- Journal -

23 July 2005
Said our good-byes to Nick. At this point, we are pretty homesick. After being gone in Australia almost half a year, I had a week to see my folks before taking off again. We decided that nothing can beat Colorado and to make it from Colorado to PA in one swoop. We started at 9 am MDT and made it back at 1 pm EDT the following day.

Kansas has got to be the longest, flattest, straightest stretch of road I've ever been on. On an interesting note, they actually do have fields of nothing but sunflowers out there. You can see from horizon to horizon - in some places without so much as an obstruction in any direction. Heading on 70 eastward, we passed through St Louis in the night as well as Indianapolis. We reached Columbus at about daybreak, and we got to have brunch with Stephanie at about 11 am Sunday morning. We finally reached Cody's house at about 1 pm after one crazy adventure.

Yes - it was worth it. Yes - I'd do it again. And yes - we had to cut out Texas, Arkansas, and many southern and southeastern states to meet our schedule. But there will be another trip someday.

22 July 2005
We spent the day heading towards Colorado Springs and Pike's Peak. Nick, what a crazy guy he is, rode his Harley up to the top. I drove. A few miles from the top, the road turns to dirt and the guard rails disappear. 14,110 feet up we went. From the top, you can see for what seems like forever. You can see all the way to the plains of Kansas as well as vast stretches of the Rockies in the other direction.

21 July 2005
We spent the day driving through Colorado making our way towards Aspen. What am amazing state. Natural beauty abounds. We camped overnight at Buena Vista, Colorado and got the chance to catch up with Nick who Cody and I graduated with. He moved to New Mexico after high school.

20 July 2005
From Farmington, we headed northwest to Four Corners, where Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona meet. It is a monument run by the Navajos. While we were there, some Navajo youth were kind enough to share some of their culture through performing a dance.

We headed into Colorado from here. The southwest corner is quite dry and barren - much like a lot of the southwest. We stopped at Crooked Creek Winery in Cortez for a tasting - their sweet Merlot is amazing. Then it was off to Mesa Verde National Park, site of ancient native cave dwellings. It is quite an interesting spot and well worth the drive.

Off to Durango then to camp and see the city. Durango is quite a nice Colorado town with friendly people and lots to do. The climate was absolutely perfect as was the natural scenery.

19 July 2005
We left Vegas for the Hoover Dam. If you ever get the chance, tour the place. It's quite interesting that this one site powers just about the entire southwest. Heck, they need something this big to power all the lights in Vegas alone.

Then it was on to the Grand Canyon. The weather was not optimal when we reached the place, but man - it is a big hole in the ground. I think I'd need to see it from the bottom to appreciate it and on a better day, but we had to move on. The purpose of this trip is to see where I'd like to go back to at a later date.

Another crazy day - we decided to go the WHOLE way to Nick's place in New Mexico before calling in. We had to pass through the Navajo Indian Reservation at night which apparently is not that safe a thing to do. The conditions that the Native Americans live in is very appalling. It's sad that these people continue to be mistreated to this day.

18 July 2005
What a crazy place. 118 degrees. Pornography littering the streets. Illegal mexicans trying to entice me to pay for a hooker. Well, at least the water show outside of the Bellagio was interesting. Dinner was good at the Harley Davidson Cafe too. There are certainly a lot of cool looking buildings. Seems that here one can visit New York City, Paris, and Egypt all in one city - in the middle of a desert - hundreds of miles from just about anywhere...

17 July 2005
OK. This is the crazy day. We left our beach camp site early in the morning and took 101 down to San Francisco. It was too foggy to see anything, so we buzzed through. It was at this point that we started heading east again *sigh.* It was also the first time in my life that I'd seen gas costing more than $3 a gallon. Amazingly expensive. Yes, we did get to cross the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges.

Heading east, we could see that California is no more than a desert. I'm amazed people can live there. The land must require millions of gallons of irrigation to even be inhabitable. Along the way, we saw huge wind generators along the hilltops spinning, trying to keep up with the southwest's energy needs.

We made it to Yosemite mid-day and drove the loop. Here are California's giant sequioa trees. Much like the redwoods, they are HUGE - as are the rock formations in this park. The Bridal Veil falls of Yosemite are an amazing sight to see. The park is crowded with tourists, however.

It was about this time that Cody and myself had this crazy idea of going to Vegas. So off we went driving through some of the most desolate areas of the country alone in a weighed down Grand Prix in the middle of the night.

We reached Death Valley with an approximate temperature of 115 degrees at 1:30 am during a spell of record-breaking heat. I don't know if the car would have made it during the day, because even at night it was overheating. We saw about 2 or 3 cars in 2 or 3 hours. I decided to stop the car in the middle of the valley to hear the silence. It was deafening. I screamed as loudly as I could without an echo or response. Boy am I glad the car started back up.

We made it into Vegas at about 4 or 5 after passing some shady looking places out there in the desert. Yes, we almost ran out of gas. And yes, we did discover that there are slot machines in the gas stations just outside of Vegas.

16 July 2005
Today, we took highway 101 down to Manchester Beach near Mendocino. The road winds in and out and in and out along the coast and started making us sick. We decided to call in early and spent the afternoon at the beach. We camped so close that you could hear the ocean as you slept.

What a crazy road that 101 is. In some places there is literally nothing between you and a cliff, and the road is breaking off along the edge.

15 July 2005
We made it into Oregon, but decided we didn't much like the place after we witnessed the gray-skied, cold Pacific coast. We zipped down I-5 and over on 199 to reach Crescent City, CALIFORNIA. I can't believe we made it. We're on the complete opposite side of the country. People actually look at your license plate and give you weird looks. And I can't believe we're in Cah-lee-for-nee-uh (thank you Mr. Governator). The redwood trees are just amazingly huge here. Big around and taller than a tall building.

