Drive Time

Wednesday, August 12, 2015     Trip odometer 2,648 miles          Evanston, Wyoming

            Let me state for the record that I agree with my dad 100% that breakfast should be filling, with plenty of protein, and except for very, very hot weather, served hot. I don’t need traditional breakfast foods, leftovers are fine. But a sickly-sweet pastry or a bowl of cold cereal are not good enough. I should have skipped the Econolodge’s continental breakfast and gone out, but the coffee smelled good, and WAS the best motel coffee to date. An English muffin slathered with “Country Crock” and a banana, however, were not a good breakfast. That set the tone for the whole day.

            I admit that, when I pulled into the rest stop ten minutes after hitting the road, it was pleasantly deserted, and it was a pleasure to smell the sagebrush I trod on to find the well-made cache in a clump of cottonwoods. However, fifty-eight years ago I was prescribed my first allergy meds for an allergy to sagebrush. I’m not sure if that’s what had me coughing and congested all day, or I’m just underhydrating for a dry climate and a high altitude.

            I admit it was a nostalgia trip to see road signs for suburbs and outlying towns around Denver, and to see the Rockies rising abruptly out of the high plains beyond the city. The traffic was unbelievable, though, crawling bumper-to-bumper half the distance to the Wyoming border. The first thing I saw upon crossing that border was a herd of bison. As the day wore on, I spotted Lone Tree and a small herd of pronghorns, in addition to cattle and horses galore. Apparently, however, Little America has expanded from its original building east of Cheyenne on Rt. 30, because a detour (the on-ramp for I-80 which I wanted to take was closed) led me past Little America but this was a posh golf resort. I gassed up at Sinclair and got out of there fast. Another Little America 200 or more miles west was an entire town of tourist traps. I’ll wait and look for the original, thank you.

            Wyoming makes Kansas look populous. Hundreds of miles went by on I-80 with absolutely nothing to see. An occasional exit invariably was marked “No Services.” Nervously I made sure to top off the tank at each of four towns we passed large enough to have a gas station. At one of these I found myself starving, and the only place to eat (and not drink beer) was MacDonald’s. Not my favorite place, but at least I convinced them to leave the cheese off my quarter-pounder. As I ate, I gazed across the street at “The Wagon Wheel Liquor Store and Fly Shop.” I kid you not; I swear that’s what the signs said.

            So this nearly four-hundred mile stretch was very boring indeed, despite frequent lane closures for construction that sometimes had us slowed down to as little as 30 MPH. At one point we passed a sign that said “Continental Divide. Elevation 7,000 feet,” which was exciting out of all proportion to its significance. I do well at high altitudes. My only symptom has been foot cramps, and that could have been from driving. Heck, my hands are sore and the skin in some spots is tender. I’ll be glad to get the forced-drive part of the trip over with.

            Storms hit in the worst stretch of construction, those Rocky Mountain thunderstorms where you think you could touch the bottoms of the clouds with a stool and a good stretch. The lightning is all cloud-to-ground because, let’s face it, the ground is closer than the other clouds. I was almost to the Utah border. Could I get through Utah, grab two caches there, and get to Oregon in a little over an hour? No, it turned out, because Idaho is in the way. I chose to stop for the night, even knowing that there is no way I will make it to Seattle in time for the Meet-and-Greet tomorrow. I may not even make it to Seattle until Friday, and feel I’d better call the hotel there and ask them to hold my room until I get there.

            It was a grueling, nerve-wracking day of driving and not much else. A few twinges of fifty-year-old nostalgia, and otherwise all traffic and boredom. I had hoped for more from the two states I think of when I ponder my roots. Perhaps, on the way home, when I have time to linger in the more esthetic parts of them, I’ll feel less conflicted.

Kansas

Tuesday, August 11, 2015          Trip Odometer 2,110 miles         Limon, CO

A better day today. Up at 7, arrived at the car repair place before 8:30. “Christian Brothers” was not just the owner’s surname. The waiting room was loaded with bibles, positive-thinking-through-Christ books, etc., and the PA was loudly playing Christian rock. Frankly, I’d rather listen to operatic arias or old-school rap. Still, I’d only knitted a round-and-a-half of my hat when the mechanic called me out to see the problem: a hole in the exhaust pipe, not a threat. She said it could easily wait until I returned home to fix as long as I can stand the noise. I can, it’s better than Christian rock.

