Let me begin by offering something of an apology to those of you who are accustomed to reading this blog once a month. I had the best of intentions regarding this blog for the duration of my trip. I thought I would post two or three times while on the road. I figured that I could draft the text and download the pictures on boring nights in nameless hotels while en route. Turned out that I was busier and considerably more exhausted than I had anticipated. Abner and I traveled close to 9,400 miles. Gas cost between $3.43 (Wyoming) and $4.95 (Big Pine California). We had a few tech meltdowns including the death of my old Fujitsu laptop on which I had intended to draft posts. On balance it was a great trip but at almost 8 weeks, it was a long time to be away from home.

Abner and I left Asheville, as planned but an hour and a half late, on Friday the 25th of July. The late departure was due to two return trips to the condo. This first was from 5 minutes away and hardly counted. I had forgotten my bluetooth for my cell phone and realized that this would not be a good time to be doing without it, particularly since California now requires a hands free device for use of a cell phone in a car.

After retrieving it, we headed south to the offices of Charter Cable to return my modem and cable box, my having discontinued service at least until we return. After completing that chore, I noticed that I was a little low on gas so we headed for I 26 via Overlook and Long Shoals Roads so I could stop for gas before getting on the freeway. Well, I pulled up to a pump at the big Ingles on Long Shoals and was pleased to see the price down to $3.88 (who would have thought that would seem low?). I started to reach for my bag to get a credit card when I realized that I didn’t have it. That’s right. I started on an 8 week trip with no ID, no credit cards and no money. Needless to say, this necessitated another trip back to the condo. Since Bele Chere was only 2-1/2 hours from its official start, the streets, long since barricaded, were now clogged with people, beer trucks and sundry other service vehicles making the prospect of getting to the condo almost unthinkable. I parked two blocks away and walked.

Asheville to Natchez

When we finally got on the road, though, I felt fine and figured we would get to Natchez when we got to Natchez. I took the scenic route through Northern South Carolina on route 11 and it was, as always, uncrowded and a beautiful drive. By the time we got onto I-85 heading toward Atlanta, traffic was moving at a very very fast pace. I had decided to experiment with driving the speed limit on this trip. Not only would I get to see what kind of mileage my hybrid would get, but I would also improve my chances of getting through some areas notorious for ticketing out-of-Staters as a means of improving their balance sheets, without a costly ticket or delay in some local court. What I hadn’t counted on was the frequent sense that I was in reverse. In Georgia, more than anywhere else we have traveled on this trip thus far, drivers are insane speeders. (I have to add this. . .it is now September 21st, and having completed the trip, I can say that in Texas they are even crazier drivers.)When I was traveling at 70 most of the cars whizzed past me so quickly I could barely make out their Georgia plates. Even after leaving Georgia, I have noticed that the most consistent high speeders are Georgia drivers. Many Texans will give them a run for their money, but Alabamans, Mississippians, and Louisianans are tortoises to the Georgian hares.

The drive to Atlanta is, by now, pretty familiar but once we turned west on 1-20 downtown, I was in new territory. Leaving Atlanta, we encountered a brief but intense cloudburst that slowed traffic to stop and go and was so loud hitting the car that I had to end a phone conversation due to my not being able to hear anything being said. The storm was brief though, and soon we were in sun. Western Georgia held no surprises, but things changed soon. We crossed the border into Alabama and suddenly we were in rolling hills covered in dense forest. I had no idea how beautiful Eastern Alabama is, but the drive from Georgia, all the way to the outskirts of Birmingham was really quite spectacular. I was a little stunned to encounter the Talledega Motor Speedway immediately off the freeway and barely out of a national forest, but even it was worth seeing, if for no other reason, its enormity. Having never been into motor sports, I don’t know much about this place, but if its size is any indication, I am thinking it is pretty significant to the folks who are into auto racing.

Our route took us around the northern suburbs of Birmingham so I have no idea what the city itself looks like but the drive was easy and we pressed on. As the afternoon wore on into evening and we found ourselves in Mississippi, I was starting to realize that the late departure was going to have an impact. I had considered doing the final stretch to Natchez on the Natchez Trace Parkway (similar to the Blue Ridge Parkway for the uninitiated). There is a stretch from just east of Vicksburg that would be a fairly direct if somewhat leisurely approach to Natchez but I realized that it was going to be dark and made no sense, so I followed the route that both AAA and my GPS device recommended. We got to the Devereaux Shields house at close to 10:00 PM, checked in and, in spite of having spent half the day driving, I took Abner for a walk.

Natchez is hot and muggy at this time of year and exceptionally so this year. At the late hour I walked Abner the temperature was still 91 degrees and the humidity was very high. Nonetheless, he needed the walk so our first tour of old Natchez was at night.

Saturday, I had a half day to check out the various historic houses in Natchez and ultimately decided on three of the multitude available for visits. I toured Stanton Hall, Longwood, and Dunleith. These were all houses with which I had some familiarity from when Bud and Janet Latz, two of my parents’ closest friends when I was growing up, gave me a book called “Great American Mansions”. Natchez was heavily featured.

What I learned from one of the tour guides was that the reason Natchez had been spared the ravages of the Civil War was partly that it sits on a bluff 200 feet above the Mississippi River and therefore out of reach of Union gunboats, but more to the point, when push came to shove, the town surrendered to the Union troops rather than be subjected to attack.

I had to time everything in a way that Abner wouldn’t be left alone for extraordinary lengths of time but he seemed fine just sleeping for a few hours in the room at the B & B. After touring, I went back and spent time with him at the house reading the paper and contemplating the evening activities. I went to a local haunt for dinner and then walked Abner around town again for a late night sniff and pee session. The dinner was interesting because it was in the same riverfront café in which Jim Bowie had his infamous knife fight that made his home made knife the “must have” weapon of the mid-19th century American frontier.

