Archive for September, 2008

Now we know what it’s like to drive through the desert! It’s hot and it’s dry… go figure. It’s actually really hot. I know it sounds silly to mention that, but really… it’s extremely hot. And dry. If you wish to test it out yourself, here’s the route you should take.

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We left Bakersfield this morning and drove through the desert on our way to Nevada. We saw about a million wind power plants in Tehachapi!

We also got to see some Joshua trees near the highway! This was very exciting because we thought we wouldn’t see any (since we ended up skipping Joshua Tree National Park). One Joshua tree grove was near a rest stop so we got close enough to hug one!

Our route took us alongside (but not into) the Mojave National Preserve (and not, alas, through Death Valley — we considered going that route instead, but it just added too much time). Hopefully some other trip can include those adventures!

Before we knew it, we were in Las Vegas!!

We’re staying at Bally’s. We chose this place on the strip solely because it hosts the show we saw tonight, Jubilee!

Brian and I really wanted to see a classic Vegas show involving showgirls with huge feather headdresses, sequins, and crazy over-the-top tackiness (often referred to here as “opulence”). You guys, Jubilee! could not have been a more perfect choice. It has been running in Las Vegas since 1981 and has seven different acts, including performances by former Polish hand balancing champions, an aerial silk artist, and a juggler; the main company enacts the stories of Samson and Delilah and the Titanic, among other things. Please don’t ask me to try to explain it. I’m just not up to the task. But it was like opener!! Finale! Finale again! Another finale! Juggling! Finale!!!! Also, we were in row H (maybe 50 feet from the stage), and the woman sitting in front of me was totally using opera glasses (dude). The show was both amazing and horrible, as Brian said.

Moving on, I also have to report that shortly before the curtain went up on Jubilee!, I started feeling pretty sick (most likely from a dubious taco I ate for lunch). Unfortunately, my problems persisted into our post-show exploration of the Las Vegas strip, so we couldn’t quite do it up the way we wanted to. We did go into some of the other places nearby, and we did attempt to play some slots (and we came out about even, I think). I don’t really understand 99% of the slot machines here; they seem pretty complicated and confusing, or maybe I’m just unfamiliar. But anyway, we both enjoyed seeing the fountains at the Bellagio!

The fountains put on a show every few minutes set to music and everything and it’s really fun and pretty.

Now we’re in our hotel room, which is by far the nicest room we’ve had so far on this trip (but not the most expensive, by the way! Hotels in Vegas are cheap; I think they just [rightly] assume they’ll get more of your money from gambling, food, shows, etc.). I’m hoping tomorrow I’ll feel up to seeing a little more Vegasy things before we move on. Whew!

Wait until you see all the driving we did today! We pretty much covered all of central California. I feel like I can accurately describe our trip today with one word: Orchards. This of course doesn’t count our beginning point or our destination, but everything in between was pretty much filled with orchards. I felt like Tom Joad rolling in from depression-era Oklahoma looking for work. Luckily we don’t have the economic woes to worry about these days that they did back then. Hrm.

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Note: I’m giving Isabel a break from the blog tonight. She’s done the lion’s share of writing up to this point and she deserves a night off. Any and all typos, factual errors, exaggerations, mistakes, fabrications, or other general sloppiness should be blamed on me.

Since we didn’t get into San Francisco until late last night, we thought we’d give it another pass this morning before heading back east. I’ve never been there before, so I wanted to just get a quick taste of it… something to hold me over until we can come back for a proper visit. We decided to hit all of the obvious spots:

Golden Gate Bridge

Alcatraz

Lombard Street

TransAmerica Building

The thing I will remember most, though, is an unintentional turn we took down Filbert Street.

I know it doesn’t convey in the picture, but the hill is so steep, you can’t see the road below us. It was much like being on a rollercoaster, but way scarier. Luckily we had the breaks checked on Pearl before the trip.

