From Sea to Shining Sea (Part 1)
This summer has involved a lot of travel.
It started with a two-week trip to Korea followed by a 71-day road
trip. We're back home now for a short break before the final leg of
this summer's journey: a 23 day, 220 mile backpacking trip along the John Muir Trail that takes us from the floor of the Yosemite Valley to Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States at 14,494 feet.
After returning from Korea we got some affairs in order, packed up, and then embarked on our road trip. Our goal was to leave San Diego, spend two months or so on the road, and then return. We had a couple friends and family members we wanted to see along the way and there were some particular sites we longed to visit, and we wanted to stay off the Interstates as much as possible and enjoy the road less traveled. Other than that the trip was to be an exercise in spontaneity. (And, yes, I am aware of the irony in planning to be spontaneous.)
Joining my wife and me on this road trip was our faithful dog Sam.
To maximize our packing space and to ensure comfort on those nights when we weren't staying with friends or family and were either out in the middle of nowhere or couldn't find a vacant motel, we build a bed with a false bottom for the minivan. This was constructed by buying three suitably sized coffee tables from IKEA, bolting them together, and then adding some 2x4s lengthwise as braces to support the tabletop and a few 4x4 columns to further support our weight on the bed. We added hinges on the two coffee tabletops at the front and back to ease loading and unloading from the back of the car and front seat.
We decided at the start of our trip that our first destination would be the Grand Canyon. While my wife has been there on more than one occasion, I had only seen it from 30,000 feet while flying from San Diego to points eastward. We took a couple of leisurely days to get there and then spent two days there hiking around the South Rim and taking in the sights. It was the week leading up to Memorial Day Weekend, so it was a little busier than I would have liked, but despite the crowd we were able to secure a campsite in the park and try out the bed for the first time. The bed mattress was two exercise mats with an egg carton foam on
top of those. It was virtually as comfortable as a real bed. We did not
feel the hard coffee table surface underneath the mattress and this
custom bed was about the size of a full size bed. The only problem was that it got down into the 40s at night and we had only brought a flimsy blanket!
After the Grand Canyon we drove down to Phoenix to visit some family, see the city, and do some hiking. We picked up a thicker blanket and got to enjoy our last bites of In-N-Out burgers until August. We then decided to check out the Santa Fe National Forest. This took a couple of days to get there and included a stop by the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park in eastern Arizona.
We hiked a short trail in Santa Fe National Forest and camped there for the night. It was another cold night, dipping down into the 50s, but the extra blanket we picked up made our second night of camping much more enjoyable. The least enjoyable part about camping or backpacking, for me, is the lack of a shower in the morning. I don't mind sleeping in the car or in a tent. Pit toilets smell, but those are no big deal for me. Having to dig my own holes is a little less enjoyable, but those all pale in comparison to having to go through an entire day (or several days when backpacking) without having a refreshing shower.
After Santa Fe we spent a few days getting to San Antonio, Texas. We passed through Rosewell, New Mexico, the capital for UFO theorists and explored Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Carlsbad Caverns are a cave that include a series of extremely large caverns that are fairly level and unobstructed with interesting stalactite and stalagmite formations. The cave is also home to a very numerous bat population, which presents a very, very foul smell for the first quarter mile into the cave, or so (assuming you're taking the natural entrance rather than using the elevator that leads directly to the caverns). On the plus side, each night around dusk the park holds a Ranger talk at the cave entrance where you can watch the 400,000 bats emerging for their nightly feeding.
We spent a few days in San Antonio doing what any first time tourist would: visiting the Alamo and San Antonio's River Walk. I was surprised at how small the Alamo was. Having only seen it on TV, the shots always make it look larger than life. But the famous front of the Alamo is really a small church that is about the size houses built in California back in the 1950s and 60s. Also, the area around the Alamo is where all of the cheesy tourist stops are located. The "get your photo with Davey Crockett!" type places. And while the River Walk was certainly catering to tourists, it was more in the form of restaurants that blended in with the environment. We actually happened to be in town on Friday night and got to enjoy the lively nighttime weekend scene on River Walk.
After our visit in San Antonio we drove east to Houston, where family friends awaited. They showed us around Houston and Kemah and then suggested some sites to visit. We went to NASA's Johnson Space Center and did the touristy stuff: explored the exhibits in the museum, took the tram ride around the facility, went to the Mission Control viewing room, and ate the God awful food in their cafeteria.
From Houston we drove to New Orleans along the Gulf of Mexico in southern Louisiana. It was interesting seeing the houses on the beach there. Some were on the ground level but most were built atop steel or wood stilts. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason why some houses were on stilts and others not. I imagine those on stilts were more recently built or had been rebuilt since hurricane damage, but what was odd was that there were plenty of new, expensive looking homes sitting on the ground. And to top it off, the home that was one of the highest built and built atop steel stilts rather than wood, was an old, not well cared for mobile home that probably cost less than the support system installed.
In any event, we spent a couple of days getting to the Big Easy. It was my wife's first trip there and my first one since Katrina. I had been to New Orleans once before in April 2001 for the ASP.NET Connections conference and remembered the large crowds in the French Quarter rollicking well past 3:00 AM. On the last full day of the conference we (the attendees) were met by a high school marching band which led us into the French Quarter and to the House of Blues, where there was food and live music.
This visit I didn't know what to expect. We ended up staying in a hotel downtown, a block away from the French Quarter and a few blocks south of Bourbon Street. There were still some boarded up shops, and many of the locals on the streets looked tired, hot, and downtrodden. The French Quarter was pretty tame (although it being early June might have had more to do with that than the drop in tourism due to Katrina and the ensuing problems). During the day it was pretty quiet, most places were closed. At night it livened up a bit, but nowhere near the crowd level or energy I remembered. Although we did happen to see a marching band leading yet a throng of conference attendees!
Despite the lower energy level on Bourbon Street, we still had a fun time. We walked around a bit and scoped out the various spots before settling on a little bar where a band was playing some lively upbeat jazz and dixie land-type music. By 11:00 PM things started to die down at the bar and on Bourbon Street, at which point we headed back to the hotel.
After New Orleans, we headed north up to Missouri where my folks live. On the way we spent a few days in Hot Springs, Arkansas, which is home to the Hot Springs National Park. The mountains in the park serve as natural hot springs, emitting mineral rich water that, at one time, was prescribed as a therapy for arthritic patients. Consequently, many large and ornate bathhouses were built in this area, piping in the hot water directly from the spring. Today only one of these remain open, the rest shut down as medical technology advanced and drugs were used to treat such symptoms.
As luck would have it, Hot Springs was home to a Harley Davidson motorcycle convention that weekend, so it was noisy and we were only able to get a hotel for one night. The other night we spent camping in the park, which was brutal since Arkansas in the summer is hot, humid, and sticky. Virtually all of the bikers were men and women in their 50s and 60s. Much more gray and thinning hair than not.
From Hot Springs we drove up the scenic Highway 7 in northern Arkansas up into Missouri and to my folks place at the Lake of the Ozarks, where we stayed for a week and boated and fished and spent time with family.
As we prepared to leave Missouri, we had, by this time, spent four weeks on the road. Our next destination was Memphis so as to soak in the blues... I'll chronicle that leg of our trip in a future posting...
UPDATE: Read Part 2....