Natchez to Austin

In the morning we hit the road for Austin via back roads across Louisiana and East Texas, getting all the way to Austin without using the Interstate system. This route, while an interesting drive because it avoided major cities and freeways, was not the most fascinating part of the US. I have to say that the day driving to Austin didn’t spur me to want to move to either Louisiana or East Texas. Austin itself, where we arrived in the early evening on Sunday, is a very attractive and apparently interesting and lively city. I checked into the Hotel San Jose on South Congress Avenue. This place is really very cool. It was an old motor court, I would guess of ‘50s vintage, that was completely redone by the highly thought of Texas architectural firm of Lake/Flato and is now very modern and spare. Floors are concrete, which Abner loved, and the furniture was mid-20th Century modern classics like Bertoia chairs and 50s desk lamps. My room had a wall-mounted flat screen TV and even an IPod docking station that I didn’t use. The only negative I could really throw at the San Jose was that in a bathroom where they went to the trouble of providing Frette bath linens and very nice castile soap, they had the roughest toilet paper I have seen outside of inexpensive European accommodations. If you stay there, stop at a local store and pick up a roll of your favorite TP.

In addition, the area around the hotel is filled with new and interesting restaurants, clubs, and edgy retail places, making it feel like quite the hot spot in which to check out Austin. Unfortunately, it was really just an overnight stop for Abner and me, but if I go back, I would try the place again. Austin looked like it could be a really great place and the San Jose seemed like a good choice for centering a visit.

Austin to Las Cruces

Monday we set off across West Texas which was also a revelation. I continued on Route 290 until it intersected with Interstate 10. West Texas isn’t nearly as flat and depressing as East Texas was. A lot of the terrain is relatively barren or covered in scrubby vegetation, but there was an oddly appealing quality to it. The only significant site we passed on this route was the LBJ ranch but since I wanted to make it all the way to Las Cruces, NM, stopping to visit the ranch wasn’t an option.

Eventually the road met I-10 which we continued to follow west until, about 80 miles outside of El Paso, it entered the Rio Grande valley and paralleled the river and the Mexican border. The biggest revelation to me of this route was the size of the mountains that line the border on the Mexican side. I will have to do some research when I have time. The biggest shock of the day was that on Texas freeways, the speed limit is 80 and precious few people respect it. I limited my speed to 75 and was without doubt the slowest car on the road. I would guess most people did 90 and some exceeded 100.

The night in Las Cruces was uneventful. The town didn’t look like much but I was too tired to do anything anyway. One interesting observation I had though was that the Hampton Inn, where we spent the night, had the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in when staying at such a moderately priced chain. The hotel looked very ordinary, but the bed and other amenities really stood out.

Las Cruces to Santa Fe

Santa Fe, NM was the next stop on the journey west and I was pretty excited about it. I was looking forward to seeing my friend Beth whom some of you may remember from the Irenka post of roughly a year and a half ago. Beth is a close friend from the last few years in Sacramento who subsequently moved to Abiquiu, NM about 40 miles NW of Santa Fe. The plan was that Abner and I would check into the St Francis Hotel in downtown Santa Fe in the afternoon of our first day there and then meet up with Beth. Things didn’t exactly go as planned.

To begin with, I arrived at the St Francis and parked in their loading zone in front and brought Abner into the lobby with me to check in. Abner drew his usual crowd of admirers and I began the process of checking in with a rather snooty imperious 30-something man who was one of several people working the desk when I arrived. There was a woman in a huge floppy white hat holding court on the other side of the lobby and lecturing to a small group of people around her about her version of Santa Fe history. While this was slightly distracting, it didn’t really bother me that much since I had a prepaid reservation that I had obtained through one of the myriad of pet friendly accommodation websites I had used to find places to stay on this trip.

The snootyman took my credit card for incidentals and checked my driver’s license to confirm that I was who I claimed to be. Meanwhile a number of employees began to flock around Abner to get some of his action. At the time it seemed odd that they would make such a big deal about him even though I think he is an extraordinary dog. Shortly, though, it became clear why they were treating him like some highly unusual celebrity. Snootyman’s final remark to me before preparing to hand me my room key was to look over his imaginary glasses and state “I presume you have made other arrangements for your dog”. When I assured him that Abner would be staying with me, he informed me in the iciest tone he could muster, that the St. Francis is not dog friendly and that Abner could, under no circumstances stay there.

Needless to say, I was both mystified and greatly displeased. I pointed out that I had booked through a website that is solely about pet-friendly accommodations and that, in fact, I would never have even found their hotel at all without it. He quickly tired of discussing anything with me and summoned the manager du jour, a seemingly pleasant young woman who, while considerably more polite, was just as obdurate in her insistence that they were not now nor ever have been a pet friendly hotel. When I related to her that I had even gone to the point (as I did with all the larger hotels where I was planning to stay) of calling the hotel directly prior to finalizing a non-cancellable reservation to confirm that, unlike places I had stayed in the past, the dog-friendly rooms weren’t also the smoking rooms. I had been through that situation in Nag’s Head a couple years back and wasn’t eager to spend two nights in a room reeking of stale tobacco smell. The desk clerk that night assured me that they did not limit their guests with pets to smoking rooms and that I would have no problems.

Nonetheless, even faced with this situation, the manager insisted there was nothing she could do to accommodate us. I pointed out to her that there was a difference between what she could do and what she was willing to do, and that, in this case she was clearly not willing to do much.

I was really annoyed about the situation and asked her to find me an alternative room somewhere since I was in no position to log onto one of the websites I had used in the first place to try to track something down. She ended up finding me a room in an overpriced rather dumpy 50s motel that had been tarted up with a little paint but nothing else.

My intention is to get in touch with the owners of the Santa Fe St Francis to let them know how displeased I was with how this screw-up was handled. Everyone makes mistakes but the refusal of the manager to deal with an error that so clearly originated with an employee of the hotel seemed unprofessional to me. If someone asked me to review this place though, I would have to give it zero stars. When a manager faced with a situation like this one can’t bring herself to figure out a way to accommodate a guest with a prepaid reservation, there is something seriously wrong with management of the facility and it should be passed by for one of the many better places to stay in Santa Fe.

