Kim's Excellent Adventure (Click on any photo to enlarge)
In March 2001, I drove from Massachusetts to California and back (with five dogs) to attend the ASSA National Specialty show. I like to drive -- probably a good thing -- but even so, I expected the trip to be rather tiring and difficult. In fact, it was a blast! I hope to make a similar trip in the future when I have more time (and fewer dogs along for the ride). I managed to see a lot of sights during my trip, but for every stop I made, there were 20 other places I know I missed. But here is some of what I saw and did:
The presentation of the warplanes was very elaborate. Many of the displays featured life-size dioramas with human figures representing soldiers. I especially liked the WWII-era aircraft like "Dream Girl" (left; click to enlarge photo). |
  Yukon,
Oklahoma: Following my MapQuest-generated directions off the main street
in Yukon, past several grain elevators, and across a railroad crossing unsullied
by as much as signal light, I found it hard to believe I would find the
"Pets & People Dog Park" at the end of this ride. But, suddenly,
there it was -- and well worth the trip. The dogs and I spent an enjoyable
hour and a half at this incredible park, which I'd found through an Internet
search. It featured more than three securely fenced acres, with a pond for
dogs that like to swim, and a separate fenced area for agility. The park
is maintained by, and is adjacent to, the local humane society. (Click on
either photo to enlarge.) |
I passed through McLean early on a Saturday morning -- too early to stop and visit the Devil's Rope (barbed wire) Museum, which didn't open until 10 a.m. In 1990, on my way to the Sheltie National in Denver, I missed visiting the nation's only other barbed wire museum in LaCrosse, Kansas, because we got there too late in the day. I hope that my timing will improve on some future trip. A visit to a barbed wire museum seems like the sort of thing one should do at least once in a lifetime. |
And the dogs would have been welcome, owner Clifton Lewis told me. Just a few weeks ago, they'd had a guest who was traveling with three Scottish Terriers, he said. Clifton is the son -- one of eight children actually -- of Chester E. Lewis, who built the place in the late1940s. In 1974, after Route 40 bypassed Route 66 in Holbrook, the motel closed and sat idle for 14 years. But the property was never sold, and in 1988, Chester's children re-opened it, just as baby-boomers were becoming nostalgic for the roadside motels of their childhood vacations. Clifton shared his scrapbooks with me -- photos and descriptions of his family's motel have appeared in hundreds of magazines all over the world -- but, sadly, he couldn't offer me a room, and I had to move on. I ended up at a Red Roof Inn in Flagstaff. It was much less interesting, but there was plenty of grass. |
The Hackberry General Store (left; click on photo to enlarge) sold a variety of useful items. I bought some earrings, a book, and a root beer. |
In the picture at right, Nola Chock waits for her car at Disney's Autopia (click on photo to enlarge). I'm in the background wearing a maroon jacket. I loved the newer rides like Indiana Jones and Splash Mountain but was disappointed to find Pirates of the Caribbean closed for repairs. |
This route took me
through the little town of Oatman, where traffic halted as wild burros wandered
into the street. As it turned out, I was wrong. Coming down the other side of the pass was twice as harrowing as my climb to the top had been -- try hairpin turns on a narrow, poorly maintained road with sheer drops of hundreds of feet to one side. Guard rails? Ha! We don't need no stinkin' guardrails! As you can imagine, this road was especially exciting in the fully loaded Montero, complete with (top-heavy) roof pod. It had looked so straightforward on the map! Truly, I would not have taken this route had I known what it would be like, but I must admit to feeling some pride in having survived it. |
By 7 a.m., I was sitting down to breakfast in the dining room of the
elegant El Tovar Hotel (opened in 1905), right on the rim of the canyon.
I had one of the best breakfasts I have ever had -- a By the time I was done eating and browsing the El Tovar's two gift shops, the clouds had lifted and the canyon was visible in all its glory (see photo at left; click to enlarge). It turned out to be an exceptionally clear day. In fact, I caught a tour guide at the rim pointing out mountains on the horizon that were 90 miles away in Nevada. |
The photo at right (click to enlarge) was taken at Arches National Park near Moah, Utah. The park is full of these delicate and beautiful sandstone rock formations. The formation to the left in the photo is known as "Balancing Rock." This was a nice time of year to visit the area, because it was relatively cool. It can be brutally hot during the summer months. I spent the night at the Kokopelli Lodge (eight units) on a quiet back street in Moab. I highly recommend this little motel and its friendly innkeepers. I took their advice and had dinner a few blocks away at Eddie McStiff's Brew Pub, "Moab's oldest legal brewery." Both the food and the beer were great! |
I couldn't have imagined that I would be driving through white-out conditions a few hours later while crossing Vail Pass (10,666 ft.). Living in the northeast, I'm used to snow, but the high winds, curving highway, and steep road grades of Route 70 made me more than a little nervous. The worst part of the whole trip came after I stopped to get gas in Copper Mountain, and then, with snow sticking to the highway signs and my usually good sense of direction having abandoned me, ended up getting back on the highway headed west instead of east. Before I realized my mistake, I was climbing Vail Pass again and couldn't turn around for 25 miles -- not until I'd gone up and over again. So, I ended up driving over the pass three times! Of course, by the time I got to Loveland Pass (11,990 ft.), I was an old hand at driving in these conditions, and it didn't seem quite so bad. |
This meal also turned out to be the occasion of a food-related epiphany. The breakfast started with coffee, juice, and a bowl of fruit. Then there was a giant pancake, slightly bigger than a dinner plate, very thin, and wonderfully crispy around the edges. Too tasty to drown with syrup. Then two delicious, fresh fried eggs, smoky bacon and sausage (each of the Amana Colony villages has its own smokehouse and meat shop), and the BEST fried potatoes I've ever had. Really! I'd never had such good potatoes. When I asked the waitress about them, she replied, "They're just potatoes. Nothing special. We just slice them and fry them." When I said again that they were the best I'd ever had, she asked where I was from. When I told her, she said, "Ah.... well, in Massachusetts, you probably don't fry your potatoes in lard." Lard! So that's what my diet has been missing! How could I have lived this long and never discovered the wonders of lard? I wonder if the supermarkets around here sell it. After breakfast, I stopped by Millstream and picked up a couple cases of wheat beer to bring home. Is it illegal to transport liquor across state lines? Well, I've been home a few weeks now, and we're almost done destroying the evidence.... |
