Tales from the road…
Whew! Made it. Forty-three hundred miles later we are back home. And it only took 207 gallons of gasoline. (20.77 MPG) We spent 13 nights in eight different hotels, not counting the DoubleTree at SeaTac Airport the night before our flight to Atlanta. We spent 12 nights with friends, family or in our own home-away-from-home in Boise. We washed the car four times. Got one chip in the windshield, which Boise Porsche fixed (for free!) Only one cop stopped us but we did have a few other close calls. No tickets. Some really good meals. Some meals in Whole Foods. Lots of visits to Starbucks. Saw one ballgame (KC) in person. Watched the M’s on TV once we hit Spokane. Hundreds of photos, some videos. Bought some t-shirts, postcards, shot glasses and other souvenirs and jewelry. The car runs like a top (as they say) but the infotainment system is random at best, cruel at worst. Hot and humid in the deep south. Hot and humid in the midwest. Hot in the southwest. Very pleasant in the PNW. Podcasts, Audible and Apple Music. Overall…
Lots of miles, lots of smiles.
Wrap-up post coming in a day or two.
We’ve had three very nice days in Spokane hanging out with the grand kids. We took our granddaughter to school all three days and picked her up twice. No, she’s not still at school! We also attended her year-end school picnic today and she went home in her parent’s car. We saw our grandson swim twice. He’s a baby, so swimming means holding one to one parent or the other in the shallow end of the pool. But he loves the water! Mostly we just hung out with the kids. And their parents…
Tomorrow is the last leg. One 290 mile trip. Or as we call it, one Spokane.
Boise was fun and uneventful. We hit a few favorite places to eat, got the car tended to & washed, and saw a movie. Ocean’s 8 is entertaining. Not great, but fun enough. Boise was also the coolest, temperature-wise, place we’ve been on the whole trip. Only one of our four days in town hit more than 90 degrees.
Today we made the drive from Boise to Spokane. There are two main routes. The longer of the two takes less time because it’s Interstates all the way. The short way takes longer because it’s more fun. Ok, it’s more fun because it’s more of a back road way to go and thus slower. We averaged 52 MPH over almost 400 miles. We averaged over 70 on other long drives. We also got pulled over for the first time. Fortunately the cute one was driving and we got a warning. And not even a written warning. Whew!
The route today took us through four distinct geographies. From not-far-outside-of-Boise to McCall (ID) you follow the Payette River through forested lands. Very pretty. The road rises and falls, but mostly rises, with lots of twists and turns. Boise is at around 2,500 feet of elevation, McCall is around 5,000 feet.
From McCall to White Bird the trees fall away and the terrain become more mountainous or at least more hilly. You descend to around 1,500 by White Bird. And then it gets FUN. Over six or seven miles you climb an average 7% grade until you reach 4,200 feet. The road twists and turns and the drop-offs are steep. This is the kind of road our car was made for. We passed everything.
From there the terrain becomes high prairie and you enter the Nez Perce Reservation. We had our traffic stop on this stretch. Eventually you drop down to something like 700 feet of elevation and into Lewiston (ID). By now you’ve left MDT and entered PDT. Our fourth time zone.
Leaving Lewiston you climb quite quickly and enter The Palouse. The Palouse is mile
after mile, after mile, of rolling, green hills. They look like sand dunes. In fact, they were formed by the same sort of forces that form sand dunes. They are tall enough to impress but small enough to plant wheat from top to bottom. At this time of year you see three shades; green, dark green and yellow. We’re not sure what the yellow crop is. We forget that whole crop-rotation section from grade school. In a few weeks the hills will turn brown as the wheat matures. The photo here is from the famed photographer Nancy Palouse-y. Hey, the jokes are free. You get what you paid for.
We’ll stay in Spokane for a few days and hang with the grandkids. And their parents. And maybe get the car washed again. And then one last drive, on this trip, to home. It’s unlikely we’ll blog for the next few days.
We made it to Boise! The drive from the Salt Lake area (we stayed in Ogden) was nicer than we recalled from five years ago. The Utah part takes you through rolling hills that were mostly green today. The Idaho part is mostly high-desert scrub, primarily brown. The speed limit is 80 for most of the drive. 🙂
Over the weekend we plan to hit a few favorite places, check out the market, take in at least one movie and otherwise chill out. We expect the high temperatures to be in the eighties, which is most welcome after being in the deep south, mid-west and south-west for more than two weeks.
On Monday the car gets a ‘spa day’ at the dealer. We picked up a bunch of bug splats, of course, but also some goo that might be tar and might be berries or similar. Plus we have a chip in the windshield to tend to. We’ve driven over 3K miles so far and the exterior of the car is showing it.