Meanwhile Beth had arrived at the St Francis and was able to guide me to the semi-dump we were to stay in for the next two nights. Fortunately we spent very little time at the hotel other than to sleep. The bed was, by far, the most uncomfortable one of the whole trip although mostly when I sat on the side to get dressed. The mattress had this oddly rigid metal edge that cuts into the back of your thigh if you sit down without your leg being well clear of the edge. There were repeated problems with the door cards not working and a few missing items from the room (like the do not disturb sign which is quite important when a large dog is alone in the room and you want to discourage housekeeping from making a surprise visit.) but since the purpose of the stop in Santa Fe was to spend time with Beth, I was more pissed off at the St Francis for having inflicted this situation on me than all that inconvenienced.

Bath and I spent the late afternoon walking Abner and hitting a few of the better galleries in Santa Fe. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the place, I would have to guess that there are more galleries per capita there than anywhere else in the US. Canyon Road is almost nothing but galleries for many many blocks. In my opinion, and I must emphasize that I think art is a very subjective area to discuss, most of the galleries carry overpriced, trite kitschy pseudo Southwest crap. I found most of the galleries to have the same problems that most of the Carmel, CA galleries have. In Santa Fe you see endless paintings of Hopi and Navajo huddled under blankets looking imperturbable, and in Carmel it is the seemingly ceaseless stream of paintings of waves breaking on the beach or rocks. Santa Fe also has a whole lot of cowboy imagery in paintings and bronzes. There is some truly fabulous stuff there. . .I was completely blown away by a painting by George Fischer called “Losing Balance” that is on display at the Turner Carroll Gallery. . .and one of the places we entered near the new light rail line was hanging a sensational show of very large photographic prints of urban landscape and architecture, among other subjects. The really fine work, while pricey, generally was, in my opinion, so superb that it was worth it. The shocking thing to me was the prices they are asking on the cliché riddled work that seems to hang in most of the galleries we saw. Still, the stroll was fun.

That night we had a nice dinner in town and then Beth headed home to Abiquiu.

The following morning we got an early start walking. Part of the reason for this was the need to walk Abner early due to heat and partly we wanted to hit the road to Abiquiu early enough to get a good day in with Beth. The walk around downtown Santa Fe was a lot like early morning Asheville walks. . .a few tourists who asked the usual questions about him, but in general it was quiet and pleasant. I am not a big Santa Fe fan myself. I find the place has too much adobe, much of it fake and modern, and way too much brown paint for my taste, but early morning without many people around, it is at its best and we hade a pretty good time.

Then we jumped on the road to Abiquiu. The drive is less than an hour and is mostly very scenic. Santa Fe sits at very high altitude (7,320) and is surrounded by fairly dramatic desert scenery and big mountains. As you leave town heading toward Abiquiu to the Northwest, the terrain is, even for someone like me who isn’t that fond of deserts, pretty spectacular. Arriving at Espanola is less than exciting but then you head off on a smaller but very good highway that takes you to the tiny burg of Abiquiu outside of which are Beth’s land and her very cool house.

Driving to her place using my by now very trustworthy TomTom GPS device, we passed a large and imposing ranch with an unfriendly sign at the entrance barring any dogs from the property. I learned from Beth that this place belongs to Marsha Mason the sometime actress and ex-wife of Neil Simon. It looks like a lovely place where I gather she grows organic crops and has a few dogs of her own that she doesn’t want visited by others. Seemed odd to me since she is pretty much out in the middle of nowhere and there cannot be that many strangers just driving through her gate, but I guess it’s her business. You pass her entrance and fairly soon after, on the other side of the road, there is a dirt road that leads up the hill to Beth’s place and a few neighboring properties that share it. Things are dry and dusty out in this area and it was a little surprising to see a mix of very substantial houses and estates like that of Ms Mason, intermingling with single wide trailers and some very modest dwellings. At the top of this road, you come to Casa Kiyosaki. Beth’s house is small but very interesting and inviting. The main structure is composed of a very modern looking shiny steel “Quonset” type building on much slicker and space-agey than most, and an adobe rectangle into which the arched building collides. There is a large deck facing the spectacular mountain views to the South and Southeast (although I gather this was just being finished when I drove up so anyone who has been to see Beth may be surprised to hear about it). The main arched structure contains a great room and kitchen with a loft above the sleeping deck. At this point Beth is storing some of her stuff up in the loft but I would guess that eventually it will be usable space. The wall facing the deck and view is almost entirely glass. Her kitchen is small but very nicely finished and looks like you could pretty much do what you need in it.

In the back adobe rectangle, the bath, laundry area, more storage, and her composting toilet room are all located along with the entry hall. Beth was close to finishing the shower and bath area when we were there and it was really beautiful. Most of the surfaces are dark and variegated slate tiles including the deep soaking tub. The texture is uneven and really suits the style of the house. Her composting toilet fascinated me although, in order to prevent this blog from entering into unnecessarily scatological territory, I will leave it to anyone interesting in reading about how these devices work to use your favorite search engine for research. Suffice it to say, I was impressed.

Beth looks great and seems quite content in her new life. Visiting her in her space really helped me understand what she is doing and how she is living better than just talking about it ever could. This visit made me realize how much I miss her. She is smart, funny and intensely human.

After hanging out at the house for a bit we headed up to Taos, which I had never visited before, where we strolled around the historic center of town after a really excellent lunch. It was very hot (100 ish like everywhere we had been that week) so we tended to stay in arcaded streets and stores. Abner tolerated it well but we still didn’t want to stay terribly long just to be sure he would be OK.

My brief impression of Taos in summer is that the area around it is dramatic and beautiful, again in that dusty brown deserty sort of way, but the town itself, like Santa Fe seems a little too much like a southwestern theme park. I prefer places where the authentic old architecture is preserved and restored and the new buildings, while sympathetic to the historic, don’t try to emulate them.

In the early evening, after dropping Beth off at her house, Abner and I headed back to Santa Fe for a second night. I made it an early one with carryout pizza in my room because I had a long day of driving scheduled Thursday, and I wanted to get a good night of sleep.

Santa Fe to Las Vegas

The long drive from Santa Fe to Las Vegas was largely without event. This was a road I had taken in the other direction when I moved so there was no terrain I hadn’t seen about 4 years before, although the weather certainly was different. The Southwest is still largely arid other than the area around Flagstaff AZ which surprised me when I drove through before and did again. For reasons I don’t know, this area is green and the landscape is covered in pine forest.

