A "best of" collection of road trip pictures can be found here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aspersions/XUSA07BestOf
Slideshow here:
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Maps! Maps! Maps!
A couple more maps:
This is a map color-coded by day of the trip:
This is a map color-coded by which minivan ("Cannonball") we were driving:
This is a map color-coded by day of the trip:
This is a map color-coded by which minivan ("Cannonball") we were driving:
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Saturday, June 16, 2007
The first of many visualizations
Presenting our route, courtesy of Ilteris:
(Click on map for more detail)
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
DATELINE: willits, ca
Author: Andy
I totally just got drunk-dialed by jenny chowdhury! She's in san francisco, a mere 150 miles away.
We just ate dinner at this random diner in town. Although we arrived 15 minutes after closing, the waitress let us order anyway. That's the 2nd time we've lucked out like that in 2 days. We were on the cusp of having to eat at Denny's again.
I drove about 200 miles today, taking over somewhere near Eureka. The drive along the california coast was beautiful. The views were right out of a postcard. We've been taking US 101 the whole way. We drove past a lot of ridiculously large redwood trees. At some points while I was driving, the road would weave underneath a thick canopy of giant trees. The sand dunes are still my scenic highlight of the day, but the subsequent drive today has been a very pleasant surprise.
Karl drove for 5 hours today and now ilteris has taken over for the last leg. It's funny how driving 300 miles seems like such a reasonable task at this point. We're going to arrive in SF in style, right over the Golden Gate Bridge.
DATELINE: fort dick, ca
Author: Ilteris
Finally! We are in california. We entered 25th state of our trip couple of minutes ago. I can see pacific ocean on my right and we are passing through small towns on the coast. Beautiful. 360 miles more and our trip is finally going to end in san francisco. I am pretty sure we are all looking forward to it!
DATELINE: reedsport, or
Author: Andy
Sand for breakfast! First stop today was the Oregon Sand Dunes. I'd been looking forward to it from the beginning of the trip. We paid $25 each for a half-hour dune buggy ride and it was great. Our driver buckled us into the dune buggy and drove down this lush forest path. Within a couple minutes the path opened up into rolling sand dunes. The driver then accelerated and we started bounding across the Dunes at high speed. It felt a lot like a roller coaster. We would shoot up the backside of a dune and then rocket down the other side at a steep angle and twisted 50 degrees to one side. After a while he drove us down another path, which opened up onto the beach. Fitting that when we finally reach the Pacific, it is on a dune buggy. Our driver sped down the beach, fishtailing the buggy and spinning it out (on purpose). Then we went back into the main dune area for more awesome roller coaster fun. It was a beautiful and exhilirating ride. I'm still a bit dizzy.
Anyway, we made it to the pacific ocean! And it only took us three minivans to do it.
Seattle yesterday was fun. The EMP and sci-fi museum worth both very engaging and consumed 2 hours more of our day than we had planned. My only qualms with the EMP and sci-fi museums is that they were conspicuously light on electronic music and Babylon 5 respectively. I think both of them are heavily weighted towards the tastes of their founder, Paul Allen. Hey it's his museum, he can do whatever he wants.
It was a little surreal seeing seattle grunge in a museum. In one display case they had a shitty-looking t-shirt that kurt cobain once wore. I mean Nirvana was good and all, but treating his torn thrift store shirt like the shroud of turin is a bit much.
I did the drive from Seattle to Portland. We hit some traffic, but once again the car pool lane made it less painful. After dinner we turned west at Eugene towards Florence, where we stayed the night. The drive was surreal. The only light was from our headlights and we were surrounded by very very tall trees. When we finally got to a hotel near the coast, we drove out to the beach to dispense with the fireworks we bought in wyoming.
On a closing note, Ran Tao was a great hostess in Seattle and we already miss her a lot. Hooray for Ran Tao!