Elated by the good news, I negotiated the Kansas City urban traffic with little difficulty and entered Kansas. Home of Mingo, the oldest continuously-maintained geocache in the world. Totally apart from state souvenirs, Goal #2 of the trip out. Only 400-odd miles away. Kansas is big. And friendly, I discovered. The sign at the first rest stop said “Dunkin Donuts.” Could it really be? Coffee had been steadily getting worse as I progressed west, until this morning’s bitter swill which I’d had to double-sweeten and cream heavily. I hadn’t seen a Dunkin Donuts since eastern Kentucky. Was it a mirage? NO! I walked in the rest stop building, and there it was. What’s more, a bank of Coke machines topped with a flashing neon sign proved that I had left Pepsi country behind and was back in the Coke-dominated world. This wasn’t a rest stop, it was heaven. I went back to the car with the largest coffee DD sells and a glazed chocolate donut, which was my lunch some miles later.

It was a pleasant day of driving. Kansas unfolded around me, miles and miles of miles and miles. Eastern Kansas isn’t as flat as I expected, but was rolling and sometimes wooded, although the trees were mostly unfamiliar to me. I kept reminding myself that, between the Mississippi River and Denver, land altitude rises nearly a mile, and most of this is in Kansas, so gradually that even Bruce didn’t object to the climb.

The most obvious feature of the view here is the sky, which seems to arch more than 180 degrees overhead, dominating the earth below with its ever-changing palette of blue and white (and occasionally grey). Below, in addition to the expected agriculture, there were quite a few cattle, plus the pens and chutes for sorting them and rolls of hay for winter feed. The highway was often cut through a hill, revealing several layers of sandstone, some red, some a distinctive yellow, and wide layers of chalk-and-flint, which I found very exciting. As often as I’ve read about flint knapping and yearned to try it myself, this was the first time I’d seen the stone in its natural setting. Some of the sandstone layers seemed crumbly, making me wonder if fossils can be found here (it turned out they are), and in deep folds of the land I had glimpses of some stone more structured, harder; possibly granite. I wish I knew more about geology, it seems so interesting, but I’ve never been able to tell one rock from another if they were the same basic type. As I took in the passing scenery, every once in awhile, with a little thrill of anticipation, my mind would whisper the single word: Mingo.

            Except for a couple stops for gas, I drove steadily westward at 75 miles an hour. I was amused, approaching Salina, that one billboard said “The Friendliest Yarn Shop Anywhere!” with the letters Y-A-R-N imposed on colored balls of yarn. Imagine a place where a yarn shop can afford a billboard on the Interstate. There was another for another yarn shop more than a hundred miles along. If I hadn’t been on a tight schedule to Seattle, I might have stopped. But, there was Mingo…

            So gradually I didn’t notice it happening, the land flattened out, becoming the true prairie that is stereotypical Kansas. “Dippy-birds,” as I call the oil pumping devices that dot the west, began to appear. In addition, the largest collection of solar windmills I’ve ever seen, even huger than the array on Dartmoor in England, spread across the land. Below them, the little traditional water-pump windmills spun merrily while the more modern ones barely moved, ponderous and dignified. (Mingo)

            Signs began to appear near Hays, indicating that this is indeed the Bible Belt. Literal signs. These are not the crudely scrawled boards along Southern roads, but neat and often artistic signs, some featuring artwork including full-length portraits of Jesus. I find these more esthetic and less threatening than a board spray-painted, “REPENT OR ELSE.” But I have my own prayer: Mingo is near.