By the time you get to Kingman, you are back in hot desert territory when we turned off I40 and headed north toward Hoover Dam and Las Vegas. The last time I had taken this particular route was in 1991 when John Ballenger, Gus Curiel and I along with two dogs had taken the motorhome trip from hell across the southwest. What I noticed on the way North was that things had changed quite a bit in the intervening years. For starters, you no longer just drive across the dam. Miles before you get to the set of switchbacks leading to the dam, all traffic is diverted to an inspection station. Apparently the dam, like all in the US, is considered a potential target for terrorists, so no vehicle makes the drive across without being checked out to some degree. Due to the Thule box on the roof of my car, we got the full on inspection. The officers, I guess from Homeland Security, were very polite but wanted to see the contents of the box. Abner politely stayed in the back of the car while I climbed up and exposed the contents to the very young looking HSA officers, and then we were waved on.

When you get close to the dam itself, things were also different. Lake Mead is so low now that it is virtually invisible when you get down near the level of the dam. I saw no statistics but it has to be down at least 150 feet. The traffic now is unbelievable. There are at least a half dozen parking lots as you approach from the Arizona side and the Thursday we arrived, all were pretty full with people jockeying to get spaces vacated by departing cars and RVs. Hordes of people emerge from these vehicles and are now swarming like ants all over the dam and various overlooks. There is a huge visitor center and gift shop (where, had I known of its existence, I would have been searching for a really choice snow globe) and what appears to be far more organization of tours and visits than when Gus and I went in the summer of ’91. The most conspicuous difference though is the new bridge being built over the whole mess. It is 900 feet above the Colorado River a third of a mile or so downstream from Hoover Dam and, when finished will be 2,000 feet long with an almost 1,100 foot center arch span. The scale of the construction is quite impressive when you drive under it, and while inching across the dam and up the switchbacks on the Nevada side, after having been in dense traffic for about 30 minutes, I could appreciate the purpose of the bridge. When it is finished, allegedly in 2010, it will make the crossing significantly easier for the majority of vehicles, and the only people who will navigate the switchbacks down to the dam will be those who are going to see it.

Once across and at the top of the Nevada approach, we were soon on the freeway headed into Las Vegas at almost 4:00PM and in 113 degree heat. Traffic was impressively heavy and moved at about 10 to 20 mph over the speed limit all the way to our exit at Flamingo Blvd. I had been keeping my speed either to the speed limit or 70 mph most of the way from Asheville to Las Vegas, but on the way into town there, I couldn’t find a lane where 70 mph was fast enough that I wasn’t getting either flipped off or at least having lights flashed.

When I got off the freeway there was a conflict between the printed directions I had gotten from Expedia Maps and the instructions from my GPS but I used my reasonably good sense of direction and made the correct turn, arriving at the Westin Hotel at about 4:30 in the afternoon.

The hotel, which amazingly enough, is dog friendly, turned out to be a real find. There was no extra charge for Abner and the room, while the cheapest of any I stayed in the whole way to California, was by far the nicest. Hotel amenities aren’t necessarily the best. . .they only have one rather unnoteworthy restaurant, but I didn’t care. I had a beautiful, relatively clean room with a deliriously comfortable bed and beautiful well outfitted bath. I was happy.

I dined on room service and had a drink with another dog owner I met while doing a pee and poo run in the late afternoon, and planned to hold out as long as I could before taking Abner on his night time walk, but by 10:00 I was exhausted and decided to just do the walk and get it over with. By this hour, the temperature had plunged to 102 degrees and the sidewalks were positively radiating heat from the sun baking they had endured all day long.

I should mention, at this point, that the only other time I had ever been to Las Vegas was in August of 1991 on the aforementioned road trip from hell and I had loathed the place when I was there. In the intervening years I had read a lot of ink about the developments along the strip and friends had gone and raved about how amazing the place had become and insisted that I should give it another chance. They were wrong.

I think Las Vegas is just about the most disgusting place on earth. It is an assault on all the senses. During the brief evening walk down Flamingo heading toward the strip, I had to mostly stare at the sidewalk so I could steer Abner away from the broken glass, garbage, and vomit that seemed to be pretty much everywhere other than directly in front of front doors to hotels and casinos. Particularly appealing was a stretch of sidewalk between the Westin and the monorail where some building had been demolished and nothing had yet replaced it. The sidewalk not only was littered with broken glass and puke, but embedded in the thickest part of this mix was a large collection of cards from one of the local titty bars so passersby would be treated to the view of silicone breasted strippers and pole dancers with human vomit all over them. Really nice.

Our walk was fairly brief, partly because of my disgust over the whole scene and partly because the heat was so relentless that I didn’t think either of us would survive more than about 15 minutes. As we approached the entry drive to the Westin and the prospect of the air-conditioned lobby was dancing in my head, an almost completely incoherent man with stringy greasy long curly hair and a beer in had approached me. He began his babble with almost unintelligible questions about Abner. I was able to pick up the gist of his remarks simply because they questions were the same ones I have answered hundreds and hundreds of times before, but once he left Abner as a subject I was somewhat lost. What I picked up, through his drunken slurred ramble that nonetheless was delivered at a breathtaking pace, was that he was from South Carolina and had come to Vegas to become a professional whistler. . .that’s right, a whistler. He babbled something about some great whistler from whom he had intended to take lessons, but when he met and performed for this guy, the pro was so impressed that he told the drunken S. Carolinian that he didn’t need any lessons and that he should just go out there and whistle for people until he found employment in some big show on the strip. Now I realize that I am pretty far behind the times on what is going on in contemporary music, but I found it pretty hard to believe that there was a big whistling industry, even in Las Vegas, and I was really hot, so I began the process of extricating myself from him and started heading down the drive to the hotel. He did call something after me that I think had something to do with giving him 5 bucks to buy a beer, but I didn’t really catch it all and decided just not to look back until I was safely inside the hotel. When inside the doors and feeling the cool embrace of the cooled air, I did turn to see if he had left, and there he was still standing in the same spot, shouting something more.

