Day 6 – Austin, Nevada to Marin, California

We awoke quite bleary-eyed from a restless night’s sleep. We were both ready to head home to a hot bath and to our own mattresses and pillows. We purchased a couple of coffees to go from the same diner (the only one) where we got the ice cream the night before. Unfortunately, the coffee was not of the same caliber, but it was hot and we really needed the caffeine. We weren’t really looking forward to more of highway 50, still being sick of our cds, and drove the first hour or so in relative silence. Then we saw an antelope on the side of the road which lit up our morning. He was a beautiful animal, so unlike anything we’d seen, and we wished we could have pulled over. But we were going over one of those mountain passes, with no shoulders or pullouts, so we had to drive on. He became something mystical in our short memories, having disappeared as suddenly as he’d appeared in our sights. We longed to see more, but he was the sole antelope of our trip.

An hour down the road we came across the shoe tree. Apparently someone started a hot trend by throwing a pair of shoes up into this tree some years ago, and now there must be thousands hanging from its limbs, as well as lying at the base of the trunk. There was nothing around it for miles but open range, which was probably why the Nevada department of transportation decided to build a car pullout there, to mark the spot and make it easier for RVs to get their photo souvenir. Even though we were acutely focused on getting home at this point, we pulled over to nab our shot. It reminded me of the bra fence in New Zealand - who knows how this kind of tradition gets started, and why so many join in. It does seem to be a middle-of-nowhere phenomenon, though.

The rest of our trip down Highway 50 was uneventful. When we reached Fallon, the biggest town on that stretch, we stopped by the county historical museum to get our passports stamped, and were pleasantly surprised by the interesting exhibits. It was definitely a worthwhile stop, if only to validate that the rocks we'd been given were indeed dinosaur gastrolites - they even had some in one of the museum displays. If we were to drive this stretch of road again, I'd either stay in Fallon, or drive right through the whole highway in one day and stay in Truckee. I was hoping to stop in Truckee to check out the cute shops, but it started snowing again. It was coming down so thick we decided we'd better get over Donner Pass before chains were required. I hadn't planned for snow at all on this trip, as weather at home had been so warm and sunny, and didn't realize how much of the time we'd be up over 7 or 8,000 feet in elevation. The car made through all of the weather we met, but we didn't end up having much opportunity to go "topless". So we continued down the road through driving rain in Sacramento, and back home again to sunny Marin. Contented to be back in our own space, take a long hot bath and dream on our own pillows of more happy trails.

Day 5 – Bryce Canyon, Utah to Austin, Nevada

This morning there was a coating of snow on all of the cars and trees. We decided to head briefly back to Bryce Canyon to check out the hoodoos with their frosting of white powder. It was very magical, and very cold. We knew we had a long drive in front of us, so we didn’t stay to see the majority of the park. We will have to return another time to spend a couple of days in the park and fit in a good hike or two down into the canyon, as we hear it’s a spectacular experience.

After leaving Highway 12, we found that the drive north on 89 was just as scenic, with portions of it following beside a river and passing the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Southern Utah gets big points in our travel book. Our plan for the day was to head out on Highway 50 west, what used to be the major trans-continental highway, also known as the Lincoln Highway.

After driving on major highways with a speed limit of 75 mph, it seemed a bit out of place to enter onto Hwy 50, one of the straightest and most deserted stretches of road yet, and have the speed limit be posted as 65 mph. Lauren was driving, and didn’t quite adjust her foot pressure to the new speed quick enough – we were barely started down the road when she got pulled over by a Utah state trooper. She pulled over, and the trooper approached the car. “Miss, is there any particular reason why were you traveling 76 mph?” “Uh, no particular reason. I’m sorry.” “Can I see your driver’s license?” Much searching around pile of stuff in the back of car for purse, behind ice cooler, under jacket, next to Cheez-it box, aha, there it is. Searching in purse, pulling out books, there’s the wallet, no license, where is the license, phew, there it is bent in the bottom of purse where it’s been since she took it out for the security checkpoint at the airport the week before. The trooper disappeared with this, plus my registration and goes back to his car for some time. He was gone so long we were sure he was writing up a ticket, but he finally returned with our documents and a friendly reminder to Lauren that the speed limit here was 65. Thank you Mr. Trooper. That would have put a real damper on the trip. As it was, we both paid very close attention to the speed signs for the rest of the trip.