            A last rest stop, and I turn on the Garmin. Mingo is less than 30 miles west. With one eye on the road, and one on the Garmin, I decide to take an exit five miles before the cache, one with a gas station, so anyone who sees my CITO t-shirt and understands it will realize geocaching is contributing to the local economy. My (faulty) memory of the map places Mingo at a back-roads crossroad, and I set off up one of the ribbons of packed dust that is Kansas’ idea of a county road (still better than Illinois). Two miles, and the numbers counting down miles-to-the-cache stop going down. The arrow points left, so I turn onto another ribbon of dust. Better, the numbers are dropping again. Left again at a T-intersection, and I see the distant movement of traffic on the Interstate. With less than two miles to go, it seems I’m approaching I-70 again. Was there a closer off-ramp? Yes, I discover, as the road turns briefly to concrete as it goes over the four-lane. A hundred yards to the cache, my Garmin says, and the needle abruptly wheels left, then back, and the numbers rise again. A little ribbon-of-dust goes off to the left and curves back towards the highway, veering right again at the berm. I turn, spotting a familiar-looking post-and-wire fence. I’ve seen this place before, in pictures. A K-turn to get the most convenient pull-off spot, and I gather my equipment and get out of the car. A corner fence post, a conspicuous rock in front of it, draws me. I pry up the rock, and it falls to reveal… Mingo. World’s oldest geocache. A big cylindrical container, the top held on by a huge hose-clamp thing, set neatly into a custom-made concrete-lined hole.

            I take many, many pictures. I open the container, sign the log, sort through the swag within looking in vain for any of the 26 trackables reputed to be in this cache. At length I put in my ASPGB IX proxy geocoin, and solemnly swap swag, taking someone’s signature poker chip and leaving my very favorite dayglo smiley lanyard. With a feeling of being a part of history, I close the container and re-hide it. Mingo. I found Mingo. The heat and dust of Kansas are friendly to me now. I drive the four hundred yards up the road to find a tribute cache, neatly hidden.

            Then it’s back on the road, off westward once more. Less than an hour sees me over the Colorado border, although the scenery looks identical. Only the road has changed… definitely less well-maintained than it was in Kansas. But, I am not in Kansas anymore…

            The welcome center is eleven miles from the border, and there I discover that one of the two Colorado caches I’d downloaded was right on the border, and only accessible from the westbound side of I-70. The other is over 90 miles west. I take to the road, but Bruce is demanding gas again and my stomach is demanding something that is not junk food. Exits go by with nothing around them, except for the occasional obviously-vacant building. Are there ANY places to eat, gas, and stay between here and Denver? A little town called Limon eventually proved to have a couple gas stations, a pretty good steak house, and an Econolodge. Here I sit, savoring the day’s triumphs.

            Mingo was an incredible find. It was also my first in Kansas, my farthest west, and farthest from home. These are statistics that don’t mean a thing to anyone but me, but they are achievements I value. Now, tomorrow is another, very long, day.

Sights Seen on the Road

August 10, 2015            odometer reading 1,550 West side of Kansas City, MO

This has been a day of highs and lows. But before I go into details, I want to say for the record that there has been more to this journey than driving like a maniac and geocaching. For instance, going through West Virginia I passed a gypsy caravan, a truck pulling a trailer that was painted to resemble a log cabin. Heck, it was so realistic it might have been built of logs! Across the back were a couple of words in Irish Gaelic, so I know they were MY kind of gypsies. I’ve never seen them in the US before. I believe the second word translated to ‘clan’ or ‘family,’ so the first word was their name.

Kentucky was much as I remembered it, although I didn’t remember the accent as being even thicker than Georgia’s. At one pit stop, I heard the cashier asking the customer to “swap” her card, and wondered if it was a credit card they didn’t take. Then the Southern part of my brain kicked in and I heard “swipe.” I stayed the night in a motel where they proudly displayed framed high-quality pictures of local celebrities, the place of honor holding a formal grouping of every winner of the Triple Crown including this year’s. Quick work to re-do such a lovely formal photo collage.

Indiana impressed me, in the southern section, with some really high-quality looking outdoor recreational areas. Also with the best roads I’ve traveled yet. Two of the rest stops held geocaches, each a satisfying quarter-mile walk/hike into a wooded area.

Illinois was a weird place. I think it’s made of nothing but clay mud. I felt like it was going to wash away or collapse, like an animal with no bones. Not a rock anywhere. Rivers and streams carved deep muddy troughs in the landscape, still no rocks. At one point, seeking a geocache (without reading the description first, a newbie error) I left the Interstate, finding that the roads immediately deteriorated into a state worse than any that Potter County can boast. A dubious grassy pair of ruts actually had a county road number. As I tried in vain to find a road that could be described as more than ‘field access for farm equipment,’ I was terrified I’d slide into the horrid clay or one of the abrupt, deep stream crossings, never to be seen again. At last I bumped across a field dotted with straw rolls to get back on I-64, only to find that the cache was in a rest stop three miles up the highway, an easy stroll across a freshly-mowed lawn. That was the only one I got in that state, as I read the description of the other one I’d downloaded and did not like the parts about ‘brush-busting’ and ‘brambles.’ In this weird place?