We managed an early morning walk that was probably in low 80 degree weather at 6:30 in the morning and encountered few problems. There was the one couple who, unlike the thousand or so other people who have made some kind of crack about Abner being a polar bear, really thought he was one. I know Vegas is known for its excesses, but I would think walking a polar bear down the strip is a bit much even there.

Las Vegas to Sacramento

We hit the road after a quick stop at the tackiest of the tacky gift and souvenir shops. I needed to buy a snow globe and found a doozy there. After that, it was sayonara Las Vegas.

Driving to Sacramento from Las Vegas normally (i.e. fastest route) involves crossing the Mojave heading toward Bakersfield, and then driving up either I-5 or US-99, both of which are less than inspiring freeway drives that I have done dozens of times. Consequently, I chose to drive north up the western edge of Nevada on US-95 and then cross over into California around Big Pine, heading north from there up 395 to the turnoff for Markleeville and South Lake Tahoe. This proved to be an interesting and often beautiful route. 95 in Nevada wasn’t particularly scenic. It is mostly barren wasteland with the occasional tiny town. All the while there are the mountains to the west that don’t look all that big until, sometime after Beatty, one finally turns west and heads over them. Between 95 and 395 you cross three fairly high ranges each marked with a pass in the 8,000 foot range or higher. What made the drive particularly interesting for me, besides the oddly beautiful desolation of the desert mountainscape, was the fact that there were simply no gas stations. Driving a Toyota Highlander Hybrid, you get a bar graph constantly showing you how many mpg you are getting. Every time I headed up, the mileage plummeted. Every time we were on the downhill side of a ridge, the computer indicated the maximum mileage of 60 mpg. The reserve light was on for quite awhile before we finally made it to Big Pine. In spite of the gas being $4.95 per gallon for regular on August 1st, I was relieved to have made it there without running out and gulped only a little over the $80 gas bill I ran up.

The rest of the drive through Bishop, past Mammoth Lakes, Mono Lake, Lee Vining, Markleeville, Lake Tahoe, Placerville, and finally into Sacramento, went by without event. I was back on familiar scenic roads and appreciated the drive.

The month in Sacramento honestly is a blur. I spent a lot of time dealing with estate planning for an old friend, and the rest of the time running around seeing people and keeping Abner entertained. With a brief break or 4 days at Lake Tahoe mid-August, I was in Sacramento from the 1st until the 29th. There were a couple of exceptional events though. On the 21st Hoss Haley, an artist from Asheville who came to Sacramento to install a large steel sculpture he did on commission for Jim Sundquist, was the featured attraction at an unveiling part Jim gave for some of Sacramento’s art lovers. Since a lot of the people in attendance were my friends and clients, I think I was at least as busy as Hoss was, but it was a fun event and I think everyone got a charge out of seeing the piece Hoss had done. I will try to include a photo of two later.

The other big do was a reunion of sorts of the Curtis Park Dog group of which I was one of the earlier participants. It was really fun seeing these people after almost 4 years away. Some had visited Asheville and I had seen many of them at the dog park when I took Abner there early on in our visit to Sacramento, but many don’t have their dogs anymore so it was nice to have an excuse just to get together.


Sacramento to Aptos

On Labor Day weekend, I drove to Aptos to visit for a couple days with Faye and Jay Stone. The original plan was to arrive that Friday afternoon before the big holiday crowds hit the roads, spend two nights and then leave early Sunday for San Francisco. Well, the first part went as planned. I got to Faye and Jay’s house mid-afternoon on Friday as fog was rolling in. The house is a stunning contemporary sitting on an acre and a half, high up on a hill above Monterey Bay. When it is clear you can see all the way from Lighthouse Point in Santa Cruz to Pacific Grove in the Monterey Peninsula. That particular view wasn’t exactly available that night but Faye poured me a glass of wine and we just hung out with their two Jack Russell terriers, Mona and Remy, and Abner. Mona seemed to quickly develop a crush on Abner and the two of them just wandered around together for hours.

Eventually Jay came home and the plans for the evening evolved. Faye and several of her women friends were having a birthday party for one of her oldest buddies that was to start with drinks and hors d’oeuvres followed by dinner at a local restaurant. Jay and I were invited to the first part but definitively excluded from the remainder, so we head off to a very nice local haunt called Café Cruz. Well, no sooner did we sit down and order a drink, then in walked two old Sacramento friends of mine whom I hadn’t seen in years. John Webre is an architect buddy of mine and Julie Didion, his wife, is a ceramicist whose work I have long admired. It seems that the first week of September sees their annual pilgrimage to Santa Cruz to celebrate Julie’s birthday. It was really strange seeing them there and certainly caught Jay by surprise. He is accustomed, after decades in Santa Cruz, to bumping into his friends when he is out to dinner, but was a little surprised that it happened to me.

After dinner, Jay fielded a call from Faye telling him that they were finishing up their dinner and heading over to another house for birthday cake and champagne, and gave us directions to find the place. It turned out to be all the women from the earlier group plus assorted spouses and significant others, and the champagne turned out to be homemade hard cider courtesy of the host. The cake was terrific. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the cider. A couple sips convinced me that this was a hangover in a glass and I didn’t want any of it.

So Friday night ended quietly with a trip back to Faye and Jay’s.

Saturday was a day of just running around doing stuff but the sun had come out and the view from the house was splendid. Faye was working (not, by the way, a common event for her) so Jay and I spent the day running errands and looking for a snow globe for my collection, alas unsuccessfully. That night, however there was a big party at their friend Mike’s house. Holly Smith blew into town late afternoon for the party and the four of us attended together although in separate cars since I correctly assumed that I wouldn’t last as long as the others. It was a very big party with a great live band and abundant good food. Even though I knew pretty much only the people I arrived with, it was still a good time. And I went back to the house of Stone at a civil hour.