Highway 50 through Nevada follows the old Pony Express route. I love this quote from a help-wanted poster for the Pony Express: "WANTED. YOUNG, SKINNY, WIRY FELLOWS. NOT OVER 18. MUST BE EXPERT RIDERS. WILLING TO RISK DEATH DAILY. ORPHANS PREFERRED". The Nevada tourism commission has decided to capitalize on the fact that a Life magazine travel writer called this stretch of road the loneliest highway in America, because there is nothing to see or do the whole way. So now tourists can get Highway 50 Survival Kits either online or from the commission and get a passport which can be stopped at the towns along the way, and after your trip you can mail in the stamped page to receive a commemorative “I survived Highway 50” certificate, bumper sticker and lapel pin. Lauren is really jazzed about the pin. Not! I don’t believe she owns anything with lapels.

Our thoughts on Highway 50: There are certainly stretches that are very lonely. Other than the small towns that are spaced sometimes as much as 100 miles apart, there is not much going on. However, I was impressed by how beautiful the drive was. I wasn’t expecting all of the mountain ranges we would pass through, which gave the drive a lot of variety. We would drive through a long, straight, shrub-covered plane, with nothing but a few cows for visual interest, and then climb over another curvy mountain pass. We must have crossed five or six ranges through Nevada, which really helped to break up the drive. As for the towns along the way, we can’t imagine what those people do for a living, or entertainment for that matter. Except that everywhere we went seemed to have a casino of some form or other. After all, this was Nevada.

By the end of the day we were getting pretty loopy, something akin to cabin fever. We had listened to all of our cd’s to the point of being tired of them, and most of the time we couldn’t find any radio stations to tune in. We would put the radio on scan, and it would spin round and round the dial finding nothing. Once we lucked out and got to listen to a Terry Gross Fresh Air program on NPR, an old interview she did with Kurt Vonnegut which was being aired to commemorate his death that week. Then we crossed a mountain range and we were alone with ourselves again. The lonelier the road got, the sillier we got, and we seemed to have no trouble sending each other into fits of giggles. I think that part of the road trip experience wasn’t about the road so much as being with each other.

The second town along the road, Eureka, was very quaint and homey-feeling. We decided to stop at a little diner to get our passports stamped, and to treat ourselves to an ice cream cone. This just seemed like the kind of town where a soft-serve cone would fit in with the ambience. Unfortunately, we’d never had worse ice cream in our lives – terrible texture, no flavor, we took one lick and both dumped our cones in the garbage. Then we drove out of there fast in case anyone inside the diner was looking! We headed on to Austin, where we were to spend the night, dreaming of soft-serve.

We determined that we would get a replacement cone, and crossed our fingers that the second one would be more tasty. It seemed to be a good omen when we saw a sign for a diner in Austin as we approached town that had a picture of an ice cream cone on it. We stopped, got our passports stamped, got two vanilla cones and licked. . . .. yum! As it was almost dark, we drove the two blocks to the other end of town where our motel awaited. We had to laugh when we pulled up – it had five rooms and a verrrrry rustic look to it. When we got our room we realized this would probably be our least favorite night of the trip – it was basically a mobile home trailer, with two small rooms each just big enough for a bed, with dark paneling on all the walls, those old mirrored tile squares in some places in an unsuccessful attempt to lighten the place up, and light fixtures that had low-wattage fluorescent light bulbs that only managed to give a dim, grungy lighting. We were kind of afraid of the (imagined, we couldn't see well enough to verify our suspicion) lack of cleanliness of the bedding, so we both decided to sleep in our clothes. In fact, Lauren slept on top of her bed, with a blanket we’d brought along in the car. I thought about eating the night’s $50 charge and finding another place, but the only other motels in town looked about on a par, or maybe even worse.

The day’s lesson: you can’t judge a town by it’s ice cream. We would have been better off staying at the Day’s Inn in Eureka.

Day 4 – Torrey to Bryce Canyon National Park

We awoke the next morning to a view of red rock mountains out of our bedroom window, and to the delicious smells of a hot breakfast. To prepare us for the day ahead, Erika prepared us eggs benedict, a welcome change from the dried-out pastries that serve as a continental breakfast at most motels. She and Eldon joined us for the meal, and we were so happy they weren’t Mormon because they served us some great coffee! It was a detail I hadn’t considered when making the reservation, but apparently it’s a real consideration for a lot of the family run places in Utah – since Mormons don’t drink coffee, most won’t serve it to their guests.

