Day 28 – Arizona

After a good night’s sleep I decided there is no way I’m missing the Grand Canyon. I’ve never seen it, and this trip needs a grand finale.

Also, as we were driving, we noticed a sign for Meteor Crater, one of the best preserved meteor impact sites in the world. This was something new and exciting to see – and it’s only 6 miles off the main highway. We really enjoyed the hands-on museum. Kaelyn and Justin had fun simulating meteor crashes into various planets by varying the size, density, speed, and angle of impact, although it was quite disturbing to me that Justin enjoyed blowing up our planet. The crater was quite distinct, and it really got us thinking about what would happen if we discovered another big one headed our way. It’s nice to know that people are watching.

With that stop, it took us until afternoon to get to Flagstaff, and I was almost afraid we wouldn’t make it to the Grand Canyon before dusk. But we did and it was worth it. I don’t know what else to say about the Grand Canyon, because you’ve probably seen pictures of it, but the first time you see it live – it is pretty apparent why it’s one of the seven wonders of the world. My first glimpse of the canyon was stunning. I had to re-adjust my eyes and just take it in for awhile. On a clear day you can see the depth in a way that is hard to capture on postcards. I can see how people spend hours camping, hiking, and just enjoying the park for days, but it was actually quite easy to drive in, spend about 20 – 30 minutes looking at the south rim view, and drive back out again. I think this was easy for us because we arrived so late in the afternoon and most people had left for the day.

One thing we did NOT expect was the big fire we saw on the drive in. It looked like there was a fire in the Grand Canyon and maybe we wouldn’t be able to see it. Turns out, they do a lot of controlled burns in that area, and this was one of them. We got to drive by and see the little fires by the road and the firemen monitoring them. I tried to explain the concept of setting fires to prevent fires to the kids, and they seemed to get it because they began to play a game of “bad trees, good trees” as we drove through the park.

I still wanted to get home, so I decided to drive west for awhile. Of course the kids wanted to get to a hotel early enough to swim, but I told them it would be fun to see all the stars in the sky since we were in such a remote area, and I promised if we got to a hotel too late to swim I’d let them swim first thing in the morning. Unfortunately there was a big cloud cover over the sky that night and we couldn’t see any stars. The sunset was absolutely beautiful, but then it was pitch black out, and really hard to take advantage of the higher speed limits. I wanted to stop in a decent sized town, so we went as far as Kingman and found a really nice, clean, motel for our last night.

Day 27 – Texas and New Mexico

Today I decided I wanted to get home. Driving across the United States with a deadline can get really tiring and now everyone is getting on everyone’s nerves. I decided to see if I could make it to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and we did.

As soon as we hit the Texas border gas prices went up instead of down, but I also think it’s because there is a lot of nothing between service stations. I noticed that in Texas we were no longer in Indian country, but as soon as we hit New Mexico, we were back, except this time it was the Navajo Nation I believe, and several others. And, there were not as many signs as in Oklahoma. It seemed like in Oklahoma the Cherokee Nation was doing a lot to advertise their presence to travelers, but in New Mexico things were much more quiet and we drove for long stretches of nothing but landscape, that was now changing from farmland into more rocky desert. But the rocks were beautiful, and the drive was straight and fast.

Today the kids were getting jumpy, and in New Mexico I saw a sign for a dinosaur museum and thought I’d stop for a diversion. The museum was pretty much deserted – but it was very clean and educational. However, the kids went straight to the kids area, which is a sand dinosaur dig play area, took off their shoes, and soon were running around the museum like maniacs. Lesson learned: when you stop to give the kids a diversion – stop at a place where they can run and play. Also, one dinosaur museum is enough on a trip, unless you have a kid who is passionate about dinosaurs.

In New Mexico, we began to see signs for historic route 66. I told the kids about route 66 and asked them if they remembered it from the Disney movie “Cars”. I was almost tempted to take it for awhile, but put that on the agenda for another trip – because I have no patience for slowness at this point.

Our hotel in Albuquerque was really nice, but the kids got a little nervous swimming in the pool as the wind kicked up. At the Boston science museum they had a lesson on lightening, and I think it made a big impact. At the first sign of thunder they want OUT of the water. Even though I assured them that the sky was clear and this is just a normal gusty desert wind, they got spooked.

We were all tired, but when I looked at the map in the hotel I felt better. With the time change and an extra hour of driving each day, we’ve made enough progress so that it is now possible to get home a day early, on Saturday instead of Sunday, and that sounded good to all of us. Justin has a soccer meeting with his new team Saturday night and liked the idea of making it. We even discussed skipping the Grand Canyon and getting home Friday night – but we’re still 12 hours away from home.