In the morning, I got up with every intention of leaving for San Francisco by 10:00 but things began to go awry. First there was the lengthy chat about the previous night’s party and a whole bunch of people I didn’t know, followed by brunch with many goodies courtesy of Jay. The weather was so beautiful that we just kind of ended up out on the deck overlooking Monterey Bay and one thing lead to another. Before you knew it, it was the middle of the afternoon, we were drinking white wine, and playing bocce on Faye and Jay’s flawless bocce court. This consists of a long narrow rectangle that is slightly below the level of the terrace, and it is filled with a material called Oyster Flour. This would appear to be some special consistency of ground up oyster shells that makes the perfect surface for rolling these red and green wooden balls in a kind of cross between bowling and billiards. As it turned out, I am not inherently very good at this game, but it was a lot of fun anyway. . .probably the wine helped.

By the time we were finished, it was late afternoon and really much too late for me to head to San Francisco or for Holly to head home. Faye and Jay had still another party to attend so Holly and I drove into town and had a fun gossipy dinner together at the Hula Grill. Fun place. Good food. You should try it if you find yourself in Santa Cruz.

Monday morning arrived and I finally managed to gather up my belongings, got the car repacked and said goodbye to all. . .only 30 minutes and a day after I had intended to. Faye was nursing a hellacious hangover made worse by Remy’s relentless pummeling of her head with a dog toy consisting of a small hard ball on a rope.

Aptos to San Francisco

As amusing as the scene was to watch, I decided I really needed to get moving. Besides, all three of them would be at Winesong in Fort Bragg the following weekend, so I was only saying goodbye for 4 days. Abner made it quite clear that he wasn’t eager to go, but I convinced him and we got into the car and headed up the Pacific Coast Highway toward San Francisco. Highway 1 is a legend as far as scenic highways go, and I have driven every inch of it at one time or another, but I had forgotten how pretty the stretch from Santa Cruz to Half Moon Bay can be, particularly on a sunny clear day. Even though it was Labor Day there was relatively little traffic so I had a great drive up to the city. At Half Moon Bay I cut across the peninsula to I-280, which I took the rest of the way to San Francisco.

It was early afternoon when I got to John’s house on 19th Street but I was just in time to catch him and his friend Jason as they were leaving for Sacramento. Abner and I got set up quickly and then headed down to Dolores Park down the block for a walk. Well, it was a scene. Apparently there was a big event in honor of the holiday with bands playing, a stage with some theater group performing, and probably several thousand people lounging about and taking it all in. It was a little much for me, so after cutting through the center spine of the park we decided to just walk the neighborhood, it being a glorious sunny afternoon. Being in San Francisco as a visitor/tourist is still a strange feeling for me. I lived so close for so many years and spent so much time there on business and in other circumstances that going to San Francisco now is almost a new experience. Only in the last couple years have I considered it a place to visit.

John’s house is about a block above Dolores Park and sits between the Mission district and the Castro. Walking in the area you get some of both. The Mission, traditionally a working class, somewhat down on its luck area, has been having something of a renaissance lately. It is one of the few remaining neighborhoods in San Francisco where you don’t have to be wealthy to afford the rent and, as such, has drawn a new group of youngish working people to mix with the older more ethnically diverse population that has been there for years. There are lots of new restaurants and entertainment venues that have emerged in the last few years and all this makes walking the area pretty interesting.

The Castro has also undergone some changes in recent years. For decades, it has been the epicenter of gay culture and gay business in San Francisco and there is still plenty of that to go around. In recent years though, the residential areas a block or two off Castro Street itself have become far more diverse. You now see many straight couples, some with children in strollers, walking along Castro and shopping in the local stores.

There still are a lot of the old porn shops and stores displaying a dizzying array of sex toys in their windows and there are still some fairly amazing characters along the street. In the time I was in SF and was walking Abner in the neighborhood, we ran across a guy who spends his evenings on the sidewalk on Castro talking to himself and passersby who wears not a stitch of clothing. That’s right. . .buck nekkid. I saw this young man three times and for the life of me I never did figure out whether this was some kind of political statement or some psychotic person who was off his meds. Making an encounter with him more perilous was the fact that he was accompanied in his nightly vigil by his dog. Each time we walked past, I had to make sure Abner continued without stopping to greet naked guy’s canine companion. What I didn’t want to do was get into a conversation with him.

One night, a bit farther up the block, there was a young couple who were begging for money. As we were walking by, the young man dropped his pants, baring his butt for all to see. The significance of this, apart from the fact that we weren’t even a block away from the naked guy, was that hand lettered on his butt cheeks were the words “spare” and “change”. . .one word per cheek. It struck me that this was a highly original way of asking but we passed this couple as well.

The view from John’s house is still extraordinary but has changed since the photos I posted from last year’s visit. A huge new monolithic condo tower has been built at the foot of the Bay Bridge that is a real scale shocker. There are plenty of tall buildings in San Francisco but this one is pretty much by itself giving it an other-worldly appearance next to the bridge. Things will get worse according to John. He has heard that it is one of 5 towers to be built in a row along the area at the SF end of the bridge, and if they are all completed, it seems that his view of the bridge will be walled off by these monoliths. With all the planning restrictions in place in San Francisco, it amazes me that this development is being allowed. Oh well.

While in the city, I got to go see the new DeYoung Museum for the first time. This wonderful building was completed after I had moved to Asheville, so this trip was my first opportunity to see it. The museum is a massive building clad in a thin skin of embossed and perforated copper one end of which forms a huge overhanging structure protecting a vast outdoor dining area. Within the building the layout is primarily linear with gentle angles slightly skewed from what would be the assumed grid of the building. This makes for a very interesting procession from gallery to gallery. The museum must be 4 or 5 times the size of the old building so a much larger amount of space is available to show the collection than had been there before. When I was there, a retrospective on the works of Dale Chihuly was on in a number of the lower level galleries and there still was plenty of space for the museum’s permanent collection to be shown. There is also a tower that is mostly administrative offices but that has a very impressive viewing room at the top from which extensive views of Golden Gate Park and the city’s skyline to the east can be enjoyed. You also get to look down onto the almost completed rebuilding of the science center located just across the street. These facilities are well worth visiting if you are in San Francisco.