We camped this evening in the crazy-big redwoods at a camp site just north of town. The coast is beautiful, the forests are beautiful, and the people are nice.

14 July 2005
Little does anyone know, but the entire eastern half of Washington state is a desert. A dry, barren, desert. Midway through Washington on 90 there is a town called George(, Washington - get it? lol). Yes, we stopped, and I had my picture taken. We passed over the Columbia River and into the Cascades we went. What beautiful mountains. We made it to Seattle on possibly the clearest day of the year and promptly went up the Space Needle.

We spent the greater part of the evening driving through Mount Rainier National Park then south to see Mount Saint Helens at dusk. For the first time on this trip, we stayed in a hotel in Longview, Washington. And we did some laundry.

13 July 2005
8:05 am MDT, we leave for the tallest, biggest, most rugged-looking mountains I've ever seen - the Grand Tetons. We don't have anything like this back in the east. All I can say is that you'd have to go and see for yourself.

At Jackson, Wy, we headed west again and caught 15 north through Idaho and Montana to 90 west again. At sunset, we reached Lake Coeru d'Alene in Idaho - one of the most amazing freshwater lakes I've seen. And the climate seems great too. We've passed through some pretty barren, desolate areas to get to here - areas where there literally is nothing for 50 or 100 miles and the highways get closed at winter because it snows so much. That being said, in some places you can smell the potatoes. ;-)

We made it the whole way to Spokane, Washington before night where we camped again.

12 July 2005
Up and out at 8:05 am MDT. After a short stop at the Buffalo Bill Dam, we finally made it to Yellowstone, possibly the most famous of the national parks. What an absolutely amazing and interesting place. It should be one of those places that everyone should see. The thermal activity taking place is reason enough to go, but the sheer beauty of pure unadulterated nature is breathtaking. And yes, I got to see Old Faithful erupt.

It was nearing nightfall that we left, and at Yellowstone Lake I looked up and saw my first satellite traverse the sky like a moving star. This is just how crystal clear the sky was. We camped between Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. It got cold, but it was insanely beautiful. I highly recommend the camp site between the two parks.

11 July 2005
Today we had the opportunity to see Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse monuments in the Black Hills. What a beautiful area the Black Hills are. Here's a tip: Mount Rushmore is one of the few places that the National Parks Pass won't get you - but if you drive by slow enough, you can get some good shots ;-). It's quite strange to see a sculpture that big and etched into the side of a mountain. Also got to see Devil's Tower and some of the most open skies I'd ever seen.

We had to cross the Big Horn mountains to get west on 14 and 14A (definitely take the alternate route). The road was red, the skies were blue, the streams were clear, and the mountains were BIG (even though I didn't think so until after driving the whole way to the top). There was SNOW in July at the top!

We finally made it to Cody, Wyoming for a beautiful sunset, and Cody finally had his chance to get his picture taken by the Cody city limits sign. We camped at a site just out of town.

10 July 2005
Started out at 7:26 am CDT heading west on 80 and then north on 29. Passed through Sioux City, Iowa then through Sioux Falls, SD. There is an amazing view of the Missouri River and the Missouri River Bridges from the rest area here. The Missouri appeared more impressive to me than even the Mississippi.

Passing west across South Dakota on 90 becomes quite annoying, because it seems every quarter mile there is a new billboard promoting this place called Wall Drug in Wall, SD. But before Wall, there's a place called Mitchell, where one can view the world famous Corn Palace - a building that each year is decorated with harvested vegetables in an artistic way. Pretty neat. Apparently they've been doing it a while. There is a lot of corn out here. Let me tell you.

We finally made it to the Badlands National Park - our first on this trip. If there is one place I'd recommend you ever get to - it's here. I'd also recommend that if you ever do a trip like this, you get the National Parks Pass. It is well worth it. The roads here wind through miles and miles of simply amazing rock formations the likes of which I had never seen. It seems almost like I'd imagine the Grand Canyon being.

So, we decided we'd come this far and seen 1000 Wall Drug signs, so we might as well see what all the fuss is about. It's your typical tourist trap. And the free water tastes like sulfur, although it doesn't leave an aftertaste. It's quite strange

We called in at a camp site near Rapid City.

9 July 2005
So Cody and I have been planning this trip for a long while. We decided it would be best to do right out of college when we could find some time off of work. Still, we're limited for time, but we want to just go out and explore. For me, this is a chance to go west of Ohio - I've never seen the Mississippi or the Rockies or the Pacific coast. We're going to try to zip out west as quickly as possible to see as much as we can.

We left Hannasville, PA at 6:27 am EDT. It was an incredibly foggy morning following a pretty stormy evening which left Cody's yard covered in hail. It looked like it had snowed in July actually.Strangely (ok, not so strangely), the weather cleared as we entered Ohio heading west on I-80.

Passing Toledo, I realized I never knew how close it was to Detroit. Around South Bend, Indiana, traffic started getting bad and the area started looking pretty run down. At one point, parts of the road were missing and the residential housing appeared to be run-down shacks along the side of the road. It was shocking to know that people live like this. Growing up in Youngstown, Ohio, one of the harder-hit areas of the rust belt, I had seen bad. But this was worse by many levels of magnitude.

Around Chicago, you could see a thick hazy brown smog hanging in the air. We didn't take the exit to Chicago and instead continued westward towards the quad cities. It was here that I crossed the Mississippi River for the first time. It's big, and there's lots of industry along its riverbanks. Iowa, I believe (and I think Cody would agree), looks kind of like Pennsylvania. Iowa seems to be where things start opening up. There is definitely more open land out here and fewer people. We made it the whole way to Des Moines before camping for the night near Adel, Iowa.

What a crazy first day. We're already a good portion across the country.