Eldon was full of tales of rock hunting finds, and showed us some of his prized finds. The most compelling was the fossilized dinosaur pooh. He had someone use a rock polisher on the bottom of it, and it was just like quartz on the inside. Apparently scientists have studied these remains and can tell what the animals were eating. Lauren and I were keen to go with Eldon on an expedition to try to find a specimen to take home, and to see some of the other places he had discovered that were not on the tourist maps, like the fossilized dinosaur prints in a nearby canyon, but we just didn’t have enough time. Eldon didn’t want to send us away empty-handed, so he gave us each a couple of gastroliths – rocks that had passed through dinosaur digestive tracts. Apparently the herbivores used to eat them to help them digest their food, just like some birds do. They are smooth and beautiful, and we now keep them in our pockets like worry stones. This was a stay to remember.

We headed directly out for a hike at Capitol Reef state park, which is next to Torrey. We stopped on the way to see some more Indian petroglyphs, these ones drawn life-sized, and especially liked the cute little sheep that were portrayed on the towering red stone cliff face. Then we hiked a mile out to a natural feature called the Hickman Bridge, down through a small canyon that was very scenic and felt more intimate than a lot of the sites we’d seen. There was a field of low-growing cacti that Lauren found interesting, and decided she needed a cactus spine as a souvenir. She wanted to carry it in her hand the rest of the hike, instead of putting it away in the film canister that I suggested. Bet you can’t guess what happened. Does anyone know if cactus spines are poisonous? It was an invigorating way to start the day. We didn’t spend long here, though, as we still had Bryce Canyon on the agenda and we were told we definitely shouldn’t miss it.

The drive to Bryce from Torrey is on route 12, known as the first “All American Highway” in Utah. There are about 100 nationally recognized scenic byways, and route 12 is one of them. It truly is spectacular. The road climbed to a mountain pass of over 9,600 feet at one point, while we watched the car’s thermometer drop to a low of 26 degrees. We were also greeted with our first snow flurries, which made the surrounding white aspen trees look magical. On the descent down from the pass, there is a section of the road that is definitely not for the faint of heart. The road travels a winding, narrow mountain crest, with steep drop-offs simultaneously on both sides down to deep canyons. It is unbelievable and impossible to describe, and probably the top reason this route was chosen as “scenic”. The rest of the drive was a bit tamer, although still beautiful, winding past more red rock canyons and formations, through forests and open fields.

We arrived at Bryce in the early afternoon, and decided it might be a bit cold for a long hike. More snow was predicted for the afternoon, and the breeze was biting. But we were determined to see this crown jewel of a park, so we took the advice from the visitor’s center of a few special scenic overlooks that could be easily driven to. We stopped at a point called Sunset, and hiked about half a mile to the Sunrise point, and were greeted with perhaps the best scenery yet of our trip. There are miles of “hoodoos”, layer upon layer of wind-sculpted spires of varying shades of orange and white that are the park’s signature attraction. The trail we walked on ran right along a cliff, with crumbly dirt and no fence or other obstruction to keep you from the edge. Very nerve wracking for someone with such tender sensibilities as me, but I still found myself drawn to look over the edge so I wouldn’t miss any of it. We burned through another roll of film, took pics on the digital camera and some video footage as well, and can’t wait to see how they all turned out. We’re sure we won’t be able to capture the feeling of being there in person, but the photos should be able to help us keep our memories alive.

Snow arrived again, this time in big fat flakes that stuck to our hair and eyelashes, and we decided to head back early to the motel. We amused ourselves for a short while with the kids’ games outside of the little shopping area (which was closed for the season) until we were thoroughly chilled. We decided it was best to spend a bit of time indoors, so we went up to our room and watched a movie on the television while we warmed up, then headed out to an early dinner since we hadn’t stopped for lunch. In the two hours we’d been in our room, the snow had piled up on top of the cars and was sticking to the ground. We were in a winter wonderland! The snow continued for most of the evening, so we were left wondering how difficult it would be to get around in the morning. There was nothing we could do but put our wet jeans and shoes in front of the heater to dry out during the night.

Day 3 – Arches National Park to Torrey, Utah

Moab is a happening little town, for southern Utah, just outside of Arches National Park. It is bordered by tall red rock mountains, and boasts a number of eateries, lots of motels and outdoor equipment rental shops, and even has its own brew pub. Amazingly, there’s even a winery just outside of town called Castle Rock. We didn’t make it to the winery, but I picked up a couple of bottles to bring home to try with my sweetie -the one that’s over age 21. Don’t know where the grapes came from, as it’s labeled “American” wine, but apparently it’s made and bottled there in Moab.

