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. Then I went to San Francisco, visited Nicole Z, then to Southern CA to visit family.

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. In Soda Springs we followed signs to a hunter's lodge in the mountains, but there was no one there when we arrived, so we drove back to town.

• Soda Springs, ID. We stayed at the Enders Hotel and Museum, next to the timed geyser. We might have been the only people in the hotel, and we crept around the second floor, looking at the display cases for the museum. Our room faced the tracks, and every couple hours a train rumbled through, blasting horns since the tracks had no gates.

We drove through Pocatello, where we had lunch, and Arco.

• Craters of the Moon National Monument, ID. We snagged campsite 13, a bowl set in rocks of aa and pahoehoe. It was quite beautiful and desolate. We camped two nights, enjoying the tour and a presentation.
• Boise, ID. We did laundry here, and shopped at a food coop.
• We stopped at a cute red and white motel somewhere between Boise and Coeur D'Alene, on US-95.

We visited Coeur D'Alene, where Uncle Ken was working a music show.

• Spokane, WA. We stayed a few days with Uncle Ken while the air conditioner was getting repaired in town. We saw the string instrument shop, and a theater where Ken was going to set up the sound. We ate ice cream at an old fashioned ice cream shoppe. We walked around Spokane and to a whitewater part of the river, where the rocks are very dark basalt.

We drove southwest on US 395 to the Columbia River, and enjoyed a beautiful sunset as we drove down the river towards Mt. Hood.

• Maryhill State Park, WA. We camped between the road and the Columbia River in Maryhill. It was quiet for being next to US 97 and across the river from Interstate 84.

We stopped to get a picnic lunch in Hood River, drove up the pass east of Mt. Hood, and had a picnic with lots of yellow jackets at a rest area at the top of the pass.

• (Some) State Park, OR. Loud motorcycles came in late in the evening, but the rest of the night was very quiet and the campground was nice and clean, showers good.

• Grants Pass, OR. We stayed with Alianor and Al at their country house. The next day we walked around their neighborhood, fed horses on the walk, and ate dinner at a brew pub downtown.

• Crater Lake National Park, OR.

• The Vu's in Portland. They were nice enough to put us up over Labor Day when all campsites in OR were full.
• Coastal Oregon. Great camping and laid back traveling.
• Redwoods National/State Park.
• Eureka
• PCH to San Francisco. Windy windy roads.
• Visiting the Cranes in San Francisco. Eating at The Stinking Rose, seeing Suzi Chen Harding.
• Santa Cruz, boardwalk mostly closed in September.
• Camping at Sunset State Beach between Santa Cruz and Monterrey.
• Big Sur. Hiking.
• Santa Barbara.
• San Bernardino
• Lake Mead. Hot! Ice cream in a little town on the northeast side—Might have been Inside Scoop in Overton.
• Zion, camped, hiked Refrigerator Canyon.
• Bryce. Hiked Fairyland Trail part way.
• Capitol Reef. Hiked part way up Rainbow, then a thunderstorm came.
• Visited Jeff in Telluride, helped stain a deck. Overnight camping trip to Mesa Verde, which is awesome. Went to a german-food restaurant in between.
• Hippie food store in Silverton, CO.
• Motel in Durango.
• Santa Fe. Stayed at B&B, pre-wedding dinner of Cris and Tracy.
• Drove in one day from there to Kansas City, to see Barbara, Frank, while Rebecca was visiting them too.
• To Nashville, to see Sharmila and Sameer.
• To High Point.
• Camped near the end of the season at Cohocton.
• To New Hampshire.