Day 26 – Arkansas and Oklahoma

Today our timing was a little quirky. We got going too late to miss morning rush hour and too early to sit around and wait for the attractions in downtown Memphis to open. So we drove through the city into Arkansas… did you know West Memphis is actually in Arkansas? I didn’t.

The landscape seemed to change with the state line and instead of trees and hills I began to see rolling hills and farmland again. Arkansas is a really pretty state, with plenty of lakes and the Ozark Mountains. I think it’s called “The Natural State” or “The Nature State”. I was really looking forward to seeing the Blanchard Springs Caverns, but I had made a big mistake in that the Caverns themselves were 2 ½ hours northeast of the visitor center address I had in Russleville. (a small town just west of Little Rock). There was no way I was going to take that much of a detour – even to see the beautiful caverns, and the nice lady in the office gave me a few suggestions of other things we could do – like have a picnic by a lake in a beautiful state park just down the way.

It was at that point I realized I had no interest in stopping and neither did the kids really. They were annoyed enough at stopping at the visitor center. They didn’t want to have to interrupt their backseat movie, and they had developed a routine they wanted to repeat at every hotel: play in the pool, take showers, and sit on the bed with popcorn and watch the Disney channel as late as they possibly could before falling asleep. We drove by the lake on the way back to the 40, and the kids looked up for a moment to acknowledge it, and then we got focused and drove all the way to Oklahoma City.

Again, at the border of Arkansas and Oklahoma, I noticed a difference. In Oklahoma we entered the Cherokee Indian Nation. There were signs all along the way to stop and purchase Native American artifacts and souvenirs. We listened to country music from Tulsa on the road, and stayed at a hotel in the center of the city.

One of the big things that the kids noticed on this trip, is that people smoke. In California, we have banned smoking from almost everywhere – to the point that the children don’t see it, and when they do, it horrifies them to the point where they are intolerant. This evening there were three young kids swimming in the hotel pool, and the oldest one, who must have been about 17 or 18, was sitting on the edge smoking a cigarette. This ruined the kids pool experience, as they didn’t want to be anywhere near it. It’s funny how as a parent, I can never think of perfect, clever responses to the kids questions when they have them. I just hope these strong negative opinions about alcohol, drugs and smoking carry them through their teen-age years unscathed.

Day 25 – Traveling through Tennessee

Today we had breakfast in Knoxville, lunch in Nashville, and dinner in Memphis. We listened to country music on the radio and heard lots of deep southern accents. I have never really listened to country music before, but I really enjoyed it today.

All the states are slightly different, and the little nuance that shocked me in Tennessee was witnessing at least two vehicles that did NOT appear to be police or government merge onto our side of the highway from dirt paths in the middle area. It was almost as if they were making a U-turn from the other side. Also, the hotels serve biscuits and gravy for breakfast, and Colonel Sanders is at almost every exit.

The other thing that intrigued me is the number of Civil War Battlegrounds. It brought home full force that a war was fought here in the USA on these grounds and people died over keeping our nation together and the slavery issue. I had been completely enamored at the Lincoln Memorial, seeing and hearing all of Lincoln’s speeches and learning about all the other important demonstrations that were held there in the name of equal rights. I thought it would be good to stop and see an actual Civil War battleground.

But I didn’t stop. As usual, I’m torn finding a balance of stopping to experience the places of interest, and getting a couple of days of solid driving in so we can make it home in time to rest for a day before school starts. Today we made ok time despite a morning filled with constant rain, poor visibility, construction detours, and driving by a couple of accidents. This evening, the kids found a stray kitten hiding under our car to get out of the rain. The manager says someone must have abandoned it here a couple of days ago. The kids are begging me to take it home (can you imagine a kitten in the car for 2000 more miles?), or at least find a shelter for it. These are the things they remember about the trip. I asked them if they wanted to see Graceland, or if they knew who Elvis was, or if they wanted to see downtown Memphis, and they were very noncommittal.

None of this stuff opens until 9am tomorrow, so if we do it, that means another slow day without much progress. Tomorrow I want to see the Crystal caves in the Ozarks, so maybe we’ll just do a quick drive downtown in the morning if it’s not still raining.

Day 24 – Leaving North Carolina

Wow- North Carolina is a beautiful – and BIG state!

Today we left my sister’s house very early in the morning, as my nieces caught their busses for the first day of school. I have a friend living in Greensboro who was my roommate for several years in California, so we stopped and visited her. We had always talked about living in the same neighborhood when we were older and having our kids play together while we sat and talked. Today we got to experience it, if only for a few hours.

