View Larger Map
The problem with driving 4,175 kilometres in 4.5 days is everything blurs together. I need to get this written down while I can still remember anything. (Incidentally, this about the distance driving Brisbane to Perth, which is not something we'd ever have considering doing in Australia)
Mountain View, CA - Barstow, CA (Saturday night)
View Larger Map
We got away a bit later than planned, around 5pm. As a result, we didn't quite make it to Needles as planned by the time we were ready to call it a night. We stopped in Barstow instead. This ended up for the best, as Needles isn't really anything much to phone home about. We didn't cover any territory we hadn't already covered before on previous road trips, so it was no big deal that we were driving in the dark.
Due to a miscommunication, none of Sarah's unmentionables got packed, so we had to make an emergency stop in Gilroy to go to Target. The Gilroy Garlic Festival was happening that day. I don't know where it was, relative to Target, but the smell of garlic from the Target car park was amazing.
We passed countless truckloads of garlic and apples heading in the opposite direction once we got past Gilroy.
Barstow, CA - Roswell, NM (Sunday night)
View Larger Map
The next day, we managed to make up for lost time (partly by driving until really late) and made it to Roswell (we made the right turn at Albuquerque). We drove through a phenomenal electrical storm in New Mexico. It was right on top of us. I miss decent storms. At one point it was raining so hard, we had only a few metres visibility.
The part of Arizona we drove through was at too high an altitude for cacti, which was a shame. I love the cacti in Arizona. The mountains reminded me of Road Runner & Coyote cartoons, though. We stopped for lunch at the Roadkill Cafe in Seligman, Arizona. There was a definite cultural change here. The cafe had some hunting cable channel on the TV (I didn't even know such things existed) that was busy showing people shooting grizzly bears for sport. It was quite disturbing.
We flirted with Historic Route 66 for about as long as it took for us to get straight back onto the I-40 again. The road surface was terrible.
Roswell, NM - Oklahoma City, OK (Monday night)
View Larger Map
We were rudely awakened the next morning at about 6:30am by someone's car alarm going off for an extended period of time. Not the way you want to start your day after a long day's driving and only a few hours of sleep.
Roswell was fun, but they weren't capitalising on the alien/UFO thing anywhere near as much as I'd have expected. We went to the International UFO Museum and Research Center. It was cool (the library was particularly comprehensive). I have to say, based on the photos they had there, that the thing that crashed really did look like a weather balloon...
Roswell had a frozen custard place, but it wasn't the same as Goodberrys/Rubees.
We left Roswell in the early afternoon, after changing plans and heading for Memphis instead of Dallas. We got as far as Oklahoma City, after dining in Amarillo, Texas (great BBQ ribs at the Texas Roadhouse).
Oklahoma City, OK - Memphis, TN (Tuesday night)
View Larger Map
Tuesday morning we went to check out the Oklahoma City bombing memorial. We just toured the outside parts. It's a nice memorial that they have made from the site. We then walked a few blocks to check out Henry Overholser Mansion, but they'd just changed their days of operation, and weren't open unfortunately.
Memphis, TN - Atlanta, GA (Wednesday night)
View Larger Map
We made it into Memphis by early evening. It wasn't very exciting at all, and was decidedly run down. Derelict buildings abounded. Beale Street wasn't that exciting. Not being Elvis fans, we didn't see the point in parting with $30 each to visit Graceland. Sarah was very disappointed, so we left straight away the next morning, and made it to Atlanta by 8pm that night. We stopped for lunch in Birmingham, Alabama, at Chick-Fil-A, the In-N-Out Burger of the South.
We spent Thursday and Friday in Atlanta, in the Marriott Towneplace Suites in Atlanta Northlake, where Chris and Briana were staying, along with Chris' mum, until they closed on their new house.
On Thursday we went to check out Stone Mountain, which was a conveniently short drive from where we were staying. Prior to embarking on this road trip, we'd had no idea there was another carved mountain in the US. We thought Mount Rushmore was it. The whole Stone Mountain Park was really nice. There was a glassblowing place there, and we watched a couple of glassblowing demonstrations. I've always found glassblowing to be fascinating. It was great to get an opportunity to see it being done.
There was a bit of a downpour while we were there, but after it passed, we took the cable car to the summit. It was still a bit hazy from the rain, which made the view not as good, but you could make out the skyscrapers of Atlanta to the south west.
On Friday, we went with Clara and her grandmother to the Georgia Aquarium while Chris and Bri sorted out the belated closing of the house purchase. The aquarium was absolutely awesome. It's the biggest one in the world. Clara had an absolute ball.
On Saturday morning we flew out to Sacramento via Phoenix, for our next engagement, the first birthday party of Zack Harvett with some of our other former neighbours from Building 4.
On Sunday we took the Capitol Corridor train back to the Bay Area, followed by the VTA Light Rail back to Mountain View. The train ride was pretty good. All it needs is WiFi. The route around the bottom of the bay is interesting. There's the train track, and there's marshlands on either side. You do get to go right alongside the salt evaporation ponds that you see from the air and on satellite imagery of the bay.
This was a good trip. We'd never planned on doing a west-east road trip, so it was good to get a few more states under our belt. I've now visited 15 states in some form more than just passing through the airport.
For most of the time we tuned into various NPR stations where we could find one. On one occasion (I think it was when we were driving through Alabama) we happened onto some FOX Radio channel, with some guy called Glenn Beck ranting about stuff. Apparently days earlier he'd created a bit of controversy by calling President Obama a racist. His sensationalist ranting was good for a giggle for a bit, but it got a bit much after a while.
We stayed in Days Inn motels every night except in Memphis, where Google Maps failed us a bit and didn't seem to be up to date with what was a Days Inn and what wasn't. Days Inn offered free WiFi and gave a AAA discount. We stayed in a Quality Inn in Memphis, and it wasn't as good.
Photos from the trip are here