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
DATELINE: albany, or
Author: Karl
When have you ever seen a Hungarian restaurant mentioned on one of those blue highway info signs? Neither had we so that's why we had to stop and check out Novaks Hungarian restaurant. By far the best highway stop food ever, one of the very few non-chain, real restaurants off of an interstate. Chicken paprika, challah bread, chicken dumpling soup, and stuffed cabbage. Wow it felt great to not feel disgusted after a meal for once, the best food of the trip in my opinion. They even stayed open an extra hour for us and gave us free extra portions. If you ever drive through central Oregon this place is worth stopping for.
DATELINE: donald, or
Author: Karl
We rolled in to Seattle last night to meet up with our good friend Ran Tao. After a couple days driving through the stix of Montana & Idaho it really felt comforting to be back in a real city again. Ran's place was really nice, we sipped a couple beers and ate at a pub just down the street from her.
We started of today eating the sinlge most obscene portion of food I have ever recieved in my life at the 5 point cafe. I went with the country fried steak breakfast with gravy, hashbrwons and eggs. Let me tell you, it was a portion fit for an NFL linebacker and not a normal human. Normally I'm good about finishing my plate, but there was no way in hell I could have finished this mountain of carbs. This unfortunately jacked up my blood sugar to hi levels for the rest of the day which made me more groggy than usual, but oh well nothing new. Next we checked out the space needle, experience music project and the science fiction museum. The experience music project & sci fi museum building was your typical Frank Gehry contruction, huge wrapping plates of metal in fluid like/organic shapes in blue and purple colors... Very impressive but not particularly different than his Chicago and Bilbao constructions. The museum featured insightful first hand audio accounts from a number of muscians and people in the music biz. It had a lot of really great interactive exhibts, all kinds of ways of recording your own stories and music; these were in-line with many of my thesis advisor's projects at his company Local Projects. The Jimi Hendrix and general history of Seattle music displays were also fascinating (good grunge music history). The connected science fiction museum was also really sweet. It seemed to be heavily bank rolled by Paul Allen, go figure, who else could justify buying raygun collection from classic sci fi cinema. Images, props and stories from Star Trek, Jetsons, Star Wars, Alien, Dune, War of the Worlds, and Lost in Space were just a few of the sights. It also glossed over various sci fi themes such as, teleportation, time travel, altered futures, changes in scale, etc... I felt they could have had more info on japanese anime and other manga style anime. But overall, it was cool and made me want to read a sci fi novel.
Time kinda ran out so we weren't able to take the microsoft tour, be then again I didn't really care too much about doing that anyway. I hope Ran likes the good bye card we left her ;-) ... You rock Ran thanks for letting us crash!
Monday, June 11, 2007
DATELINE: fishtrap, wa
Author: Karl
Road trips are fun Karl, that's what I just keep telling myself. We're on the 3rd minivan with probably $1,000 worth of damage to the last 2, and I have to go through the fun process of now filling out yet another insurance claim form. The newest cannonball is substantially smaller, only a dodge caravan, and not designed for cargo. We somehow stuff all my bags into the van, many of which are now splitting apart with my clothing spilling out all over the place. Melted chocolate, diet coke spills and mystery lotion slick coats the last vans interior. Budget would be stupid to ever want to rent a car to me again... Chances are cannonball III will also be returned in the same ravaged state as the first 2.
My perspective on the deer decapitation: I was fast asleep at 3am. We were driving in the remote state of Montana in the absolute darkest and most desolate pitch black night I can ever recollect, no lights on the horizon, no other cars, just black. When the tank hits half you start worrying when u will ever see another gas station. I feel the car slow down and swerve right, I wake up from my delirious sleep seconds from impact. I see the deer standing still in the left lane. Andy cuts into the right shoulder and slows down to about 60 mph. In the last possible moment this deer makes a suicidal dart for the KIA. Andy makes the smart move not to jerk the wheel hard, which could have ended in tumbling inferno, but tries to keep it as right as he can without flying off the road. Then I hear a load thud against the front left of the car and see what looks like a football sized object launch into the night sky. It took me close to 1 minute to realize that this was in fact not a dream and really happening. According to the casino guy in Ananconda at least we didn't hit a cow ... why? Because if you hit a cow in Montana you have to pay the farmer for it.
