Posted on 09/23/2017 5:16:04 PM PDT by Army Air Corps
February 1985. A friend and I set off for New Orleans and Mardi Gras from Long Island. We left Thursday afternoon in a snowstorm in a 1976 Plymouth Duster with baloney skin tires and a broken speedometer. We switched drivers in PA. I fell asleep. Lisa woke me up somewhere in VA to say the headlights weren’t working. We pulled into some little country convenience store where a tow truck driver replaced the frozen headlights.
We drove along with no incidents until, in Tuscaloosa, AL a car filled with boxes and trash bags and a bicycle with CA plates started following us. For a few hours, this young guy just stayed with us. We needed gas and figured he would continue on his way. But no, he gets off the exit. (This was one of those country exits where you have to drive through miles of nothing until you come to the one gas station/general store. All the while, I imagine faintly hearing Dueling Banjos) Anyway, Mr. California pulls in behind us. We started talking to him and find he was moving back to California. Mr. California decides to go to Mardi Gras with us. (Remember, we were young and stupid)
We pullrd into New Orleans about 9:00 and hit the French Quarter. After walking around and drinking, not wanting to go to the campground in Slidell,we decided to pitch our tent in a park. A cop came by and told us we couldn’t camp there or we would get a ticket. I asked how much. $25.00. He walked away and we pitched our tents, Mr. California in his and Lisa and me in ours.
The next day we went to the campground. Then back to the French Quarter. It got really cold. HIgh in the 40’s, low in the 20’s. Lisa had packed for the 70 degree weather we were expecting and was sick after a couple days. (When she finally got home, she was diagnosed with walking pneumonia.)
We met up with some of her friends from school who were going to Mexico, but needed a ride. So we drive them to Houston, where it was 75 degrees. I decided to shave my legs and put on shorts in a McDonald’s bathroom. I lost the car keys in that bathroom. I called a locksmith who made new keys, we drove to the bus station, dropped off the friends and said goodbye to Mr. California.
We were at a truck stop in Delaware when Lisa decided to ride back to Long Island with some Truck driver she just met. I tried to follow them, but when I was on the entrance ramp the steering wheel popped off. I lost Lisa and the truck as I drove 35 miles an hour back to Long Island holding the steering wheel down as hard as I could. I made it to my house and didn’t hear from Lisa for three more days. She finally showed up. She had stayed in a motel with the truck driver for the weekend. It was a great unforgettable trip.
I bet that y’all needed a change of underwear after all that!
I bet that y’all needed a change of underwear after all that!
Ping.
Youth is wasted on the young! Man TX is big! All that land!
Hell, don’t even know if there was such a thing as an illegal alien then! lol
I have made many, many road trips through that vast, open expanse that is the Big Bend area. There is terrain out there that looks more like Mars. Then, there are stories I could tell of night trips out there - it can be majestic and spooky at night.
A few years ago, my wife and I went to France on business, but stretched the trip by adding almost a week of personal time. We rented a car in Angers (on the Maine River, in the Loire Valley) and drove up to Calais, then followed the Normandy coast south to Saint-Malo. We took out time and explored each little town.
Darn near. At that moment it was the loneliest place in the world and my prospects looked dim indeed.
Either God’s country or God forsaken country.
Spooky!
Loaded up a U Haul in August of 2001. Took my son, just turning 18, back east to college in IL (We’re from Phx). 1,700 miles. I was a single dad of him for most of his life. His momma went of the res and drank herself incapable. Stopped past Albuquerque the first night at a KOA, slept in the back of the U Haul. got up and drove 900 miles before we stopped the next night at his half sisters house in a small town in north central Missouri. Same mother, different father. Town was so small (220 people, spread out) that the deer walked through it constantly like it was just another part of the forest.
Next day got up and drove to Springfield, IL to see Lincolns hometown and grave and then continued on to Urbana-Champaign, IL to the University of Illinois...The Fighting Illini! Arriving there 8/17/2001.
I spent 2 1/2 days gettin him situated over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Went to the church on campus with him Sunday morning and bawled like a baby in church because the boy I raised on my own was now going off on his own. Couple hours later dropped the U Haul off, said my goodbyes to him and took a shuttle up to Chicago for a lonely flight home on August 19, 2001.
9/11 happened 22 days later. It pretty much marks the line between my son’s child and adult hood.
1972, Aged 7-8 (8th birthday on the road).
Anchorage, Alaska to Alamogordo, New Mexico.
Fourteen days, IIRC.
1969 Impala towing a smallish camper.
The Al-Can Highway, a loooooong gravel road.
Two stops due to axle breakage on the trailer, near Calgary and in Montana.
I saw exactly one of those, at Ivar's in Seattle in the mid 70's.
Until just now I assumed it was Ivar's own decor, which was nautical and fishy (in the seafood sense) and included a ship's telegraph.
4 years ago my family drove from S.E. Florida to the Chicago Art Museum and the start of Route 66 and took it all the way to the Santa Monica Pier.
Most fun and memorable.
Lots of fun reading. Lots of Americana. It is what Americans did and do — road trips!
I have been on dozens of road trips since I was a kid. All very memorable.
The most memorable was the time my friend and I made the run from LA to Denver Colorado without stopping. Around 1100 miles.
The highlight of the trip was when we drove through Glenwood Canyon at around 3AM. It was in June and the Colorado river was at its peak level and had been flooding the highway. We didn't know this.
We were the only souls on the whole highway because the police and had road-blocked the highway in Grand Junction and we had somehow slipped through. Must have been a matter of minutes because I remember driving over a bridge with the police looking over the edge at the rising water just a few feet from spilling over and onto the highway.
This was before the highway was developed in Glenwood Canyon and the highway snaked along with the Colorado river just a few feet away in some sections. As we weaved in along the base of the canyon, I remember looking to my right at the river and noticing the water splashing higher that the roof of our car.
Occasionally as we made our way around the bend, the river would be up on the highway pavement and in a couple of instances it was completely across our lane and we'd have to slow down to avoid hydroplaning and spinning off into the oncoming lane or worse, off to the right and into the churning river.
So what were we to do? — power on and drive through or turn around. We decided to continue driving and eventually made it safely through the canyon.
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