After lunch we got back on the road, and I guess I thought I’d make it through the state quickly, but it took the rest of the day. The drive was really amazing. We went through the Great Smoky Mountains – and they were gorgeous. We were surrounded with layer upon layer of hills covered with trees, and some of the leaves were already changing color. Even though we were on curvy roads, they were paved well and we could easily drive more than 60 miles per hour.

Many of the locals told us how beautiful the town of Asheville in West North Carolina is, and suggested that if we had time to get out and hike we should. As I drove I thought of all the places we are passing by without experiencing, and estimated that in order to do everything right we would need at least 6 months for this journey. But it’s still pretty amazing to drive and see the different cities and states even when we don’t stop.

Day 22 and 23 – Virginia and North Carolina

Early in the morning we dropped Mark off at Dulles airport and headed down to North Carolina, through the state of Virginia. In Virginia, the first thing I noticed is that everyone actually drives 55, and the cops are watching. Also, the traffic on the interstate is horrible – it’s almost like everyone in DC takes off going south on the weekends, so Saturday morning at 9am, rush hour starts.

But it did get me thinking about the patterns of how people have settled over the country. Most of the biggest cities are in places where a traversable body of water meets land, and they all seem to have slightly different personalities. Meanwhile, people balance their desire to be in the midst of all the action (in the cities) and their desire to be with nature, in open spaces. The thing that struck me is that I’m probably experiencing the last of our current configuration of people. People have congregated in cities because they’ve needed to be near the jobs and the stores and the schools and the people they work with. Only some people have moved out into nature, and many have made these separate vacation homes or stayed within a reasonable commute to a nearby city. But with the advent of the Internet, more and more people can telecommute. In fact, on this trip, I learned that for the most part, had I been on my own, I could have run 75% of my business from the road. The only parts that would have been a problem are the in person meetings and speaking engagements, the networking events, and handling incoming “snail mail”. It makes me feel like I’m seeing the last of an era, and that humans will spread out over the world in a completely different pattern within the next few decades. It’s actually quite intriguing to me to imagine that I could at some point pick anywhere to live, as my home base, and it could be fairly remote as long as I could easily travel for in person work engagements. But that’s still a long way off. Because even though I’m enjoying this trip – regular travel is a completely different story. We’ll definitely stay in California for the next ten years or so.

My sister and her daughters live in North Carolina, so we spent two final days with them before beginning our long trek back to California. As usual, the cousins loved spending time together. We hung out at the pool, did laundry, grilled out and my sister and I got a couple of nights of good talking in as we caught up on each other’s lives. We joked about the journey back. They had seen a sign at Wilmington, North Carolina, on the I-40 that said something like 2700 miles to Barstow California. That’s one thing that’s going to make driving the southern route home easy. One freeway that you can catch a few minutes from my sister’s house in North Carolina, goes all the way to a small city a few hours from my house, in California. It’s going to be a long drive home - but at least it will be pretty hard to get lost. Here goes – the last big long week!

Days 20 – 21 - Washington DC

After staying the night in Maryland, we drove to Washington DC. We picked a downtown hotel, hoping that we’d get free parking so we could explore the city without worrying about our car. We were right that we had downtown parking, but it did cost quite a bit.

We decided to get around by taking “the Metro”, DC’s subway and train system, but while we were told it went by “every” point of interest in DC, we soon learned that meant “give or take 10 blocks or so”. We got off at the closest stop to the White House, and walked to the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and all the way back home to our hotel. I guess for security reasons they don’t make it very easy to take public transportation close to those sights – OR we chose the wrong form of transportation. But, despite our confusion and learning curve, exploring Washington DC was really fun.

On Friday we decided to go to the Smithsonian. For some reason, I had always imagined the Smithsonian to be one HUGE museum, kind of like the Louvre in Paris. What I found out is that the Smithsonian is actually a whole slew of different museums, many of them close together, and all of them spectacular. Even better, they are all free. We saw the Natural History Museum, the National Art Museum, the Air and Space Museum, and even a little bit of the Zoo before the day was over. We could have stayed for a week and still not seen everything. But I did have a bit of a problem with the kids. Although a few of the exhibits mildly intrigued them, they were still high from their experience at the Boston Science Museum and they kept asking me if we could go to a “to do” museum instead of a “to see” museum. I thought that was an interesting way of putting it. They are so used to learning interactively, that looking and reading about things is simply boring. They need to touch, feel, experience, and what’s more, run around. Even by the end of the night, when Mark and I were both practically limping back to the hotel with swollen knees and burning feet, the kids were giggling, running, jumping, and goofing off.

The only big problem we had in DC was mosquito bites. We never thought to bring bug repellent with us sightseeing; yet when it cooled down in the evening we were still out there, and so were the mosquitoes! The itching since then has been awful, but the ability to walk around the city in the evening and actually experience it was really fun – I wish we could have stayed longer.