Will we ever make it to san fran??
As Andy mentioned, all good stories end in a trilogy. Neither a rock in the road, a charging deer nor Grillz Mcgee could stop this journey, we roll on to the north western corner of the USA... Forward we press on without looking back.
DATELINE: alberton, mt
Author: Andy
Two fun facts about deers, highways, and Montana. We learned these from a local an hour after they would have come in handy.
If you see a deer in the road, you are supposed to come to a complete halt rather than try to avoid it. This runs counter to the instinct most of us would have on a 75mph interstate; the last thing you would ever want to do is stop, particularly in the passing lane. But here in Montana, especially at night, the chances of getting violently rear-ended are much less because you are typically the only car on the road for many many miles.
The other lesson concerns what to do if you do hit a deer. Apparently it is customary to stop your car, get out, and drag the carcass onto the shoulder. As it worked out, the idea of doing this didn't even cross our minds. I would go so far as to say that dragging a decapitated deer around was the last thing any of us was inclined to do.
We soldiered on and found lodging in the lovely town of Anaconda. The problem was that both motels in Anaconda were closed for the night. We went into a casino (there's lots of little ones in montana) to use the bathroom. We met a very nice guy running the place who explained the aforementioned deer rules to us. He also explained that we were out of luck finding a hotel within 20 miles with an open check-in counter at that hour of the night. Exhausted, we parked in a nearby parking lot and slept in the minivan.
We stopped off in Missoula to use the free wi-fi at a random super 8. Karl had to make some calls to deal with the car situation. Our left front headlight is smashed to pieces, and there is even deer hair embedded in it. We're gonna need another new minivan. Karl arranged for us to pick one up in Spokane.
We had pizza for lunch. We've been laughing a lot.
DATELINE: butte, mt
Author: Ilteris
Karl: 'omg! I saw something flying off!` after these couple of days, finally we just chopped off a head of a deer at 3am in the morning in montana interstate north something. Last two days were insane. First we went to vegas. Of course on the way grand canyon and hover dam. To be honest, I couldn`t make it if I was sober. Vegas. It`s a city where you come for a day and live the danger of not be able to leave again. Seductive for addiction. We could threw ourselves into road saturday afternoon and made it to salt lake city around 11pm. I must say I have never seen such a strange nightlife. Men from different ages and pretty girls are dancing through the worst cover band ever and having their best moment. It was weird. The next day, today, I have experienced the more impressive part of it. This was the part about latter-days saints. So the story goes on like this. Jesus shows up in the north america for a couple of days long before colombus. Then a guy named joseph smith finds a book about this. Starts translating and sharing it people. The people that goes in this way become mormons. Of course, the other christians don`t like this idea. They are forced to move west and end up in utah. Beside all of these stories, the folks at salt lake city built nice buildings out of these. I really enjoyed walking through temple area. I cannot tell the same about nightlife. It was interesting to see two such different cities such close in such a little time. Oh, and the text message that I got from my brother was explaining how we are doing this trip. `what happened to san fran? What are you guys doing in utah, are you going back?`
Sunday, June 10, 2007
DATELINE: chubbuck, id
Author: Andy
Do a google image search for "virgin river gorge." It is really really fun to drive through.
Driving north through utah basically goes like this: you drive up to the crest of a hill, and suddenly you see a 15 mile long valley ahead of you. There are at most two buildings in the whole valley. At the northern edge of the valley is another set of mountains. You follow the road up the front of the mountain. You reach the crest of the road, and you see the next 15 mile valley laid before you. This repeats for about 300 miles. Each valley is a little greener than the one before. Finally you reach the crest of a hill and a whole lot of lights are in the last valley. This is Provo. It's the southern edge of 68 miles of salt lake city sprawl.
We got into SLC a little late, checked into the hotel and walked up to the area of town where the desk clerk said the bars were. There were two bars, only one of which was serving food. The bars close at 1am, so we ate fast. While we ate, a band on stage played instrumental Tool cover songs while half a dozen disenchanted youths moshed in front of the stage.