In addition, I got to go to the museum of Craft and Design in downtown SF to see the retrospective show of the work of my friend Randy Shull. This medium sized show occupies most of this small museum’s main floor and shows a broad spectrum of Randy’s work over more than 20 years of productivity as an artist, furniture craftsman, builder and designer. It is a well selected show and really merits a visit for any of you who get a chance to see it.
Aside from being a tourist, I got to see my niece Amanda, her mother, my friend Risa Ogroskin and her husband Joe, and my friends Matt Guerena and Jim Sundquist, all while in was in the city for only a little more than 4 days. Busy busy.


Winesong

On Friday the 5th of September, I packed up all our things again (except, importantly enough, the charger for my cell phone which I inadvertently left plugged in at John’s house) and hit the road again, this time headed north to Ft Bragg to attend Winesong. This event, which my regular readers and most of my friends know about, is an annual fundraiser held in the Mendocino County Botanical Gardens. It consists, for our group anyway, of about 4 hours or so of wandering around these beautiful gardens on bluffs above the Pacific Ocean, sampling food a wine from a very large variety of Northern California vintners and vendors while being entertained along the way by a wide range of performers in small groups. There is also an auction that raises huge amounts of money but is a little too rich for most of our group’s spending habits so we usually just find our way back to houses and hotels for the remainder of the afternoon.

The drive up was a fun one for me. This year, I took 101 to Petaluma and then cut across the coastal mountains on country roads to pick up highway 1 at Bodega Bay. This is the town, for those of you who aren’t super familiar with the California coast, that Alfred Hitchcock used as the backdrop for “The Birds”. The old part of town still looks much as it did in the film although the surrounding area has had a lot of beach house development from the 70s on. Many of the houses are of the Sea Ranch vernacular with weathered shingle or redwood or cedar siding.

From there I drove all the way up to Ft. Bragg on the Pacific Coast Highway. It is, as I mentioned before, a beautiful but challenging road. It rises and falls along the terrain of the coastal cliffs and from time to time has to head inland a bit to get around the multitude of rivers and small harbors that connect to the ocean. It isn’t a fast drive but highway 1 is usually fairly uncrowded so as long as you aren’t in a huge hurry, it is a great drive.

The experience of Winesong weekend was, as implied above, pretty similar to previous years. Most of the usual suspects came, although Jonathan Boynton and Shaghig Kodbashian missed this year due to their still being on their two month European tour. Dan and Kim Delaney were there this year and they had just barely made it back from their own two month motorbike tour of Alaska, and Dan’s parents Mike and Mary came from Orange County for their first Winesong experience. My friend Maryanne Payne drove up from her place in Novarro for the event as well. The abalone dinner at Rick and Louise’s place was wonderful as always. . .too much food and wine, but a fabulous time. It is amazing really, that after the orgy of consumption that Friday night at Rick and Louise’s always is, we can all manage to get up on Saturday and attend Winesong and start eating and drinking all over again.

Ft Bragg to Portland

For me, the biggest difference this year was that when the weekend was over, instead of heading back to Sacramento, or to San Francisco to catch a plane back home, Abner and I got back in the car and pointed it north. Sunday was one of the longest driving days of the whole trip. We got started late morning in Ft Bragg and continued up highway 1 toward Humboldt County and Redwood country. I had almost forgotten how beautiful the drive through the redwoods is. They are huge and provide such a complete shade cover that you are almost unaware that the sun is out. Still, we continued north through Eureka and finally, at Crescent City, CA we picked up highway 199 which cuts back through the coastal mountains and bends northward, crossing over into Oregon, and finally ends up in Grant’s Pass where we picked up I-5 for the remaining drive to Portland. We finally found our way up to the home of Tom Burns and Brent Miller and their son Alex at about 9:00 pm.

I have known Brent and Tom since the late 70s or early 80s but had not seen them since they moved to Portland in October of 2002. The first thing I realized when we walked into the house was that, while Brent and Tom look almost exactly like they did 6 years ago, Alex, who is now 13, did not. Since I have known him since he was an infant it was a little bit of a shock to see him as an adolescent. There also has been an addition to the family. Carmen, the latest standard poodle to grace the Burns/Miller home, is a beauty on three legs (one was lost to an auto accident when she was a puppy) who is not generally very comfortable with other dogs, but she took to Abner reasonably quickly so things went well. At least as far as domestic dog issues were concerned.

While I had been in Ft. Bragg, my laptop computer crapped out on me. Apparently the graphics card had reached the end of the line, and now all you can see is whatever the screen image is supposed to be with alternating pixels of white, green and black obscuring clarity. In short, you can’t see a goddamned thing. So, from Portland, I called Greg Mayer, of Charlotte Street Computers in Asheville, who has been my computer guru for the last 3+ years and discussed my options with him. It was clear that due to the age of the laptop, it no longer made sense to nurse it along with more repairs, so I had to go into Best Buy in Beaverton, WA to buy a new laptop. As it turned out, I lucked into probably the only Best Buy employee I have ever encountered who actually knew anything about what he was selling. The young man who waited on me was very knowledgeable about the differences between the various machines they had, and between him and having Greg on my cell phone advising me from Asheville, I settled pretty quickly on a slick new Sony. Of course, it had no software on it that I could use and comes with Windows Vista and some 64bit system that probably won’t tolerate any of my old software, so I am hardly out of the woods yet, but I bought a lightweight version of Microsoft Office, paid them to download all my data (didn’t quite get all of it but I am confident that Greg will find the rest) and set out with Tom and Brent to be tourists in Portland.

We took Abner to lunch downtown and Tom and I walked around the Pearl District to see all the development that has happened in Portland since I was last there in 1994 on the trip with Kathy Treaster when I picked Harvey out as a 6 week old puppy. Much has changed in 14 years, and downtown Portland has turned into a very attractive city. There are a few unfortunate architectural decisions, but in general, it all goes together quite well. Since it was sunny and 80 degrees, it was just the kind of day that could lure the unsuspecting into moving to Portland, only to be bombarded with months on end of gray and drizzle. In truth, it is probably a good thing that Portland has such dreadful weather. I suspect that Portland and Seattle would both have populations the size of Calcutta if their weather were sunnier.

