Part Three - New Jersey to L.A.
Theme of this part of the journey was to travel as much of U.S. 50 as possible while getting home. In fact, I skipped the last segment from Utah to Sacramento opting instead to head south to Las Vegas.
August 16, 2017 Seven Mtns. CG
Spent a few days at my sister's house in Paramus trying to figure out where to go next. That turned out to be back home. Settled on trying to follow U.S. 50 which runs nearly coast to coast through the middle tier of the country. To get out of the congested east coast area took I-80 (an old standby for me) back to State College and stayed at a campground south of town not far from the Boy Scout camp I attended in the early 60's.
[[ As I add this email excerpt to the blog I am remembering
that before this commercial campground the only business here was a
stand selling soft ice cream (the kind that comes out of a machine and
is sort of spiraled into a flat-bottomed "cone" by the attendant) and
other sweet, cold snacks. A tradition while we were in camp was a
Wednesday evening hike out to the highway to get ice cream. Those
stands, "Frosty Freeze" and the like, were a feature of more rural areas
of the country. They had an atmosphere all their own with buzzing neon
and fluorescent lights, the soft, summer air, the occasional car
motoring past on the two lane road in the dark night. ]]
August, 17, 2017 Super 8, Clarksburg, WV
Continued south to pick up US-50 in Maryland. I should mention that the route selection was chosen partly to swing south in hopes of avoiding some bad weather that the NOAA maps showed sweeping east into PA and northern West Virginia.
Forest vegetation continued to shift toward more deciduous. Did I mention that along some roads in Vermont the trees were twice as tall as the road was wide giving the feeling of riding down a high and narrow hallway. In West Virginia the trees closed over the road turning the impression into a dark tunnel.
Some of the roads south were delightful like those described earlier in PA and NY. The first stretch of US-50W from where I picked it up at its junction with US220 is less so. It is definitely a challenge, especially on a loaded bike on first visit. The mountains here seem to be small and jumbled together and the road climbs over them all with switchback after switchback after switchback usually with a 9% grade and semi-trailers coming the other way. And the road is narrow.
Fortunately, it didn't rain though there were occasional damp spots. Confusingly, it also passes from West Virginia into Maryland and back into West Virginia. I'd never noticed how odd the state boundaries are here.
The twisty stretch ends at Bridgeport where I stopped and booked a Super 8 motel in the next town.
Super 8 now joins Motel 6 on my list of budget chains to avoid. I opened the door and was assaulted by an overwhelming wave of cologne. It was as though someone had dumped an entire bottle in the middle of the room. Add to this that the room was frigid. The AC had been set on 60 degrees. As soon as the door was opened the warm, muggy air from outside rushed in. It didn't exactly rain in the room, but it might as well have. Moisture condensed on every smooth surface - mirrors, counters, desk top, etc. Drops started running down the mirror. I asked for another room but all they had was a smoker that smelled like an ashtray.
August 18, 2017 Airbnb Milford, OH
Today some of my clothes reek of cologne. Another bad sleep night.
August 19, 2017 Salem, IL motel
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| I took this shot for the grain elevator and the slow Union Pacific livestock train. But looking at it now there is much more in it: the Taqueria, a stack of firewood, Spanish on the delivery truck, a billboard for a rodeo, the taillight of the pickup that was stopped in front of me, something advertised for 99 cents, even the vast sky. It's a deeply midwestern scene. |
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| I was taken by this sign for the motel where I stayed. The style is straight out of my childhood. |
August 20, 2017 Owensville, MO Airbnb backyard cg
Continuing into Ohio, US-50 begins to flatten and straighten and the farm field grow larger. I'm guessing this is foreshadowing what the later sections of the road will look like. The road is leaving behind all the tectonic stress of the east
and slowly relaxing.
Through Indiana and Illinois the road would occasionally lapse back into curves and hills and dark forested stretches. But now in Missouri I think it's finally flattened out for good.