And then on to Washington state! Unless something amazing happens, we won’t post for a few days. Mañana…
We started on I-20 around Atlanta (and Montgomery and Jackson, MS.) We crossed I-40 in Memphis and I-70 in Kansas City. We got back to I-40 in OKC and took it across the rest of Oklahoma, the Texas panhandle and a lot of New Mexico. Today we crossed over I-70 again and then I-80. In a few more days we’ll cross over I-90. We will also cover I-85 to I-5. It’s a big country…
It was when we came through in 2013 and it was again today. The area around Moab is incredible. If you want a fantastic drive, pick up US-191 in Monticello and drive 90-plus miles up the Spanish Valley, through Moab and up to i-70 at Crescent Junction. You’ll go past Canyonlands and Arches National Parks. Even if you don’t hit the parks, you’ll see amazing land formations and colors. It’s hard to capture on ‘film’ because of the scale. The photo here is the backdrop to a parking lot in Moab. Just another day in Utah.
We’re staying in Ogden, just north of Salt Lake City. It’s our last night in a hotel on this trip. The land north of here is more high desert. That will carry us into Idaho and to our place in Boise. We’ll have another spectacular drive in a few days when we head up to visit the grandchildren. And their parents of course! More to follow…
Today is mañana. I mean yesterday is mañana. No wait, today is yesterday’s mañana. Something like that.
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Several of them actually. We turned a 200 mile drive from Santa Fe to Durango into a 350 mile drive by taking a detour to the Four Corners Monument. It looks like this:
Not really, it looks like this:
The cononical photo is to put one limb in each state. There is a line of people wanting to do so. We skipped the line and grabbed the snap above between parties. Visiting the Monument is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Because you only need to do it once…
Somewhere in New Mexico we crossed over the Continental Divide. The countryside in the Southwest is amazing. The distances are huge and the roads are not always great. But you do see stuff like this…
… everywhere you go. We never get tired of driving in the West.
We learned in school that mañana means tomorrow in Spanish. But there is another meaning.
In Santa Fe mañana means eventually. Eventually you will get your breakfast or your lunch or your dinner. Or your Doppio Espresso con Panna with cold brew whip cream and Blond espresso. And that’s ok. Three days in Santa Fe leaves you pretty relaxed, if you let it. And we let it.
Now it’s time to get back on the road. From this point on it’s north and west at every stop.
Halfway by time, more than halfway by mileage. We’re camped in Santa Fe for three days. The weather is awesome, the hotel is great and it’s fun hanging out with family.
People in Santa Fe, and also the deep South we noticed, seem to take red lights as an advisory. In one twenty-five minute stretch of driving today (day 14) we saw six cars run red lights. You know that expression “If only there were a cop…”? Well… yup, there was, he lit it and hit it and took down two red light runners on one of the main drags through town. Loving it…
We had a leisurely car wash yesterday. OK, the car had it. They have car washes that look like ours; a tunnel the car goes through. Only there are no machines. They hand-wash your car. They aren’t fast. For some reason no one did anything for ten minutes or so. We definitely have a different sense of urgency on the coasts. The results were awesome.
On day 13 we had a mediocre dinner at the Ranch House. It was Father’s Day; we saw a new father and new one month-old baby with matching Star Wars shirts. Dad’s said “I am your Father” and the baby’s said, wait for it… “I am your Son. Today (14) we had a very good dinner at La Choza. Crazy spicy but very flavorful.
Santa Fe has it all — good car wash, good food, good weather, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and an entirely outdoor Starbucks. What more can you ask for?
The car is big. Not SUV big. But bigger than it drives. And drive it does. It’s almost 900 miles from Kansas City to Santa Fe, Yesterday, day 11, we covered just under half of that, like it was nothing.
Alabama and Mississippi are flat-ish. Tennessee too. Western Missouri, Eastern Kansas and Eastern Oklahoma are very green (in June anyway) with rolling hills. Not what we expected, but nice driving. Inside the car, seeing all that green, it’s hard to remember the outside temperature is around 100. I guess things will turn brown soon enough.
We picked Weatherford, OK as the more-or-less halfway point. We left late and got there earlier than we expected. The town is right around the line when the land flattens out.
It turned out not to be the best choice. The town is small, which is fine. But that means the choice of hotels is limited. Ours, the Fairfield Inn had bugs. Not so fair after all.
Today things are much better. We went from the worst hotel of the trip to the best. And the drive was interesting. We covered the rest of Oklahoma, the top part of Texas and a good bit of New Mexico. It rained hard around the Texas / New Mexico border, which slowed us down. The geography in Western Oklahoma is more like we expected; flatter and browner than the eastern side of the state. That continued into Texas. Once we got close to New Mexico, the terrain got interesting again.
The last 60 or so miles of the trip was on a state highway. It was nice to get off the Interstate and into more interesting land.
We’ll hang out here in Santa Fe for a few days and then head north. And west.
States so far: GA, AL, MS, LA, TN, AR, MO, KS, OK, TX, NM