This is actually my 2nd cross country road trip, but the last time was VT - CA. I also have done CHI - CA after college for my move. This time it was CA - VT.
It's all about the journey...blah blah...but no, really, it is. Sure my car is loaded with all of my belongings (except 2 shipped boxes) and sure the goal is to move my home base to a new city, but before that huge new chapter begins, I had a week of pure FUN on the road. A perfect vacation. Being stuck in a car forces me to do nothing and enjoy.
In the words of my road buddy, oldest college friend, and DJ GPS,"We have to hit the road to get somewhere tonight."
Somewhere was along this route....
I started the trip up CA HWY 1 to San Fran and then the "official" trip began...
The first day was an adventure, which is what we asked for, but we quickly learned to ask for maybe..."a little easier adventure". After Yosemite, Day 1 was an amazing roller coaster road that caused extremely high pitched screams to echo across the empty desert in the middle of no where.
After considering sleeping in a very creepy casino desert town (ALL hotels were booked - what??), considering camping at a rest area (rest area = epitome of bad ideas), and considering camping by a recommended crater (crater ended up being created by a missile, proven by the missile next to the road and the "testing area" sign), we instead drove into the night imagining the other worldly desert landscape around us and ended up a the nicest hotel we could have hoped for!
The 2nd night was camping in Flaming Gorge, mostly chosen for the name, which provided amazing water front views and fields of grazing antelope. An old man in a pickup came at dusk to collect the required $10. The 3rd night the landscape changed as we
climbed in elevation to Rocky Mountain National Park. A view of spectacular yellow aspen leaves, and yes some snow, met us. Our fire was shared by a friend who I made 2 years ago on a show I worked on, time means little on the road. Night 4 & 5 were a hotel night in Des Moines and then couch in Chicago, for time with the best of college friends. We barely made it through Indiana on day 6...but did...and then just one more night on the road before the destination.
Wondering when all this will set in....because this isn't real life.