Our sojourn into Arches was nothing short of stunning. Boy, I’m running out of adjectives for all of these amazing sites we’re seeing. Forgive me if I begin to sound repetitive. The power and beauty of nature seem to fill our days, which is perhaps why our eyes and minds are so exhausted each evening.

We decided on a healthy hike to stretch our legs, and headed out for the Delicate Arch monument. On the way we stopped to see some thousand-year-old petroglyphs, left by the Ute Indians. There is a lot of history in the area as well as natural wonders, even from the dinosaurs. Anyway, the hike was up and over what is called “slick rock”, smooth red sandstone. We climbed and climbed, admiring views of cliffs that looked painted with various shades of green, violet, red, orange, and a far-off backdrop of snow capped mountains. At one point the trail became a narrow cliff-hugging track with a very steep drop-off on one side, just too much for my vertigo. I had to beg off just before we could view the famous sandstone Delicate Arch, but Lauren made it with no problem and was able to take photographs to bring back and show me. She even came back to get a different lens from me for the camera, and went back a second time. She’s a born mountain goat.

We drove through the rest of the park, stopping at view points along the way, then made one more stop to check out some fingered rocks that had slotted openings just large enough for a skinny, non-claustrophobic person to climb into. Lauren took the challenge, and reported back that there was even grafitti at the end of one of the slots. Such a shame. As we’ve heard it said, it’s one thing to be stupid, and quite another to want to paint your name on a wall and announce it to the world.

After dinner at the brew pub in Moab, the late afternoon and evening consisted of more driving to our next destination, Torrey, Utah. Along the way we saw lots of nothingness, followed by more fantabulous rock formations and ever-changing colors. There were even some rocks that I thought looked bruised because of their blue and purple splotches. At just about sunset we stopped for a herd of about 20 deer by the side of the road, and a couple crossed in front of us. They were quite unperturbed by our presence and we watched them for some time. A bit further down the road a single wild turkey lurched across in front of us – such a comical looking bird. Another thing for us to giggle about.

Our lodging for the night was a bed and breakfast, the Torrey Pines Inn, the only non-motel of the trip. We had a hard time finding the place in the dark, as it was located down an unpaved side road and our map was a bit sketchy. We had to ask some locals, and then wondered if they’d sent us off on a wild goose (turkey?) chase. But we made it to our destination, and it turned out to be a very comfortable home, with gracious hosts Erika and Eldon. They’d lived in the area for more than 13 years, and had loads of ideas of things for us to do and see, more than we could possible attempt in our short visit. At any rate, after a nice visit and refreshments, Lauren and I settled down to a great night’s sleep on a real mattress with real pillows. Ahhhhhhh.

Day 2 – Grand Canyon to Moab, Utah

Since we’d missed the opportunity to see the Grand Canyon at sunset, we decided to set the alarm for 5:30 a.m. so we could see it at sunrise. Right. When 5:30 came around neither one of us could remember why it was so important to get up so early, especially after such a long drive the day before. It doesn’t take much for the best of intentions to be defeated! And I think we were both suffering from the effects of the altitude, with headaches and congestion, not uncommon at 8,000 feet. Besides, the best road trips allow for flexibility. . .

We went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, and had the misfortune to arrive at the buffet just after an entire busload of Japanese tourists. We were too hungry to contemplate going somewhere else, plus the meal was included with our stay, so we slogged through the line and filled our plates. All of the tables were full when we got to the dining area, so we asked a couple of young women if we could join them at their table for four. It turns out they were Australian, here on a 4-week tour of the western U.S. They were very nice, very enthusiastic about their stay so far, and very entertaining. We ended up having a great visit and it started our day out on a positive note. Guess the Japanese tourists had good timing after all.

The low down on the Grand Canyon: it’s beautiful and grand and overwhelming even at 10:00 in the morning. At each new stop in the road we were greeted with a view more awesome than the last. We were also greeted by increasing winds and freezing cold, and we found out that there was a weather forecast for possible snow. After a hot day previously in the desert, it was quite an abrupt change for our systems, and the cold seemed somehow at odds with the red rock views, but the weather certainly put an exclamation point on the morning. After stopping at all of the view points and taking lots of photos, we decided it was time to push on north.