Once I got my fill of the city, we were on the road again. This part of California is dry. Really dry.

My aunt Ginny said that they haven’t had rain since March, and that it was typical. Yikes.

After several hours on the road, we reached the base of the Sequoia National Forest.

While it’s not quite as steep or windy as Rt 1, the road into the park is not for the meek. Many, many switchbacks and S-curves are your payment (along with the $20 entrance fee) to see some of the most amazing forests you will ever see. Oh, and also wildlife. Isabel and I had yet another encounter. As you may recall, we’ve already seen deer, antelope, bison, elk, moose, seals, and pelicans. Now we can add bears to the list. Are you kidding me? Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I would actually be in a situation where I was within a few feet of a wild bear–or two.

We have been having a healthy debate over whether these were two baby bears or a mother and her cub. Anyone out there with an expert opinion (ahem, Kenton) should feel free to chime in.

As if we’re not feeling skittish enough from our death-defying drive up the mountain, or our harrowing encounter with vicious (and adorable) man-eating bears, now it turns out that the mountain is on fire.

We passed a sign that warned us of “Smoke Ahead” and then saw that there were about 4 guys working on the situation… we felt pretty confident that they had it under control, so we moved on to the main attraction of the day: the General Sherman.

(Isabel is making me own up to the slight distortion above. We actually saw the smoke BEFORE we saw the cuddly, angry bears. I just think it works better, narratively, the way I wrote it. She’s such a stickler for the facts.)

Not only is the General Sherman the biggest tree in the world, it is the largest living thing on this planet.* Its measurements are: 274 feet high, 36 feet across its base, and has a total trunk volume of over 52,000 cubic feet. Whew. Plus, it’s top-heavy. The park ranger told us that the biggest danger to the sequoias is their weight. They don’t taper like most trees, and they hold most of their weight higher in the tree, so sometimes they just fall over. We were hoping that General Sherman wouldn’t choose this evening to decide that he was tired of standing. He didn’t disappoint.

Then the sun went down…

…and chaos reigned. Out of nowhere, we saw a bright flash of light and then the loud boom of thunder. Uh oh. We raced up the steep trail to try to make it to the car before the rain hit. More lighting, more thunder. Isabel nearly had an asthma attack due to the high elevation (the air is thinner at 7000 feet above sea level). Then, about half way up the trail, the rain hit. We didn’t get drenched, but we weren’t completely dry either. We finally made it back to the car and began the two hour journey down the other side of the mountain. Another great day was over.

*factoid taken from the back of a postcard, so it must be true.

Hooray! We’ve finally reached our goal of making it across the country! We’ve seen both ends of route 50, driven countless hours, and touched both the Atlantic and now the Pacific. But I guess our work is only halfway done… we now have to drive back. Here is today’s route log, which took us as far west as we’ll be going this trip!

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We checked an important item off our list before leaving Sacramento:

We had to go to the western origin of Rt. 50 to see the Ocean City sign. Remember this one (from OC)?

So now we’ve closed the loop (sort of). Hooray!

After that, we stopped by Brian’s aunt Ginny and uncle Joe’s house in Brentwood, Calif. We enjoyed a truly lovely visit with them and with Brian’s other aunt Mill and uncle Rich, who are here visiting Ginny and Joe:

After that, we drove up to the Point Reyes National Seashore, where we finally touched the Pacific Ocean!

Point Reyes looks like a really fabulous place to vacation; it has many beautiful features, including crazy-looking cliffs and a lighthouse and an elk refuge. For us, though, it was just so cold (surprise: the Pacific Ocean is extremely cold north of San Francisco in late September!!) and so cloudy that we couldn’t really enjoy the full effect. Hopefully someday we can go back!

After that, we drove along Highway 1 for a bit. On our way out, we saw some pelicans:

and seals!

After that, things got a little dicey. Highway 1 is famous for winding its way around cliffs near the ocean. It’s so pretty!

