2nd Travel Entry
Mar. 30th, 2005 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fabrisseWhen last seen our intrepid heroine was at a Motel 6 between Indianapolis and Terre Haute.
I wake up early on Saturday. I'm less than fifty miles from the state border. I have a big breakfast, fill up the gas tank, and head out secure in the knowledge that I'll be in Missouri in an hour.
Who the fuck dropped Illinois in there?
Fortunately, I'm at the lower end of the state, so it's only about a hundred miles to cross. I get to the Mississippi River just before noon.
This is the point where I-70 joins the I-55 which almost immediately joins the I-44. In other words, St. Louis. The Arch is really impressive. Something about the beveling around the edges makes it look like a Moebius (sic?) strip and then like an eye that's following my progress. The traffic is slow, so I have a great deal of time to observe the arch from many angles. It's huge: 630 feet. It's taller than the Washington Monument.
I'm looking forward to some flat driving. After all, my teachers told me that the westward progression started just after St. Louis with the "Sea of Grass" -- no one mentioned the Ozarks. For the next five hours the only thing I can see when I get to the top of the hill is the next, higher hill.
I finally make it to Oklahoma and it rains. Repeatedly. I try to make it to Oklahoma City, but when it starts to rain again, I pull over in the one EconoLodge town of Chandler.
Easter Sunday is clear and sunny and a little windy. I make it past Oklahoma City (it's not "mighty pretty") and on to the I-40 before 9 a.m. The wind picks up. I also decide that I'm not going to spend money in Texas. I fill up on gas and a sandwich just before the Texas border. This is when I find out that most of northern Texas and all of New Mexico was in full white-out conditions the day before.
Texas is a state of death. I see more road kill in an hour and a half, including full grown deer and a steer beside the road that's beginning to bloat, than I have in the previous 1600 miles. I also never see anywhere near that much on the rest of the drive.
New Mexico is beautiful if barren. It's also high and getting higher. Out to my left I can see snow capped peaks. I spend the night in Gallup , New Mexico. I've been following old Route 66 since St. Louis.
I cross over into Arizona just as the wind picks up some more. To give you an idea of how windy it is: I see a hawk try to take off, and its wing bends backward. The look on its face says "Oh, shit!" better than I could imagine possible on the face of an animal. It misses my windshield and finds its way back to the ground without breaking anything.
The next 800 miles have such high winds that I have to wrestle the car. Calluses begin to develop on my hands. There are a couple of turns where I actually have to turn the steering wheel opposite to the direction of the road in order to keep from being blown off the road.
The sandstorm hits me just before Flagstaff. It's not very deep; I'm only in it for about five minutes and the road is never totally obscured, thank heavens. I have brunch and a haircut in Flagstaff. Then I'm back on the road. I've crossed the continental divide twice: once in New Mexico and once in Arizona. The last elevation sign I've seen before the continental divide is in Maryland where the state fathers are very proud of their 1200 foot mountain. Now the signs I'm passing are 6000 feet -- and I'm going downhill.
The wind and cold get worse as I enter California. Needles is only at an elevation of 485. Before Barstow I go downhill past a sign saying elevation 5000 on my left and an overturned truck on my right.
I finally make it to LA at 8:30 p.m.
I wake up early on Saturday. I'm less than fifty miles from the state border. I have a big breakfast, fill up the gas tank, and head out secure in the knowledge that I'll be in Missouri in an hour.
Who the fuck dropped Illinois in there?
Fortunately, I'm at the lower end of the state, so it's only about a hundred miles to cross. I get to the Mississippi River just before noon.
This is the point where I-70 joins the I-55 which almost immediately joins the I-44. In other words, St. Louis. The Arch is really impressive. Something about the beveling around the edges makes it look like a Moebius (sic?) strip and then like an eye that's following my progress. The traffic is slow, so I have a great deal of time to observe the arch from many angles. It's huge: 630 feet. It's taller than the Washington Monument.
I'm looking forward to some flat driving. After all, my teachers told me that the westward progression started just after St. Louis with the "Sea of Grass" -- no one mentioned the Ozarks. For the next five hours the only thing I can see when I get to the top of the hill is the next, higher hill.
I finally make it to Oklahoma and it rains. Repeatedly. I try to make it to Oklahoma City, but when it starts to rain again, I pull over in the one EconoLodge town of Chandler.
Easter Sunday is clear and sunny and a little windy. I make it past Oklahoma City (it's not "mighty pretty") and on to the I-40 before 9 a.m. The wind picks up. I also decide that I'm not going to spend money in Texas. I fill up on gas and a sandwich just before the Texas border. This is when I find out that most of northern Texas and all of New Mexico was in full white-out conditions the day before.
Texas is a state of death. I see more road kill in an hour and a half, including full grown deer and a steer beside the road that's beginning to bloat, than I have in the previous 1600 miles. I also never see anywhere near that much on the rest of the drive.
New Mexico is beautiful if barren. It's also high and getting higher. Out to my left I can see snow capped peaks. I spend the night in Gallup , New Mexico. I've been following old Route 66 since St. Louis.
I cross over into Arizona just as the wind picks up some more. To give you an idea of how windy it is: I see a hawk try to take off, and its wing bends backward. The look on its face says "Oh, shit!" better than I could imagine possible on the face of an animal. It misses my windshield and finds its way back to the ground without breaking anything.
The next 800 miles have such high winds that I have to wrestle the car. Calluses begin to develop on my hands. There are a couple of turns where I actually have to turn the steering wheel opposite to the direction of the road in order to keep from being blown off the road.
The sandstorm hits me just before Flagstaff. It's not very deep; I'm only in it for about five minutes and the road is never totally obscured, thank heavens. I have brunch and a haircut in Flagstaff. Then I'm back on the road. I've crossed the continental divide twice: once in New Mexico and once in Arizona. The last elevation sign I've seen before the continental divide is in Maryland where the state fathers are very proud of their 1200 foot mountain. Now the signs I'm passing are 6000 feet -- and I'm going downhill.
The wind and cold get worse as I enter California. Needles is only at an elevation of 485. Before Barstow I go downhill past a sign saying elevation 5000 on my left and an overturned truck on my right.
I finally make it to LA at 8:30 p.m.
