Road Trip '14

Our drive from frigid Minneapolis to California this year was uneventful, the way you want a two thousand mile westward trek in January to be.

We set out in the dark, coffee and conversation getting us through the darkness into the first light of day.  I told Carol that I felt a certain reluctance about leaving.  It's a sadness I first noticed the night before a wilderness canoe trip a few years ago, and it has visited me on every departure in recent years.  We leave behind our son, our daughter, her husband, our grandchildren, our friends, our day-to-day life.  There is a soft pang of loss, even though the event of travel is something to celebrate.  There is really no explaining it.  I myself think that it has something to do with aging.  We change with age, physically of course, but also mentally, emotionally, spiritually, call it what you want.  Leaving home, leaving family is leaving security and intimacy; and I feel it more now than I used to.

I've met many people in my travels who thrive on the road, for whom you might say the the road is their home.  They are the ones who can journey for months or even years.  I've always loved to travel and to explore new places.  I still do.  But after a while, I am ready to return home to family, friends, routines, my own bed.  

I've never told this to anyone.  It felt good to hear my voice saying all this in the darkness to someone who cares.  It was reassuring to hear Carol's voice in return, acknowledging and accepting.

Such thoughts at the start of an adventure.  As we sped across Nebraska, the sun rose at our backs and through the day so did the temperatures.  When we stepped out of the car in North Platte, the temperature was a balmy forty-nine degrees.

I like driving across Nebraska.  Still in the Great Plains, the terrain begins to lose the tabletop quality of the Midwest, rolling hills offering a hint of what is to come.  We passed by the towns of Hope, Friend and Aurora, encouraging names meant, perhaps, to dispel the sense of loneliness in the vastness of the landscape.

Museums!  The Plainsman Museum, Danish Windmill Museum, Pioneer Museum, Robert Henri Museum, Pony Express Station, Fort Cody.  There is no lack of places to stop and learn something.  Driven by the promise of springtime temperatures in California, we kept the speedometer locked in at eighty.

(You can click on any photo to see it full screen.)

On the banks of the Platte River

On the second day we passed through Denver under sunny skies.  I-76 became I-70, named here "The Grand Army of the Republic Highway."  The temperature hovered in the fifties.  Through the mountain passes, the roads were dry.  Perfect.  One day later, as we prepared to leave from Grand Junction, CO, we saw that temperatures in Denver had plummeted and that the city and the nearby Rockies were getting several inches of snow.  We got through just in time.

Barn In Georgetown, in the Rockies west of Denver

Leaving Grand Junction on Day Three with the news of the storms behind us on our minds, we drove into the vast expanse of Utah under threatening skies and swirling snow.  My heart beat a little faster.  Was this a major storm we had somehow missed warnings of?  We were heading into a couple hundred miles of rugged, inhospitable country.  We seemed to be the only car on the road.

Within a half hour, we passed through the snow squall.  The skies cleared.  Other vehicles, mostly trucks, materialized around us.  Heart rate returned to normal.  The stunning, bleak beauty of Utah lay before us.  Exits like "Yellow Cat - No Services" appeared.  There was no sign of Yellow Cat.  Indeed all exits seemed to be exits to nowhere, as if you could drive off the highway and just disappear.  A wire fence paralleled I-76, the only sign of human activity beyond the four lanes of pavement. 

Nothing grows out here - not a tree, not a shrub.  There is not one building in sight.  The sense of solitude is complete.  It is the best two hundred miles of the journey west.  I'll let the photos do the talking.

Heading west through Utah

Utah

Utah

Uranium country, Utah

And then we turned south onto I-15 at Salina.  The magic spell was broken.  First shrubs appeared on the hillsides, then pine trees, then billboards.  Soon we approached the Arizona border, nearing our destination of Overton, Nevada.  The temperature outside was sixty degrees.  We had left winter behind.

Our motel in Overton was pretty basic, a mom and pop place that was clean and provided a good breakfast.  I was happy to pay my money to local owners, a husband, wife and daughter with whom we could chat.

We began the last day of our journey with a leisurely drive along the North Shore Road of Lake Mead.  Then it was Henderson, Nevada, Starbucks, a view of Lost Vegas to the north and onto I-15.  Next stop San Luis Obispo.