Cross country trips

1991

Christy McMunn and I drove straight to California, visited family, and drove with Jeff to Wyoming. Jeff rode his bike (!) from Rock Springs back to California, and we went back to Syracuse.

1992

Ed Lyman and I drove from Ithaca to Santa Fe to pick up Cris Moore, we drove to California, ending up in San Francisco to visit friends. Cris and Ed flew home and I zoomed back to Ithaca via the road.

1994

Wolcott Sprague and I drove around with very little money in the winter. We started southward, stopping at Alison Nash's parents' house in High Point, NC; Chip Harlan's family house in Marietta, GA; New Orleans; Wolcott's friends in Austin, TX; Santa Fe; my parents in Rancho Cucamonga, CA. On the way back, we drove through ice storms in the Midwest.

1997

I drove my new car from Ithaca to Spokane, WA to meet my uncle Ken and my mother. From there, I drove to Wyoming where my dad was fishing and camping. I finally had enough time on a trip to get to know some of Wyoming better.

2003

Alison and I drove for three months all over the Midwest and West, visiting many friends and family.

• High Point, NC. We started at Alison's parents' house.

We drove through West Virginia so we could use our EZ-Pass one last time.

• Lafayette, IN. We stayed at a bed and breakfast that put out two shot glasses of peach Schnapps, which made excellent mouthwashes before dinner. We went out to a fancy Italian restaurant, La Scala.

We drove through Rockford, IL.

• Stoughton, WI. We stayed at another bed and breakfast, I believe the Naeset-Roe Inn.
• Madison, WI. We stayed here for 4 days for the American Association of Physics Teachers' summer meeting.
• Winnetka, IL. We stayed with Aunt Sondra and Uncle Denis, enjoyed seeing cousins, walked around downtown, went to botanical gardens with Sondra and cousin Dina.

We started driving west on I-90.

• Winona, MN. We stayed at a motel.

Stopped at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD either this day or the next.

• Somewhere near Sioux Falls, or maybe Oacoma, at a western pine lodge style motel.

Stopped at Badlands, got our Golden Eagle National Park Pass. Spent an hour at Mt. Rushmore, as the sun was setting, using the telescope in area between the parking lot and the visitor's center to look at the faces.

• Newcastle, WY. Stayed at the Fountain Inn.

We drove to Casper, went to a natural foods store where we bought a can of Worthington's vegetarian "Skallops," and to an outfitter where I bought a felt hat that later turned out to be too tight.

• Middle Piney Lake, Big Piney, WY. We spent a few days here with my Dad and stepmother. One day, I left the tent out to dry, looked in on it in 30 minutes, and noticed it was floating out on the lake. A helpful camper with a boat or float went out to get it. One day we tried to drive up the dirt road to New Fork Lakes (or was it to see Willow Lake?), which I remembered from my 1997 trip to be quite stunning, but the washboard was just too hard on our suspension.

We drove US-189 south to Kemmerer, US-30 west to Fossil Butte National Monument, where we toured the visitors center.

• Soda Springs, ID.