Something odd about this highway. It has a lot of right angle bends. Maybe the original road had to follow the boundaries of properties and land owners won the arguments with road builders. Sometimes a bend is not associated with an intersection but when it is I have to pay attention. At least once a day I've missed a sign and headed off miles in the wrong direction. And I thought that following a single road most of the way home would make navigation easy.
Now in Owensville, MO. Tomorrow I'll continue west on 50 and stop around 1:00 to watch the eclipse. If it's visible. Weather forecasts look dicey. There may be an awful lot of disappointed people.
August 21, 2017 Grandview, MO Airbnb
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| I pulled over here where people were scattered about waiting to watch the eclipse. The light grew dim and the camera had trouble focusing (or maybe I just shook it). |
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| As the moment approached crescents appeared in the dappled shade on pavement under some trees. |
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| The anti-climactic moment. A smartphone camera just isn't the best instrument to record astronomical events. |
August 22-23, 2017 Hutchinson, KS Airbnb
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| A prairie restoration project somewhere in eastern Kansas, I think. Looks scrappy now. I'd like to see it in Spring when the flowers bloom. Early settlers in the 19th century described a breathtaking sight. All gone now, of course. |
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| Mercury rocket and capsule outside the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas. |
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| A big section deals with the German rocketry program in WWII. |
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| A V-1 flying "buzz" bomb. |
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| V-2 rocket. |
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| And some of the V-2's innerds. |
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| What we Americans knew at the time as "Sputnik." It's like a toy compared to man-made objects whizzing around the planet now. But at the time it was world shattering. |
August 24, 2017 Lamar, CO motel
August 25, 2017 CG near Salida, CO
August 26, 2017 KOA campground, Grand Junction, CO
I'm sitting in the laundry room of a KOA campground in Grand Junction, Colorado escaping the late afternoon sun that is savaging my camp site. Las Vegas through which I will be passing the day after tomorrow is in triple digits all week. I'm looking at traveling in the very early morning hours to escape the
worst of it.
From here on the route is a boring drone on interstates. I'm not looking forward to it.
So, Kansas finally flattened out after Hendrickson to what I'd anticipated for the entire state. After Dodge City, however, it started to be hillocky and I had the distinct impression that the land was slowly rising. This may have been an illusion resulting from knowing that the Rockies were ahead. Lots of cattle feed lots. I'd always read about these abominations but never seen one. Of course they stink to high heaven.
Feed lots meant lots of semi-trailers hauling cattle. For some reason, maybe the slotted sides, these trucks seem to create more turbulence than other trucks. Add a stiff left to right cross wind and every time one of these guys passed going east it felt like a full body slam from the shock wave of air. I began to wonder if such repeated blows (no pun intended) could lead to TBI. Ducking my head in anticipation seemed to lessen the impact.
The farther west the road goes the more grazing land and less farmland. I forgot to mention that one of the crops I saw looked like a very short variety of corn, maybe 2 feet tall plus a dark reddish brown tassel. Not a pretty crop.
Also, the farther west and into Colorado I saw more and more high deserty type plants - some sages I vaguely recognized as well as a yucca-like plant mixed in with whatever grasses there were.
First night in Colorado was in a motel in Lamar. After Lamar the scenery begins to pick up especially after Pueblo. The road begins to climb in earnest and everywhere you look could be a picture postcard.
Second night in Colorado was a campground a bit past Salida (pronounced "Sah Lie Dah," not with the Spanish pronunciation "Saleeda" - I was gently corrected by a gentleman at a visitor center - visitor centers are everywhere here).
That night (last night) the stars were like I haven't seen in decades. Milky Way spread across the sky like dust and the stars so dense that other than the Big Dipper the few constellations that I can recognize were lost in the clutter. Salida
is a little above 7000 feet elevation and despite a late afternoon shower the air was clear.
Today the big test was crossing Monarch Pass at 11000 plus feet. I was curious how the bike would handle the altitude. It did just fine.