We decided to rest at a small outpost on the Navajo reservation called Cameron, which has a restaurant, souvenir shop, gas station . . . mostly we stopped for the gas station. Opportunities to fuel up were few and far between, and we had no desire to find ourselves stranded in the desert without cell phone service to call AAA. The Navajo have the largest reservation in the U.S., with something over a million acres, but much of it is wind-blown, tumbleweed filled and devoid of any development. The wide open expanses and soft colors are beautiful in an understated way, though. I decided to try a local specialty at the restaurant, called a Navajo taco. It’s a plate-sized puffy Indian fry bread topped with chili, cheese, lettuce, tomato and chopped green chiles. It was actually very good. I’d never had fry bread before, and I’m not sure I’d want to eat it on a regular basis (after all, it IS fried bread), but Lauren and I both gave it a thumb’s up.

Our next destination was Monument Valley, home to many of the iconic red rock formations we’ve all seen in photos and in the movies. Again, we decided it was time to put the top down on the car so that we could get the full impact of driving through this park of giants. The route through the park was unpaved, mostly consisting of red-rock dust and washboard bumps. The speed limit was 15 mph, and there was no way we could have gone any faster. Not that you’d want to – around every turn was another awe-inspiring view to ogle. Again, the cameras got constant use. At one view point we got out of the car and made friends with a couple of little puppies who appeared out of nowhere, probably belonging to one of the Indians who worked in the park. Lauren got a good fuzzy four-legged fix, as she’d been really missing all of our cats and dog. The little pups were very friendly, jumping into her lap and giving her lots of licks, probably prompted by the cheese stick offering she had for them. Sometimes the little things can put an experience over the top, and that was definitely a memorable moment of the day.

We left Monument Valley full of the sights of the day, a bit sun burned and driving a now orange-dust-colored car. The downside of having the top down meant that the dust got inside the car too, on the upholstery, on our road maps and in our hair. After a brief stop on the road so that Lauren could re-enact the scene from Forrest Gump when Forrest is running through the desert (her favorite movie), we drove the rest of the way to Moab, Utah for our next night of recuperation.

Day 1 - Marin to Grand Canyon

For our second annual Mother/Daughter road trip, Lauren and I planned a route that would take us through some of the most deserted parts of the Western U.S. Hopefully we'll see some of the most interesting sites as well. We've got 6 days on her Spring Break, and we've chosen a rather aggressive driving plan, but we are road warriors at heart. We decided to take my car, since I thought a convertible would be a good road trip ride, even though Lauren really wanted to take her little Honda Civic. We had fun in the Civic last year in Death Valley, and it was a real trooper, but I had visions on this trip of the wide open road, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, all viewed without the inconvenience of a roof.

Day 1. We decided to just chew up the asphalt today and make tracks for somewhere interesting. Trying to get out of California always means a long slog on Interstate 5, incredibly boring but at least fast-moving. We headed south for several hours, then cut across through lovely Wasco to get to 99, heading east for the hills.

We had a very uneventful morning drive, except for the occasional bad driver, and decided to stop to change drivers and have lunch at the biggest dot on the map: Barstow. Ever been there? Picture sand, wind, no trees, barren monochrome landscape the same color as the brown, dust-filled sky. We found an oasis of gas stations and fast food eateries, and decided on Bob’s Big Boy diner. It just seemed fitting, somehow.

After an entirely UN-memorable meal in an entirely forgettable place, we headed back out on the highway - only to get stuck in a traffic jam. What’s this about? Stop and go traffic, never going over 5 mph, in the middle of the desert! Good thing we have that meal in our stomachs, digestion is something to keep us occupied. Where are all these people going? Is there a Spring Break special in Vegas?

Finally we make good headway through the rest of eastern California, Mojave was interesting in its own stark way, then into Arizona. Lauren really wanted to drive a portion of the old Route 66 (thank you, Pixar and the Cars movie), so we left the main road Kingman and put the top down on the beemer. By this time it was getting close to sunset, there were very few cars on the road, and we were able to zoom down the road past deserted little towns, imagining what a booming route this used to be in its heyday. We made a stop at an outpost called Hackman, a small museum and store where there was an incredible collection of memorabilia. We would have loved to trade our car for the little red Corvette out in front! Lauren made friends with Rudy and Jenny, the resident burros, with her offering of baby carrot snacks. Then we were off to finish our stint on Route 66 and finish the drive, in the dark, out to our hotel at the Grand Canyon.