Now came the part of the day I’d been dreading: Driving in St. Louis. With one eye on the gas gauge and one on the clock, I decided to postpone both gassing up the car and lunch in order to miss rush hour in the city. A few minutes later, from the Interstate, I glimpsed the famous arch ahead. Whoa! It is so much more impressive, even at a distance, ‘live,’ than in jigsaw puzzles.

Of course, I was faced with a quandary right away. One of the bridges carrying one of the Interstates that meet here was closed, and I wasn’t sure which one: the one I was currently driving on, or the one heading north/south. Reading signs, watching traffic, moving from lane to lane, and being exceedingly anxious caused me to miss the pivotal moment when I crossed the Mississippi River. The Wabash had been darned impressive, and later that day the Missouri itself blew me away, but I missed the Mississippi.

But I spotted Busch Stadium and went baseball-ballistic. I was a high fly ball, and could hear the whole thing in Harry Kallas’ voice, bless him. That’s my excuse for missing my exit, but I managed to make a save two exits later and found myself driving up Market Street with the Arch perfectly framing the buildings at the end of the street. For blocks and blocks I drove, thinking that here was a structure placed to best advantage and designed to be viewed just this way; art AND great engineering. When I approached Ground Zero for the virtual cache, I was just too bloody impressed by the huge, glittering Arch looming above and ahead to pull over and get my landmark notes (and the picture I promised Nermal). Going around the block for another pass I found myself right AT Busch Stadium and the American baseball gene kicked in again. When I once more found myself on Market Street, the parking meters had the high-tech, hostile look of Cylons and there appeared to be no coin slot, so I timed the light at Broadway and pulled out into the lane that would take me to I-70 just when the light turned red. I got my landmark notes and pictures from inside the car.

It was a matter of ten grueling city-driving minutes to reach I-70, and just as I did the rain started. Great Plains, pouring-down rain, hiding the other cars and road signs, forcing me to a slow pace the other drivers barely exceeded themselves. And were there other cars! The traffic that was absent before was all on this stretch of superhighway, no doubt routed that way by the bridge detour. Miles and miles and miles of this. I was afraid to exit for gas or food, still watching that gauge droop towards the quarter. The road was sometimes six lanes, sometimes three, and it seemed several Interstates were still braiding together there. Somehow I stayed on 70 west and some twenty or thirty miles out of town the rain stopped and the traffic thinned enough that I could get to an exit lane. Even so, I was blocked by traffic from turning towards the good restaurants and filling station, and had to make do with a Phillips 66 and a slice of pizza from its convenience store. Once again I’m in Pepsi country, so I lived through the day on unsweetened Gold Peak tea and (at the moment) a diet Mtn Dew.

By the time I paused again, peacefully out in Missouri’s country side, the other two caches I’d downloaded, both back in the metro area, were nearly a hundred miles behind. One thing I noticed about Missouri is that angel’s-trumpet, also known as strangler-vine, is currently the most common flower blooming on the road verges. I also was reassured by occasional banks of rock breaking through the soil: weathered chunky limestone  or seams of shale, with a few ledges of something harder. This area is not at all hilly, but at least it has bones.

For a good many miles I’d had a song going through my mind despite the techno-fusion playing on my CD player, prompted by the road signs along I-70. “I’m going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come. Oh, yes I’m going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come. (At this point I play fast and loose with the lyrics.) They got the best steaks in the world and sure I’m gonna get me one.”

But the periodic rumbling noise I was hearing was getting louder, and I could no longer explain it away as a nearby truck or passing motorcycle. Did I do something to the exhaust during my impromptu detour in Illinois? The dealership said they left a guard plate off when they re-welded that one join. Or did their repair of the transmission leak fail, during that up-and-down shifting madness in West Virginia? I pulled into this hotel (I should know better, but this seemed like the cheapest one amidst a cluster of high-end hotels and suites) and here I am, with a referral by the manager for a muffler place that opens at 7 a.m., trying to de-stress and wondering, not how much money this will cost me, but how much time. I didn’t realize I’d crossed a time zone and blew my chance at a half-price buffet (including triple Happy Hour) in the hotel restaurant because I thought it was already after 7. Instead, dinner was a Good Humor ice cream cone. As stressed as I am, it’s probably better for me than that steak.