Now, the scenery on the west side of the mountains is extraordinary. Of course, it was morning and the sun was behind me lighting up the colors beautifully. I won't try to describe the views except to say that the landscapes are huge. I was reminded a bit of my drive across the Texas panhandle in 1987 enroute to my new job in California.
At the campground a fellow traveler outlined some side trips for even more extraordinary scenery. While coming down the mountain I toyed with following his advice but finally concluded that I've seen enough. Maybe too much. It's like
museum fatigue. I just want to get home now.
August 27, 2017 Beaver, UT motel
Now in a motel in Beaver, UT.
The KOA turned out to be another campground from Hell. Somehow I overlooked the fact that it is right next to Hwy. 50. Truck traffic all night long plus yahoos in loud cars (or probably pickups) and some jerk setting off fire crackers at 11pm. I think I slept about 3 hours and finally got up shortly after 5 am. At least I got an early start which will be good practice for the next two days.
I spoke too soon about the interstates being a boring drone. I-70 west from Grand Junction for 200 miles to where it meets I-15 is spectacular. I'd always read that Utah has these other worldly landscapes and had seen pictures of bizarre rock formations. But I'd assumed that the sights tended to be localized like the Red Rock Canyon north of LA. But this stuff in Utah just goes on and on for hundreds of miles. And not all the same. There are plunging canyons and towering cliffs and sandstone pinnacles sculpted in crazy shapes. This is all visible from the interstate so I can't imagine what is back in the many national and state parks along the route. Again it was a clear day with windblown cumulus clouds and the sun behind me for maximum effect.
Now I'm on I-15 going south to Las Vegas and this looks like it will be comparatively boring. Not to mention hot. I hadn't noticed that much of I-70 is at a fairly high altitude with some summits over 7000 feet. It makes a final descent in the last miles to the junction with I-15. There I noticed the temperature rising dramatically.
August 28, 2017 Las Vegas, NV Airbnb
Again spoke too soon about I-15 being boring. Got away just before dawn so had the benefit of a low sun enhancing the landscape. I actually don't remember much of the scenery except that it was big and engaging. Maybe lack of sleep
is affecting memory.
A short section of I-15 crosses a corner of Arizona - fact I hadn't realized until a "Welcome to Arizona" sign flashed by. This part of the road is barely believable. It descends steeply and winds sharply between monumentally tall cliffs. A bit
unnerving as you jockey for position with 18 wheelers. As with other bits of landscape out here everything felt out of proportion with scales all wrong - the road too narrow, the cliffs too tall, the mountains too massive and too close. I felt
like a small creature scurrying through a big maze.
Another thing I didn't realize is that Beaver, UT is at more than a mile altitude. That kept temperatures reasonable for the first part of the ride. Tonight's Airbnb is in Henderson, NV, a suburb of Las Vegas. I've been here before (finger doctor). As far as I can tell this place consists almost entirely of pavement, crushed rock and stucco making it a perfect heat island. Houses are crammed together with no outdoor space that would invite community. Front "yards" are just patches of crushed rock dotted with the occasional desert shrub. Looking at these "neighborhoods" that go on for miles I have the impression of a hive. Except that in a hive inhabitants are all working together. Here I suspect there is very little interaction.
August 29, 2017 Home
Left Henderson at 4:15 am to get ahead of the heat in the desert (we are in a lengthy 3-digit heat wave). Somewhere in the desert the odometer passed the 12000 mile mark for the trip.
The trip home was not without excitement. A coyote, its eyes catching the headlights, started to cross the highway ahead of me and a car to my left. It shied back as we both braked. I was apprehensive that it would dart around behind
the car and into my path but it didn't. I stopped at a rest stop and was entranced by a half dozen or so large bats swerving and diving feasting on bugs attracted to the lights. They were quite low to the ground sometimes only a few feet above my head. I've tried to id them online but without luck. Then a rear-end crash occurred right in front of me on the 210 freeway requiring a hard but controlled stop from 60 mph. That was 15 miles from my house occasioning some ironic speculation.