Our next stop was the 4-floor party juggernaut Port O' Call. You don't pay a cover charge in Utah, you "buy a temporary membership" to a "social club." Karl is now the proud owner of a 3-week membership to Port O' Call (ilteris and I were his guests). The entertainment for the evening was a cover band fronted by a guy in an afro wig. They were basically a wedding band. They closed with "Ladies Night." The scene was kinda lame. When they say they close at 1, they mean it. They literally padlock the liquor at midnight and shut off the taps at 1am sharp. Utah has very strict rules about these things.
We spent the afternoon touring Temple Square and learning about Mormonism. We had a guided tour of their new conference center, which features a slick 21,000 person auditorium. We spent some time in the visitors center and the museum of mormon history. The whole experience connected a lot of dots for me, as I now realize that I only had a partial idea of what their deal is. Basically, there are two narratives at work.
First, there is the story contained within the book of mormon. 600 years before christ, this guy Lehi in jerusalem has a prophecy about the coming of the messiah. He gathers his family in a boat and sails for the americas. Shortly after being crucified, jesus turns up in latin america and hangs out with the native americans, who are decendents of Lehi. Then the tribes are at peace for a while, but then become wicked. The message of christ is lost in the process, which is why there is why when the spanish showed up with catholicism, no one knew what they were talking about.
Anyway, we know about all this because in 18something joseph smith found gold tablets in his backyard in upstate new york(!) and translated them with the help of an angel. Then his growing band of followers is persecuted evrywhere they go until, under the leadership of brigham young, they get to utah. This is the second narrative, the one that took place more recently. It also proves that god has a special place in his heart for the USA.
Yeah.
We've got a lot of driving ahead of us. The woman working behind the counter at an Idaho Chevron tried to pick up Karl.
DATELINE: downey, id
Author: Karl
What a nice surprise, Grillz McGee the dirty south hustla from memphis gave us a ring. He wanted to say wazzup and asked us to pick up some important ups deliveries in Seattle.
Grillz: Hey man where u at? Lets link up.
Me: ok, cool I'm chillin out in west Butte. U going to be around there tonight?
Grillz: Uh, ok, where's that from beale st.?
Me: Oh, yea it's on the westside ... westside Montana dawg!
Grilly-Z was just being his good caring self and helping out the community from coast to coast...
Saturday, June 9, 2007
DATELINE: mona, ut
Author: Karl
The cannonball sailed over the hoover damn with just enough time to dart out for a quick picture. The road swooped around lake mead and down a long desert stretch and there it was, a giant f*ing pyramid in the desert... Vegas stood before us.
We parked the cannonball at stop number one, got out and each picked our favorite machine gun. Andy went with the sniper rifle, Ilteris - laser scope assault rifle, and I preffered the guerrilla classic - AK-47. Checked in at Excaliber. We proceeded to stuff our faces with buffalo wings and oysters while girls in scantily orange booty shorts sang to me for my birthday. We slugged sips from bottles of wine and whisky in the streets. Mexicans passed us stacks of what looked like prostitute playing cards as we watched a massive fountain dance to 'All that Jazz'. Glitzy skyscrapers, an elevated monorail, interconnected labyrinths of miles of casinos. Nothing was too big and everything created flashy spectacle. Fake breasts, swirls of fire from pirate ship cannons, elevators going sidways up a pyramid, indoors converted to outdoor daytime venetian streets, bridges connected more parties, clubs, stores and casinos. Flashing, blinking, buzzing gambling all around you and everywhere. Bachlorette parties, strangers soliciting sex, bathroom stall clouds, and 5 am blackjack. Winning money and loosing money, then winning and loosing some more while the drinking and gorging conitnued. The party never ends and it feels like all sense of time and place are swirled up around u in some kind of buzzed vortex. We moved from one fantasy land to the next in debaucherous exhillaration. It ended with a thin wallet, a cracked watch, and tossing down the final free cocktail waitress cocktail at sunrise. We hit an all you can eat buffet at circus circus on the way out, 3 waters, 2 coffees and 3 servings later we're on the road through a desolate Utah mountain range.
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