Still, somewhere during the Illinois debacle I came up with the knowledge that it doesn’t really matter if I complete the HQ Geotour, or even if I miss the Thursday night Meet-and-Greet. I was waxing quite philosophical about my reasons for going to Seattle, prepared to get there any day before Saturday… until the car began to act up. The gods of anxiety have upped the ante on me.

Caching and Chocolate

Sunday, August 9, 2015 odometer reading 1,003 miles. Louisville, KY

            Today I made up for stopping early last night. I stopped in Breezewood, where I-70 E and I-76 E part company. In fact, I’d wanted to stop an hour further west when I-70 WEST separates from the PA Turnpike. Well, as tired as I was it was not such a bad thing, but I drove fast and with few stops today, racking up 580 road miles. West Virginia is totally nuts. The Interstate through there has such steep slopes my transmission was auto-shifting at highway speeds, which in that state are posted at 70 (which the roads are often not designed or maintained for) and cars are actually going 75 to 80. There I stopped twice for gas (poor Bruce) and once for a quick lunch. Once again a so-called fast-food joint had me waiting longer than I would have in a sit-down luncheonette.

            I took the first exit off I-64 when I entered Kentucky, knowing I’d loaded a JOE (Just Off Exit) cache in the Garmin at home. I pulled into a convenience store lot to turn on the Garmin and start hunting, but my bladder and the heat drove me inside where I purchased and somehow ate an overly-chewy ice cream confection called a Choco Taco. My hands were sticky on the wheel and leaving smudges of chocolate on the GPS as I returned to the side road, crossed the Interstate, and turned up the next little country road. Less than a quarter of a mile later, I was carefully insinuating my hand past an inconvenient growth of briar rose covering the end curl of a guard rail. “WAHOOO!” I exclaimed as I held up the jungle-camo covered container (For a guard rail cache?). “My first cache find in Kentucky! A new state souvenir! My first new one since December ’13.” I didn’t even notice the oppressive humidity and heat until had signed the log and was trudging the short distance back to the car.

            Sixteen miles later, the Garmin led me into a rest stop. Yes, I was trying to rack up miles and make up for lost time, but caching in new places is the primary goal of the trip. Besides, I love caches placed near rest stops. They encourage me to pause and exercise my arthritic old body, breaking up a day spent behind the wheel so I don’t wind up painfully stiff. Most are bordering wooded areas, if not actually in them, which provides a dose of natural surroundings after the glaring artificial environment of the Interstates. So it eases stress as well as being physically healthy. This one required me to clamber up a rather steep, longish slope to the trees, wearing sandals and without my walking stick. Eventually I spotted an Altoids-sized tin with a few springs of grass carelessly scraped over it, hiding nothing. I am just loving the camo on the caches I’ve found this trip. It’s ranged from glaringly obvious to none at all like this one. This has made them easy to spot, but the locations have been chosen for seclusion and a low chance that anyone not actually hunting the cache would be anywhere close.

            After that, I headed west, hoping to get past Lexington’s traffic and exceed my goal of 550 miles for the day. One more gas stop, and I found myself in Louisville, in a good position to cross into Indiana forty minutes or less after checking out tomorrow morning, ready to add yet another state to my collection of States I’ve Found Geocaches In. This part of town makes Breezewood with its ‘hundred motels’ look like a rural cluster of tourist traps; it is HUGE and includes dozens of hotels, hundreds of eateries, some shops, and even some light industry buildings. It took me almost a half-hour after leaving the Interstate to find the right series of service roads to get to the Sleep Inn. Because of this chaos at the end of a long day, dinner was a package of vending machine Donette Gems washed down with lukewarm Diet Coke.

Tomorrow afternoon sometime I should be handling the most massive hassle of the trip, downtown St. Louis, MO. The famous Arch is closed for renovations, but thanks to geocaching I’ll be led to one of the best spots to view it (and get a virtual cache find). The hard part will be getting out of town and finding I-70. Oh, how I hate city driving, especially in a strange city!