But it’s soooo winding! Between the very curvy, frequent turns and my fear that we were going to fall off the cliff (but mostly the twisty turns), I felt really carsick for the first time on this trip (remarkable considering my history). That route was so intense that even Brian felt carsick. We were not very into that! So I think we may scrap plans we had to drive down Highway 1 down to Big Sur. We also realized tonight that we have to be back in D.C. in just two weeks — less than that, actually — so we need to start figuring out what we can skip. We lost quite a few days to illness in South Dakota, and the whole first leg of Michigan was not in our initial plans, so we want to make sure we use our remaining time well!

Anyway, we attempted to go to Muir Woods on our way down from Point Reyes, but alas, we arrived 10 minutes before closing time, so we weren’t allowed in. (In fact, Brian wants to be sure I share that after noticing us take a flash photo of the sign outside the park, the park ranger manning the gate accused us of flicking a cigarette butt into the trees! Oy vey!) So we just kept on driving until we got to San Francisco (via the Golden Gate Bridge):

We stopped in town for a quick dinner and a fresh air/carsickness recovery break and considered staying in SF for the night, but ultimately we decided to stay outside the city at the Super 8 in San Bruno. Right now we’re working on figuring out our next steps. Stay tuned!

Can you believe we’ve actually made it to California?! No, we haven’t touched the Pacific Ocean yet… that will have to wait until tomorrow, but we are here. Once we made it to Idaho, it feels like we rocketed through the west. Do you think that’s because the average speed limit out here is 75 mph?! Could be.

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Today was mostly just a driving day, so I don’t have too many interesting stories to report. We began the day in Nevada and drove through miles and miles of deserty Nevada-ness:

We took a quick detour through Reno, but there was a huge street festival going on, so we couldn’t really check anything out. Sorry, Reno!

Shortly thereafter, we found ourselves in California!!

That was an important milestone for us… the goal was coast to coast, and now we’ve hit our west-most state. Hooray!

Shortly after we crossed into California, we had to go through this checkpoint thingy, which looked like a tollbooth plaza but wasn’t. A guy there asked us where we were from and whether we had any animals, plants, or fresh fruit in the car (um… is crossing the state line of California like going to Canada??), then inspected our trunk for gypsy moths before allowing us to pass. It was weird. Can someone explain to me what that was about?

Anyway, we passed inspection, so we were allowed to drive along and enjoy the sunset and palm trees along the way to Sacramento.

We’re now at the lovely Sunset Inn & Suites in West Sacramento. Tomorrow we will touch the Pacific!

During our drive today, we finally passed into the Pacific time zone. We are now three hours behind the East Coast. It’s been great passing through each of these zones as it gives us an extra hour each time. Coming home will be a different story, however… losing three hours will certainly be a challenge. Here’s the log for today:
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We left Jackson Hole this morning, and soon we were in Idaho!

Check out these amber waves of grain:

But when you think of Idaho, you don’t think of grain, do you? Neither do we. So we went to the Idaho Potato Museum in Blackfoot, Idaho!

The museum contains the world’s largest potato crisp:

And a huge collection of vintage potato mashers:

We also got to watch a video produced by the Idaho Potato Commission all about how potatoes are grown and harvested and see a lot of old-school harvesting equipment. Then we got to go to the potato gift shop! They have a variety of potato items such as potato-shaped soap, potato-shaped recipe cards, and this:

It’s potato fudge shaped like a baked potato in foil with butter and sour cream! NICE!

We also each received boxes of freeze-dried hashbrowns for visiting the museum — delivered to us in a genuine Idaho potato sack:

We drove through some really beautiful parts of Idaho. Check out this crazy bridge we drove over:

It’s the Hansen Bridge, it goes over the Snake River canyon near Twin Falls, and it is over 400 feet tall!

Eventually we crossed over into Nevada:

Now we’re at a Days Inn in Elko, Nev. Tomorrow’s another driving day!