues!