Archives September 2013

This morning we slept without an alarm until 7:30.  It was a luxury we haven’t had very often on the trip but we only had about 450 miles to drive today.  We found a Dunkin Donuts to fuel up before we left.  Unfortunately, for the second day in a row, a Texas DD delivered horrible coffee.  It was bitter and short on the sugar and cream I ordered it with.  I choked it down anyway for the caffeine benefit.

Most of the drive today was backtracking road we traveled already when we headed west.  Cindy actually did more of the driving than I did.  I spent most of the highway time blasting through countless waves of zombies.

The van mpg bounced back up into the 16’s after the piss poor mileage the day before which saw a 13 mpg.

I am so glad that I have been blogging and uploading pictures daily during the trip, to try to recall this monster trip after the fact would be a feat that far exceeds the capabilities of my deteriorating memory.

Tomorrow I hope to hit the road a little earlier.  The final drive back to Naples is longer than I thought, over 600 miles which will take around 9 hours to complete.  My goal is to be enjoying dinner under my own roof tomorrow night.  I have not even attempted to total how much I have laid out in gas on the trip, it would put an unnecessary damper on what has been a great adventure otherwise.  It will take me forever to balance the books once I get back home.

There isn’t much excitement to be found in today’s lengthy drive across the widest part of Texas.  We were up early and out on the road around 6AM.  We found a near by Dunkin Donuts, unfortunately they made pretty lousy coffee.  I was able to choke mine down, Cindy gave up after downing about a third of hers.

The 80 mile an hour speed limit was welcomed to help gobble up the seemingly endless miles in western Texas.  Unfortunately pushing the van to 85 mph meant the gas mileage was horrid.  On the one fill up I calculated my mileage to be in the high 13’s, ouch…

For bathroom breaks we normally would use either a rest stop or a gas station during a fill up.  Well we both found ourselves having to go badly in the middle of no man’s land with neither of those options available.

Cindy pulled off on an exit that only had a couple campgrounds listed as attractions, no gas or food.  We figured before we would resort to using a tree as a bathroom we would try the main office at the campground.  Fortunately the women that worked there were very nice and didn’t mind if we used their employee bathroom.  We bought a couple ice cream sandwiches there just because.

The drive wasn’t bad for me during my first 5 plus hour shift but during my second shift I started losing it a bit.  I felt like a babbling idiot making stupid sounds and noises to entertain myself.  I just wanted the driving to end.

I spent almost all of my time out of the drivers seat playing Plants vs Zombies 2 on my Iphone.  It’s a great game but I HATE the way they have put micro-transactions into it.  Actually they aren’t all that micro if you ask me, $2.99 to buy a cool plants? $5 to unlock a level??  Fck that.  I much prefer the model they used with the first game where you paid 5 bucks for the game and that was the end of it.  With 2.0 the game is free but if you lacked financial discipline you could easily drop 50 bucks on the game with these transactions.

I refuse to pay for these upgrades and am doing it old school style, meaning you grind and grind until you earn the in game currency needed to progress instead of pulling out your credit card for the fast track.  Even with the annoying pay model the game is very fun, and addicting.

The place we are staying at in Beaumont is surprisingly nice, it’s called the MCM Elegante’.  It also is the first hotel I ever stayed at that has a huge statue of the Ten Commandments by the front door. Weird.

We had a nice dinner at the hotel restaurant before retiring for a well deserved good nights sleep after 13 plus hours of driving.  This was the last brutal driving day of the trip.  We have about 450 miles to get to Pensacola tomorrow and about the same to push into Naples on Sunday.  The van has already racked up 4,400 miles, whew…

So yesterday’s drive from the Grand Canyon was not all that eventful other than a pit stop we made in Tombstone, Arizona.   Like a dumb ass, I left my charger and cord for my Iphone 5 in the hotel at the Grand Canyon.  I figured I could grab another one at Wal-mart.  So we head into the store, go back to the electronics section and find an overpriced replacement.

Before paying for it I had to hit the bathroom, while Cindy went to find some laundry detergent.  In the span of 60 seconds I saw no less than a half dozen people that belonged on peopleofwalmart.com.  The funniest of all was this gentleman.  Here is how I described him on Facebook.

Fumanchu mustache, short shorts, orange sneakers, mullet, tank top, beer gut, toxic waste tattoo on left arm – welcome to Tombstone Arizona.

The guy just looked incredibly ridiculous.  His toxic waste tattoo was just perfect icing on the cake.

On the way back out to the van we were passed by two guys driving what looked like a homemade dune buggy.  It also looked like it was ready to fall apart.  The driver mistook my stare as one of admiration and gave me a “yea, this shit is cool huh?” nod.  Instinctively I nodded back.

The rest of our driving day was long, longer than I would have liked.  We didn’t pull into Las Cruces until 9:30 PM local time.  We lost an hour along the way as we started out on Pacific time and wound up in Mountain time.

I can’t tell you how whacked out your internal clock gets when you are doing cross country road trips like this.  I have left the radio clock and GPS on EST the entire time.  It gives me a reference point to how screwed up my sense of time has been.  Last night we ate dinner at something like 11:30 est and it felt normal.

That dinner was take out from Cracker Barrel, something I only found was available when dad and I drove down to Florida in January.  The meal was good but heavy, not exactly what I like to go to bed with in my stomach.

I had a rude awakening around 4:30 am when I heard a sound I never heard before coming from my phone.  I stumbled out of bed and tried to focus on the screen.  It was a weather alert, similar to what you would see/hear on the radio or tv with the emergency broadcast system.  It was a flash flood warning.  I looked out the window and saw it was raining hard but did not see any floodwaters nearby, so I went back to bed.  I never knew they had the capability to do targeted emergency broadcasts to cell phones in a specific area.

Cindy and I slept in majorly, not getting out of bed until nearly 8AM.  This was ok because today was a scheduled light driving day.  We actually wound up staying at the hotel until nearly noon, waiting for laundry to dry.  It was ok though as it gave me a chance to get caught up on some computer work.

We pulled out and headed to White Sands National Park, a place I have been twice before with Ali.  I never get tired of seeing it’s snow like sand.

The weather heading to the park was very ominous.  It rained most of the way, only stopping a few miles before the entrance.  We also got to pass through our first border patrol checkpoint where you get eyeballed by some guy while he asks you if you are US citizens. You tell him yes and if he believes you, you can go.

When we went inside the building we checked out the shops.  I realized that the two prior times I was there I never went into the gift shop in the back.  I don’t recall if that was intentional because of having the dogs in the van or if we just missed it altogether.  The gift shop had a ton of cool things, including saucer sleds you can buy/rent for the dunes!

Cindy and I had been hobbling around badly all day.  The second day soreness from the epic Grand Canyon Hike was hammering us in a major way.  Despite that we had to grab a sled.  How many times do you get to sled in sand dunes in your lifetime?

The temperature in the dunes was dramatically less than my two prior visits when the thermometer was close to 100 degrees.  I don’t think it was even 80 degrees thanks to the overcast skies.

The white sand was much more compacted than I remembered, probably an end result from the monsoon rains of the last month or so.  I was bummed out that access to a huge portion of the park was blocked off because of the rainy weather they have been having.  Evidently they didn’t want vehicles on the non-paved roads if heavy rain was a possibility.  It meant we couldn’t get back to some of the really cool areas deeper in the park.

It didn’t matter much though, we parked the van and just walked deep into the park, looking for good dunes to sled.  It didn’t take long to find some.  We bought some wax to help reduce the friction the plastic sled would have on the sand, we reapplied it regularly although I don’t really know if it was needed.

Cindy has never seen snow in person in her life and she certainly has never sledded.  This was a very cool thing for her and she wasted no time trying out the sled, being the first one down a dune.  Once you got moving downward it really does feel like regular sledding although you slow down a lot faster when you run out of dune.

Cindy rode the saucer like a pro, not falling off once, even down some very steep sections.  I was not as fortunate, wiping out twice, including a funny head over heels flip on my last ride.

I compiled the phone video into a YouTube video if you want to see the fun.

It was not only great fun to sled the dunes, it was breathtaking to just take in the beauty of them.  The dark skies with angry clouds put a backdrop on the dunes I never had seen before.  I took a ton of pictures, many of which I am sure are going to be used in the future to decorate either my cyber or real living spaces.

We left the park just as it looked like the skies were going to open up.  I stopped back at the visitor center to grab a new window sticker to replace the badly weather beaten one that is on the van now.  The Grand Canyon and White Sands National park in a three day period is about as much of nature’s beauty that I can imagine,  such different and incredible places….

After the park we went to near by Almogordo to have an authentic Mexican meal at a place named Margo’s which was recommended by one of the White Sands employees.  The parking lot was empty when we arrived but probably it was due to the time of day, 3:30pm, right between lunch and dinner.  (more of our internal clocks being whacked)

We had the entire place to ourselves for awhile until another couple came in.  The food was great, the inside of the restaurant was charming, and all of the staff we dealt with seemed very friendly.  What a nice find.

The remaining drive to El Paso was thankfully short.  Cindy booked a room at DoubleTree which is the nicest hotel of any that we stayed in.  It’s too bad it is in a place like El Paso which I have long considered the armpit of Texas.

Tomorrow we will be getting up early and blowing out of here.  Tomorrow is the last brutal driving day of the trip.  I plan to cover the entire width of Texas in one day which is somewhere around 900 miles.  The mind numbing drive is made somewhat better by the 80 mph speed limit in much of west Texas but even so there is no way to avoid the suckage which will await.

I have had odd mpg numbers with the van.  The last three fill ups at elevation were showing my getting exceptional gas mileage, 17 mpg and even 18 mpg for one tank.  It didn’t make sense to me since it seemed the thin air was making the van work much, much harder to maintain speed.  Well this morning’s fill up calculated to an mpg in the high 14’s, the worst of the trip, I dont know why there is such a wild fluctuation.

The CEL did come back on yesterday and it was the same O2 sensor errors.  I cleared them with my code reader prior to the drive today.  It will be interesting to see the numbers the rest of the way.

I can pretty much write tomorrows blog entry right now, “We drove,a lot…”

The drive into the Grand Canyon took longer than expected, a common theme for the road trip so far.  The check engine light that came on in the van thankfully turned off eventually.  I checked it with my code reader later.  As I expected the codes were from two different O2 sensors unhappy with the amount of oxygen available.

We turned onto AZ-64 which is the eastern access route for the South Rim. After I paid the 25 dollar park entrance fee we came upon an area where a lot of people were turning in.  It was a visitor center for the area that includes the watch tower.  The tower was really cool, even though it was built somewhat recently, it was built to look like it is much, much older.  It is perched right on the edge of the canyon,  offering awesome views, normally.

Unfortunately most of the normal view was obstructed by very dense fog.  The weather was pretty awful with off and on rain and temps in the 50’s.  Despite trying to act to the contrary, I was freezing my ass off walking around in simply shorts and a t-shirt.

The tower was really a great site to see, the detail that was put into it was very evident as you looked at the interior on your climb to the top.  I was happy to stay inside as long as possible to take some of the chill off my body.

So we piled back in the van, the next stop was the hotel.  We had a much longer than expected drive to the main visitor center of 25 miles, made longer by the slow driving in almost blinding fog at times.  Along the way we saw several huge elk by the roadside.  Cindy got a few great pictures of them.

Cindy and I got into a “discussion” about where our hotel was actually located.  Based on the description she gave of the hotel location, being only one mile from the park entrance, I thought we were going the wrong direction.  Cindy insisted we were going the right way.  I stopped and walked to the guard shack and asked two women.  They confirmed Cindy was correct.  I begrudgingly told Cindy she was indeed correct although the confusion on my part came because we came in from the east instead of the south entrance that the directions were written for.

We unloaded the van with more stuff than our prior stops due to us staying two days and also needing the additional stuff we were going to use for our hike.

We were quite unhappy when we saw the forecast for Tuesday which seemed to worsen greatly from the last prediction we saw on our phones.  The new forecast was a low in the mid 40’s, a high in the low 60’s and an 80% chance of rain and thunderstorms. Great.

So although I packed a lot of clothes for hiking, none of it was waterproof which now appeared  to be a big problem.  After a dinner which included good food but poor service we addressed the problem.  We found a general store that had hiking supplies.  In there I picked up a lightweight water proof jacket.  I figured it was somewhat practical since I could certainly use it to protect myself from Florida downpours in the future as well.

We were both worried about the weather conditions we were going to be facing.  The hike is brutal enough on it’s own without any additional help from mother nature.

I had hoped to catch the Eagles game Monday night.  I did, well the last two minutes of the game at least.  I did not know that they were doing a double header Monday night and that the Eagles were the first game.  So I was happy to see they won Chip Kelly’s first game as Eagles coach.  It looked like I would have been annoyed watching the Eagles defense allow the Redskins to score 21 unanswered points to make a game of it towards the end.  Oh well, a win is a win.

Cindy and I tried to go to sleep quite early knowing that Tuesdays hike was probably going to be one of the most physically difficult feats either of us has attempted.  We set the alarm for 5:15 am, hoping to arrive at the visitor center a little after 6AM, giving us plenty of time for the monster hike.

We hit the floor running Tuesday morning.  I had some indecision about my wardrobe.  I was originally planning to wear a t-shirt, my Under Armour long sleeve cold gear shirt, a hooded sweat shirt and the rain coat on top of it all.  I decided to ditch the sweatshirt, feeling it would be unnecessary once my body temperature kicked in from hiking.  I am quite glad I opted to leave it at the room.

On the way to the canyon I stopped at the gas station to grab breakfast, blueberry Pop Tarts and chocolate milk.  I figured Pop Tarts have successfully fueled me for 5k’s, triathlons, half marathons and Tough Mudders, why mess with a good thing?

We parked at the visitor center and loaded up the back pack mounted water bladder as well as one of the two smaller water bottles with H2O.  We didn’t top either of them to the brim as the advice we saw online was you will use much less water on the way down then on the way up.

We found the bus that takes you to the South Kaibab trail and hopped on board.  We were the only two passengers.  On the short drive to the trail head the bus driver gave us some Grand Canyon info on the over modulated PA system.  It was hard to make out much he was saying but I did catch that the Kaibab trail was the only one that was designed and built by the national park service.  All the others are old indian trails that have been upgraded over the years.

He also mentioned some info regarding the trail construction back in the 20’s, saying it took 4 years to complete.  He said the suspension bridge at the bottom of the canyon was built mostly with materials that were carried down by mule/man.  The steel cables were lugged down there on the backs of multiple men.  It sounded incredibly difficult.

So our hiking plan was based off a page I found on the internet where some guy documented his down and up one day hike, something you will not see officially recommended by any official canyon web site due to it’s difficulty.  The guy that wrote the guide was an experienced hiker.  Cindy and I are just two fit people that have no real hiking experience.  To add to the fun we both live at near sea level where the air is much thicker than the 7000+ feet elevation at the South Rim.  Despite this, the guide gave us good guidance on what we would encounter and time goals to try to adhere to as best we could.  We hit the trailhead a couple minutes after 7AM.

Of course early on there is a lot of just stopping to admire the raw beauty of the Grand Canyon.  It was just 360 degrees of pure awesomeness.  When I hiked the canyon as a 15 or 16 year old I don’t think I had nearly the same level of appreciation for nature.

The hiking early on was challenging but manageable.  Going downhill sounds easy but that depends on the decline and terrain you are covering.  You had to be aware of each and every foot placement, the trail gets very rugged at spots.  Plus with all of the rain the trail was full of muddy puddles that you did your best to avoid as much as possible. Then there was the mule poop, which seemed to be scattered about every 6 or 7 steps.

When we got down to the first break spot there was a funny moment.  Cindy had to take a leak.  She found a spot to the side of some building and relived herself out of plain view.  My job was to keep lookout to make sure no one saw her.  Well the funny thing was just as she finished a woman went into the building up top, it was a bathroom (outhouse).  It was quite funny.

As you go down the canyon you see a lot of people that you pass and that pass you.  You also have those that are going about your pace and are around you most of the time.  We saw a couple guys fly by us on the way down, both of them using hiking poles and both looking like they were borderline running at times.  We later found out both of them are park workers whom were hiking to the bottom to get to work.  Wow, what a commute.

There were two younger guys near us that seemed like they were not very prepared for the hike, they had backpacks but both were wearing just plain sneakers and shorts.  I nicknamed one of them Adidas Kid, after the white sneakers he was wearing.

My eyes almost popped out of my head when I passed a young girl that was hiking upward. She was barefooted.  I looked back at Cindy and asked her if she saw that.  I have no clue how you could hike that trail barefooted.  It was wall to wall sharp rocks that felt like they were cutting up the Vibram soles in my hiking shoes.  I was dumbfounded by what I just saw. The weirder thing was as we descended through areas that were soft/muddy, I looked for bare footprints and saw none.  How bizarre.

The horrible weather that was predicted had not materialized.  In fact for a good period of time the sun was out.  I had stripped off my rain coat and Under Armour shirt and was hiking in just my t-shirt.  I was still warm.  Cindy stripped off most of her layers as well.

The raincoat, although quite good at keeping water from penetrating it’s exterior, acted like one of those rubber suits people wear when trying to sweat off the pounds.  My shirt underneath it was drenched with sweat.

During the last third of the downward descent my quads were really fatiguing.  8 miles of asking them to act like human air brakes takes their toll for sure.  Finally the bottom of the canyon and the Colorado River were really close, diverting the attention away from my aching legs.  It was a proud moment when we crossed the suspension bridge, leading to the other side of the river.

The river looked full, muddy and angry from the monsoon rains the area has been experiencing for the past month or so.  We saw a number of rafts docked just past the bridge for the river rafting that was available.

We decided to not go the extra distance to the Phantom Ranch, the spot where people camp out that break their canyon hiking into multiple days as is advised.  We instead took the left turn into Bright Angel campground where they have fresh spring water, bathrooms and picnic benches.

We arrived at the bottom right around 10:30.  The three and a half hours we took to the bottom was about a half hour slower than the guide I printed out but still pretty good for two hiking noobs.

We fully loaded our water supplies at the bottom knowing we will be needing every drop on the way back up.  In total we spent about a half hour at the bottom of the canyon where we dined on our various food items like power bars, cheese crackers and more.

As Cindy was in the bathroom I used a picnic bench as a makeshift bed, laying flat on my back while looking up at the sky and surrounding canyon walls.  As I laid there, with all the magnificence of nature around me I thought that I could die at that moment in time and feel content.  It was a weird thought to go through my head but it just felt peaceful.

Once Cindy returned I hit the bathroom before we loaded up for what promised to be a challenging upwards climb.

Early on the ascent actually kind of felt good.  It was nice to be using my hamstrings and glutes instead of so much quads.  The climbing angles early were not all that awful either, yea it was tough but nothing that I couldn’t deal with.  There was definitely more water consumption going on as is expected.

The climb pace was much slower than the descent as you would also expect.  Rule of thumb is you should expect the climb out to take roughly double what you spent getting down.  We had some confusion/concern when it seemed to be taking us forever to get to Indian Gardens, a spot roughly half way up the Bright Angel trail.  Our concern was amplified when we saw a confusing sign that seemed to indicate the Gardens were three more miles away when by my calculations they should have been much closer.  Luckily my calculations were the more accurate of the two as we entered the gardens about a half hour later.

The Indian Gardens is a full camping area with lots of amenities.  We stopped there to drink, eat some more and hit the bathrooms.  We would have stayed longer but some annoying German guys were smoking near by. (and drinking beer)

The Indian Garden was the spot where our Grand Canyon hiking experience took a turn for the worse.  It was “only” 4.5 miles from the South Rim but it turned out to feel more like 45 miles.

First of all our luck ran out with the weather.  It started to rain, lightly at first.  For awhile I just continued to hike in my t-shirt.  The cool rain felt good on my skin as I was struggling more and more to keep going.  Eventually the rain got harder and I had to put my rain coat back on.

For a period of 30-45 minutes hiking was basically pure misery.  The rain had turned the trail to mush and many spots had transformed into temporary waterfalls as the water traveled down the “steps”.  It also felt like the most steep portion of the trail was upon us.  Every muscle from my waist down was begging for relief.  My feet felt like raw meat from carrying me over the rugged surface for hours.

Cindy was struggling as well but less than I was.  For a good portion of the hiking she would be in front, and pulling away which I also found annoying but of course at that point everything was annoying me.

We had a number of German hikers in our area.  In my state of exhaustion induced delirium I found the sound of the German language annoying beyond belief.  I felt like asking them to simply stop talking because it was aggravating me.

Cindy could tell how beat I was and tried to encourage me and talk as we trudged upward and upward.  At one point I had to declare it a NTZ, (No Talk Zone)  When a NTZ is declared, that means preferably no talking takes place but if there is any talking directed at me I will not be responding.  When I get really, really exhausted I just don’t want to speak.  I was that tired and then some.

In what seemed like a cruel joke, this segment also included us following a pack of horses up the trail that were very happy to fill the trail with ample manure to offend both our eyes and noses.

So we hit the 3 mile rest house and didn’t stop, wanting to just keep going to get this over with.  It was sort of pointless since I stopped probably 100 yards past it anyway.  Stopping was a very frequent occurrence towards the end.  The combo of altitude, angle of ascent and fatigue from already hiking so far had just cut me off at the knees.  Every 10-15 minutes I was finding some rock to sit on for a minute or two to gather the energy to push on.

At the 1.5 mile rest house I had to refill the backpack water supply, I had drank the 2 liters it held since we refilled it at the bottom.  The last part of this climb was like hell on earth.  There was no more looking around at the scenery, no appreciation for being inside one of the most beautiful places on Earth.  It was all about keeping your head down and putting one foot in front of the other.

The amount of stopping increased for me during this home stretch which frustrated me more.  A number of groups had converged at this point.  Everytime I would stop that meant some of them would pass me, which of course bothered me.  It was a back and forth game though as when they stopped for a breather we would pass them as well.

Finally the top of the canyon was in site.  You could tell you were close by the casual “hikers” that were coming down with umbrellas and flip flops.  After one last air gasping stop we pushed the last 15 minutes or so of the trail unbroken, passing Adidas Kid in the homestretch which was some sort of weird badge of honor for me.

We emerged from the trail exhausted beyond description but joyous at the same time.  We did it.

The hike to the bottom and back was something I didn’t consider trying when I was a dumb 15 year old kid.  I think back then I went down either 3 or 4.5 miles before turning around and thought I was going to die by the time I made it back to the top.

Now, some 30 years later I traversed the entire back and down hike.  It is attributed much more to the development of the muscle between my ears than elsewhere.  At some point you are moving forward/upward on pure willpower.  Without a doubt it was the most difficult physical accomplishment of my life.

We arrived at the top of the Bright Angel trail at almost exactly 4 pm, meaning our round trip checked in at 9 hours minus the half hour we spent for lunch at the bottom.  When compared to the experienced hiker guide I was carrying it took us 90 minutes longer than they did but all in all I think we did great.

The rain, which had stopped for maybe the last hour of the hike resumed with new vigor as we exited the trail.  I was quite glad we beat round two of the deluge.

I was in a near comatose state as we sat at the bench waiting for the bus to take us back to the visitor center.  I just felt zombie like.  Cindy was much more functional than I was at this point.  As we sat waiting for the bus we started getting cold.  The rain seemed to bring lower temperatures with it.

When we got on the bus we were talking with a retired couple that was talking to us about their various adventures since they retired 9 years ago and bought a 5^th wheel.  They have been all over the place and seemed to just be loving life.  It was nice to see a couple enjoying old age as most people only hope they could.

When we got back to the visitor center it was raining hard.  The icy rain drops put the deep chill back on both of us quickly.  Cindy’s teeth were literally chattering when we got back in the van.  It seemed to take forever until the van could start throwing some serious heat from the vents.

When we got back to the hotel we dumped our muddy, wet clothes on the tile by the door.  We both took showers to try to warm up.  We had already agreed we were doing nothing last night besides eating pizza and vegging out.  Unfortunately nobody delivered so Cindy went and picked some up while I showered.

When I got out of the shower I felt really bad.  Despite standing in the hot water for a long time, I emerged from the shower still feeling chilled.  I climbed under the bed covers and pulled them up to my neck, I was still cold.  On top of that I felt somewhat nauseous.  By the time Cindy got back I had actually fallen asleep for a bit.

Once I ate some food I felt a little better but I felt whacked all night.  I couldn’t stop drinking fluids.  I guess despite downing around a gallon of water during the hike I was still dehydrated.

I slept like a rock last night and awoke this morning feeling rested but extremely sore.  The worst body part were my calf muscles that felt like they were about an inch too short.  I have been walking with an 85 year olds gait all day.

After eating the free continental breakfast which was the best of the trip thus far, we hopped back in the van and went back to the Grand Canyon visitor center for souvenir shopping.  On the way there I filled up the van at the only gas station in the immediate area and got raped with paying $4.20 a gallon for regular gas.

We hit the gift shop at the visitor center and the watch tower facility 25 miles east, figuring it was the direction we were going today anyway.  For part of the time it was pouring rain and freezing.  We were very lucky we got the hike in yesterday when we had good weather for the majority of the day.

After loading up on stuff we began the push eastward, seeing tons of scenery that was hidden by the rain and fog we drove in with.  It’s so beautiful out here.

I readjusted our travel plan a bit.  Today we are doing a long drive to Las Cruces, NM which will see us pulling in around 8-9pm local time.  Tomorrow though we are making it a much easier driving day.  A good portion of our Thursday will be spent at White Sands National Park, a place I have been to twice with Ali on road trips.  It is such an awesome spot that I thought it would be nice to really spend some time there.  After that we have a tiny 150 mile drive to El Paso.

From there we are hoping to cover the width of Texas on Friday, get to Pensacola on Saturday and then home late in the day Sunday, giving me two full days to recover, something I always like to do after these big trips.

It’s been a blast so far.

So the drive to Durango definitely did not go as planned.  When I initially mapped the route it showed I would be doing a roughly 780 mile drive going from Oklahoma City to Durango if we included Dodge City Kansas as a waypoint.  The mileage was pretty accurate but unfortunately I did not take into account the mountainous terrain the drive includes, making it take FOREVER.  We started at 7:30 central time and did not get to Durango until 10:30 mountain time, a horrendous 16 hours, the longest I have ever logged during a road trip in one day.

There were of course highlights along the way.  We stopped in Dodge City for lunch where the temperature was at 100 degrees.  We walked around an area near Boot Hill but it seemed almost everything was closed for business on Sundays.

We ate at some Italian restaurant that looked like it was just transported from 1974.  The walls were covered in crooked, old pictures, the light fixtures were in various states of disrepair and every table cloth was encased in plastic sheeting.  Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate places like this and the charm they carry.  The pizza we split was very calorie dense but very tasty.

I found myself losing my mind a bit during the endless drive.  The Kansas cornfields at first got a “hey look at all that corn !” reaction.  Later it turned into a “damn there are a lot of cornfields”  Finally, after seeing my 10,000^th cornfield it was “I hope I never see another fcking cornstalk in my life…”

Driving for this long can become very physically challenging.  Even with the plush, soft captain chairs in the party van, pressure points start to hurt.  My sore spots were my ass, my elbows, forearms and feet.  At a certain point you are shifting your position around every couple minutes to bring relief to one area only to inflict more discomfort on another. I also was getting a one sided sunburn on my left arm and leg as the sun beat in the drivers window.  Cindy gave me a long dress of hers that I used to cover the exposed skin to stop the pain.

Unfortunately, as we were getting into the most mountainous part of the drive in Colorado we were running out of daylight.  Cindy was actually behind the wheel for a big part of that part of the drive.  It was very challenging because of the steep inclines, followed by twisty and very steep declines.  We utilized dropping the gears on the van to allow the motor to help us decelerate and avoid cooking the brakes too badly.  She did a good job driving in the tough conditions.

We didn’t wind up eating dinner until after 9pm mountain time.  At that time of night we had few fast options since a sit down dinner would only retard our arrival further.  We grabbed our second McDonalds meal of the trip although neither of us felt great about it. Yesterday was a pretty filthy eating day, pizza for lunch and McD’s for dinner.

We were a bit shocked by the temperature swing we experienced.  It was 100 degrees in Dodge City and 64 degrees in Colorado.

By the time we finally reached our hotel in Durango we were both understandably beat from logging and incredibly long day on the road.  I hope to never duplicate that feat again.  We fell asleep almost immediately once our heads touched the pillow.

When we woke up today we were greeted by the beauty of Durango which was hidden from us by the veil of night.  The air felt cool and crisp, such a pleasant change from the never ending Naples humid summers.  The hotel was nestled in between beautiful rock formations in all directions.  The visual helped erase the negative energy from yesterday’s brutal drive.

The continental breakfast at the Quality Inn was served in a room that had a bar along a window that faced the front of the hotel.  Cindy and I enjoyed the view as we ate breakfast.

After considering some options we decided to just go to the downtown historic area of Durango, park and walk around.  It was a good choice.  We walked down main street in the cool air checking out all of the sights, sounds and shops in the area.  It seemed every person we talked to or dealt with was very, very nice and friendly.  They all appeared to be in good moods and I can understand why.  Durango seems like a really awesome place to live.

I had a little familiarity with it since my sister went to Fort Lewis college, which is located in Durango, however I had no real appreciation of just how great of an area it is.  There is so much there that would be fun to do if we had the time.  I could easily see spending a week there and be able to fill every moment with good experiences.  Unfortunately we did not have that luxury of unlimited time, this trip is all about the Grand Canyon.

We only have a “short” 312 mile drive to the South Rim however once again the terrain is going to make that distance take a good amount of time.  Our hope is to pull in to the South Rim late afternoon, giving us a chance to recover enough for our massive to the bottom and back hike to the bottom of the canyon tomorrow.

Along the way today we had the unexpected bonus of stopping at the Four Corners, where the boundaries of New Mexico, Utah, Arizona and Colorado all meet.  I remember stopping there on the western trip we did with my dad as a kid.  It has changed a lot since then.  The attraction got a facelift in 1992 and another one in 2010.  It looks nothing like I remember but it was still fun to see and well worth the time spent.

This morning I was thinking about how well the party van is doing on the trip despite the average mpg of 15-17 mpg.  Almost on cue, the check engine light came on during this mornings drive.  I am hoping it is just some sort of O2 sensor error that can be simply attributed to the thin air.  I actually have my code reader with so I can see what code is being thrown.

The next blog entry will not come until after the Great Hike, if I survive it…

So the drive to Oklahoma City felt quite long since we didn’t leave at 4:30 AM as we did the prior day.  We wound up not getting into OKC until around 8:30. The original room we were assigned at the La Quinta reeked of cigarette smoke, despite supposedly being a smoke free room.  The cigarette burn on top of the set of drawers was another nice touch.  We got a free upgrade to a bigger, better, less smelly room with a microwave and fridge even though we had no need for the additional amenities.

We wasted little time before we changed and headed right out to eat.  Cindy had spent a lot of time on her iPhone scouting out the area ahead of time and found a nice sounding place close by named Pearls Fish House.

The place was nice indeed but very sparsely patronized at that time of night.  I think there may have been two or three other groups of people eating there, that’s it.  The small amount of people didn’t have anything to do with the food, which was excellent.  Cindy and I both enjoyed our meals although we didn’t spend much time enjoying them.  Despite the late hour we wanted to see one thing in Oklahoma City, the national monument on the site of the former federal building that was bombed in 1995.  Cindy read that it some ways it is actually better to see at night.

Getting to the monument was a bit frustrating.  Evidently they redid some of the highways in the area recently, more recently than the version of maps that is in my van GPS.  We wound up getting sent on a maddening series of wrong turns until we finally found our way to the memorial site.

As you approach the monument there is a chain link fence that borders the sidewalk.  This fence has become a memorial in itself.  Thousands of people have left little mementos over the years hanging there.  It was a sad but powerful thing to see.  Cindy felt very sad as she walked the entire length of fence, looking at the various objects left there, rubber bracelets, necklaces, pictures, stuffed animals, all meaning something different to every person.  She said she felt like she should leave something.  She asked if I would mind if she left the Bar-barian bracelet I gave her awhile back.  I said it was fine.  She took it off and carefully attached it to one of clips on the fence.

Once you got inside the memorial the visual was powerful.  In a perfectly manicured lawn you saw all of these lighted chairs, one for each person that died in the explosion.  Each chair had the persons name on it and they were arranged in a manner that correlated with where they were in the building.  I felt an additional wave of sadness when I realized some of the chairs were smaller than the others, signifying the children that died that day as well.

In the middle of the monument was a large rectangular area that had water only a fraction of an inch deep over black granite.  At either end were large walls, one had 9:01 on it and the other 9:03, the two minutes that flanked the time of the explosion, 9:02 AM.

There were only a couple dozen people walking around with us at that time of night.  We walked the inner and outer perimeter, not saying much but thinking a lot about the weight of what we were looking at.  What a terrible, terrible tragedy…

They really did a beautiful job with the memorial site.  I am glad we took the time to see it.

Today we have yet another hellishly long drive ahead of us, just short of 800 miles.  We are currently rolling through Kansas with an eventual destination of Durango, CO this evening. In all the road trips I have taken I have logged a lot of long days of driving but never have I strung this many long driving days consecutively.  It will be worth it as  we look back  but it would be nice to be semi-retired where trips like this could be digested at a more leisurely pace.

I am not injecting pictures into these posts as I normally would because of the limits of back of the van internet access.  Of course I have been taking a number of pics, here is the link to the FB album which contains them.

So with the time change we pulled into New Orleans around 4:30 PM, not bad considering we logged 800 plus miles to get there.  The La Quinta we stayed at was right in the heart of the city.  It looked like an old building that they renovated.  They did a nice job, it was very nice inside.  Unfortunately it’s heart of the city location left no parking options that didn’t cost $30 and a valet, oh well.  After taking a quick survey of the pool and fitness center in the hotel, neither of which we used, we headed out onto the streets of New Orleans.

I have driven through New Orleans several times on other western road trips but was never inclined to stop, partly because of having the dogs with and partly because what I saw of the city from the highway looked pretty dirty and rundown.  This was the first time my feet actually hit the streets of NOLA.

We walked a bit and found ourselves going up and down Canal Street.  I didn’t realize New Orleans had trolleys.  They were zipping up and down Canal Street all the time.  We decided we wanted to head down to the French Quarter since that is what everyone talks about.  Street signs seem to be a low priority item in New Orleans.  It seemed most intersections had either poorly visible or non-existent signage.  They did have the intersecting street names embedded into the sidewalk.

Without realizing it we had turned onto Bourbon Street.  It looked as I expected after seeing it in pictures, lots of bars, lots of gentlemans clubs and lots of people.  Cindy and I knew we needed to crack the seal by getting a couple drinks.  As I was sitting there at the bar Cindy could tell I was a bit uneasy.  Cities and large amounts of people do that to me generally.  I also felt like I needed to be on alert at all times as I was unwilling to be a victim of any sort of criminal/shady business.  I had my pocket knife in my shorts just in case, as silly as that sounds.

So I determined the way to mesh into the New Orleans experience was to drink.  I drank two oversized Miller Lights at the bar.  As we were sitting there a brass band suddenly formed right outside the bar.  It consisted of guys playing the drums, trumpet, trombone and tuba.  They were great.  In no time they had a huge crowd gathered around with various people dancing in the streets.  It was quite entertaining to watch, we hung there for awhile just taking it in.

We then decided it was time to grab some dinner.  I had a Po Boy sandwich and another beer.  Cindy had a tasty but very fried seafood platter.  Our waitress was very friendly, as were most of the people we had interactions with.

We headed back out on the street to continue exploring Bourbon Street.  There were a number of street entertainers, all of which were impressive/funny in one way or another.  A number of dollar tips were handed out.

Another New Orleans tradition are of course beads.  We sort of cheated at first as Cindy bought an Eagles bead set.  However while we were out on the street I got a set thrown to me from some women on a balcony after Cindy lifted my shirt.  Cindy got her own set of beads when she flashed her abs/tattoo without having to do a full mardigras style breast reveal.  It was funny.

We stepped into a place with an interesting beer, Huge Ass Beers.  They served beer in this massive 70 ounce plastic bottle with a built in handle.  I was already kind of drunk so it took little convincing for me to plop down $20 (including tip) for one of these mammoth beers.  It was a ridiculous amount of beer.  It also was quite the attention getter as we walked around.  NOLA has no open container laws, you can carry your beer in the middle of the street without worry.

The Huge Ass Beer bar had some pretty scary looking bathrooms.  If the doorway to hell had a bathroom it probably looks like this.

I started working on the beer myself but had to enlist Cindy to help throughout the night.  As we walked around there was just so much going on, the vibe was pure fun.

We even saw a marching band that was leading a wedding party through the streets.  The wedding members were all fully dressed in tuxedos/dresses as they marched by waving white hankies.  It was something I never saw before and will probably never see again.

I was dead tired by the time 9PM local time rolled around.  We had been going since 3:30 AM in our time zone,  Trying to knock down the last of the Huge Ass Beer became a matter of willpower.  The beer no longer tasted good at all and was warm.  However I did not want to take any shortcuts.  As Cindy was taking her shower back at the room I finally sucked down the last few ounces of Miller Lite.

When I woke up this morning I felt like shit as expected.  My head was pounding, I was severely dehydrated and had no motivation to move.  Eventually I drug myself out of bed.  We ate the free continental breakfast and got back out on the road a little later than we hoped since we have another 700 some miles of driving to take down today on the way to Oklahoma City.

The drive so far today has been pretty uneventful although we discovered northern Louisiana is a pretty boring/empty region.  We did grab filet-o-fish meals at perhaps the friendliest McDonalds ever just outside of Shrevesport.  All the employees treated you like you were ordering filet mignon instead of fast food.

Our plans in OKC are pretty minimal since we wont be rolling in until 8PM.  We want to head down to the site of the Oklahoma bombing memorial, eat dinner and call it a night.  We want to not get another sluggish start tomorrow, we have another long leg through Kansas and winding up in Durango, Colorado.

Another 300 miles to go..

So here I am in the back of the van doing a blog entry after logging the first 350 miles of the trip behind the wheel.  I am accomplishing this magic via my Virgin Mobile hot spot.  We pulled out about a half hour later than we hoped at 4:30AM.  However once getting on the road it has been smooth sailing thus far.  The van has been driving fine although I was hoping for better than the 15.7 MPG we got on the first tank of gas.

If things go as we hope we should pull into New Orleans sometime between 5 and 6pm which will allow us some time to walk around, drink a few beers and taste some authentic cajun cuisine.

The bed of the van is pretty comfortable for lounging around as long as you avoid the hard portion in the middle where the seat hinge is.  I doubt that I could actually fall asleep back here though.

The van feels much bigger without two canines and their supplies on board although I would trade the added space for their company. 🙂

Ok enough for now, still have 400 miles to cover today….

So on the way home last night I asked Ali if she minded if I stopped by to see the dogs which she said was fine.  On the way there I stopped by Sports Authority, looking at things for the trip.  I wound up not buying anything other than a cheap pair of sunglasses for the trip.

I always was a big fan of Ponch from Chips/T-1000 Terminator 2 style sunglasses. The huge mirrored lenses when combined with my buzzed hair and facial scruff I am sure to accrue while on the road it will make  for an interesting visual.

When I got to Ali’s place Sadie was inside by herself, meaning Ali was out walking Nicki.  I hooked up Sadie and went out to find them.  Once I did, we handed off, I took Nicki back while Sadie did her business.

I have started a new “thing” with Nicki.  When I am at Ali’s place we play the elevator game.  Instead of making Nicki climb and descend the steps with her aching back legs I pick her up and carry her up or down the two flights of stairs.  When I first started doing it Nicki was uneasy, thinking it meant something suspicious was going on like possibly a bath.  She would lay down and try to avoid it. Now she actually stands there and waits for me to grab her, like she actually enjoys the zero effort trip to the second floor.

I hung out at Ali’s place for a little while with her and the girls, talking about the trip and other things.  Ali is actually going to be out of town for part of the time that I am, the first time we both have been out of Naples at the same time in different locations.

It felt a bit strange saying goodbye to everyone since typically every road trip out of the state I have ever taken has involved some combination of Ali and the dogs. It’s just part of the new world we both live in. I gave both the girls a kiss on the head before heading out.

When I got home I had no time for farting around like I did the night before.  I spent a couple hours attending to trip related items as well as sharpening my mental list of things to get handled before shoving out tomorrow morning hopefully sometime around 4AM.

I will be leaving work early today to knock out the last minute items, including mowing the grass, regardless of the amounts of water that are still on the ground.  Hell even if it is pouring I will be out there on the tractor, knocking down what I can.

The rest of the evening will be a whirlwind of activity with Cindy showing up later to help me batten down the hatches.

I’ll be trying to blog as time allows while on the road.  I am bringing the wifi hotspot to potentially allow me to type away while rolling along at 70 mph.    I look forward to creating a new set of road trip memories to supplement my already impressive collection.

Last night I should have been doing more prep for the road trip than I did. The yard was still filled with ponds so mowing the grass was off the docket.  I did a few things but I mostly just screwed around.  One of the screw items was messing around with X-split, twitch.tv and WoW. X-split is a tool that is used to broadcast your local desktop to the world, through sites like twitch.tv.  This combo is often used to live stream video game play.

I had no idea how popular video game streaming is nowadays.  Not only do people love playing video games, they apparently love WATCHING people play video games nearly as much.  I found myself spending 20 minutes watching Boogie2988 play Hearthstone and found it very entertaining.  Boogie is one of my favorite people to watch on YouTube which you may find odd since physically (morbidly obese) he represents the segment of the population that I find so annoying. However I find the guy to be a good mix of funny with intelligence.

So anyway I thought I would play around with trying to broadcast some WoW play.  With the free X-split broadcaster you have a number of limits with what you can do but I got it streaming.  X-split is cool in the way it allows you to bundle multiple A/V sources into a live stream.  In my set up I had my web cam video in a corner while my WoW window filled the rest.  Unfortunately my mic was misconfigured so you couldn’t hear my additional commentary, just the game sounds.

Of course this set up could be used to do something more productive than streaming video game play.  You could use it to live stream just about anything on your pc.  You have the option to stream it right to twitch.tv (aka. justin.tv), or save it as a local file.  I want to try to do more with this in the future.

My buddy Jeremy has been out of town for nearly two months.  It has been a rough 60 days for me, not having Jeremy available to me via Skype IM to bounce random thoughts off of is a luxury I found myself missing.  Thankfully he is home again now, making my daily grind at work more tolerable.

Tonight I am going to stop by Ali’s place to see the dogs before I leave and then later begin packing/preparing in earnest.