After walking around enough to get the lay of the land downtown, I asked Tom if we could hit Saks Fifth Avenue to see if I could add to my snow globe collection. We drove to the store but when I went to park the car in one of the nearby parking garages, I was disturbed to discover that one of the rear windows was stuck in the down position and wasn’t going to go up for anything. This represented an immediate problem since I had planned to leave Abner and all my crap in the car, but didn’t think it was a good idea to do so with a window down. Moreover, since we were supposed to leave at around 9:00 the following morning to begin the roughly 4,000 mile drive home to Asheville, the prospect of a drive of that duration with a wide open window was pretty unappealing.

So, at 4:00 in the afternoon on a Monday, Tom went with me to Broadway Toyota on the East side of the Willamette River, where, amazingly enough, they took the car into the shop to see what they could do. An hour and a half later, the window was up, although not functioning, and we were on our way without charge. Amazing!

That night, after a wonderful Italian dinner downtown, we made our way back to Best Buy to pick up my new computer and the moribund old one, and my tech nightmares were over, at least for the day.

Portland to Missoula

So Tuesday morning, largely on schedule, I headed down the hill from Tom and Brent’s house, stopped at a deli downtown to buy some food for lunch on the road, and found my way to I-84 eastbound which would take us through the Columbia River Gorge. This drive, for those of you who haven’t done it, is quite beautiful. The Columbia is a very wide river for most of the length that separates Oregon from Washington, and is punctuated along the way with parks and scenic wonders, as well as a number of huge hydroelectric dams. Brent had advised me to stop at Multnomah Falls for a quick viewing and as it turned out, this was really good advice. You can walk pretty much right up to the base of this very high (620 feet) and rushing falls and get a real feeling for the power of that amount of water dropping over that distance. For pictures other than mine, and other information check out http://trips.stateoforegon.com/multnomah_falls/.

As an added plus, there is a gift shop in a lovely old lodge building at the base of the falls, and they had a snow globe. Couldn’t believe my good luck. Having gotten one in Las Vegas, and one in Portland, this was just gravy.

Once you leave the gorge itself but still follow the river, the terrain gets much more like the plains and is much drier and more barren. It certainly is clear where the wet weather of the coast and the area west of the Cascade Mountains ends. Eventually, you cross the Columbia into Washington and head toward Spokane over slightly hillier terrain but still very dry and barren. I didn’t stop in Spokane since my plan was to make Missoula Montana for the night, so we zipped through town on the freeway and turned east toward Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. As you approach this area, the terrain once again gets considerably hillier. I didn’t get off to check out Coeur d’Alene either but the surrounding hills and lakes were spectacular and I began to appreciate what has drawn people to the area.

By the time we got to Missoula, it was dark so we just checked into the hotel and hunkered down for the night. It had been a long day and Abner was showing some signs of becoming less enamored of long days in the car. I had noticed on the way to Portland that he had started panting and drooling in the car. A quick call to Warren Riggle, his vet, left me with the feeling that he was probably all right but getting pretty stressed out over the increasingly long days in the car without the days in between that we had had the whole time we were in California.

Missoula to Cody via Yellowstone

The next few days are pretty much of a blur but there were highlights. The day we left Missoula, it was raining and dreary for the first time on the whole trip. This is pretty impressive for being almost 7 weeks into the trip, but unfortunately, this was to be the only day I would get to see Yellowstone National Park. I had planned to stop in Cody, Wyoming for the night and briefly considered skipping Yellowstone due to the dreadful weather, and just taking a more direct freeway route, particularly since Abner was pretty burned out in the back of the car. Still, in the end, I decided that this might be my only shot to see this important locale for some time and that I should go ahead and drive through the park, even if I only ended up seeing it from inside. As luck would have it, less than hour into the park, the weather broke and the sun came out through the clouds, casting spectacular late afternoon sunlight on the scenery. The rules pertaining to dogs were pretty limiting in Yellowstone, so much of my touring still was from inside the car, but I was able to make a few stops, and most conspicuously, managed to visit Old Faithful geyser and even got to see an eruption that came about 15 minutes earlier than the posted prediction. Abner was decidedly unimpressed, but I sure liked it. Believe it or not, I scored another snow globe at one of the gift shops by the geyser. . .and this one has 4 color LED action lighting up the inside of the little replica of the geyser. It is so tacky it is wonderful.

There was a fairly long and pretty drive around Yellowstone Lake that gave me a pretty good idea of what the area looks like. I was amazed at how many places you drive by where there are steam vents in the ground. Some are large geysers that don’t get the attention Old Faithful gets primarily since eruptions aren’t as frequent, and some are bubbling pots of water and mud that are constantly boiling due to the volcanic action that is a perpetual state below the surface. It is pretty clear that someday this whole area will probably be blasted into space with another massive eruption, but for now, it is a pretty interesting spot to visit. I did not find it to be as visually spectacular as Yosemite, which is still my favorite of the National Parks I have visited, but the geothermal oddities make Yellowstone worth seeing.

Once you leave the park heading east toward Cody, oddly enough the terrain becomes quite spectacular. I was quite surprised to find that the drive out of the park was, in many places, prettier and more dramatic that what we had seen inside the park’s boundaries. It was also late in the day so the canyons through which we had to pass and drop precipitously down to Cody were very dramatically lit by late day sun.

Cody to Rapid City

By the time we hit Cody, it was dark. I had booked a room at the only dog friendly hotel I could find in Cody when I had done my online searches and bookings from Portland before heading east. It turned out to be a Super 8, and I have to tell you, this wouldn’t be my first choice in the future. It was OK for one night but the hallways were filthy, bathrooms really meager, no amenities of any kind to speak unless you consider a Pizza Hut on the other side of the parking lot an amenity. I managed to get a decent night’s sleep after a brief walk with Abner and was eager to get on my way the next morning.

At this point, I was using both my GPS and AAA triptiks to figure out routes since I had never driven in this part of the country before. For Thursday’s drive, I had planned to make it from Cody to Rapid City, SD with stops at Mt. Rushmore and on Tom’s suggestion, the Crazy Horse Memorial that is under construction nearby. The recommended route from the GPS was considerably different from the one I had printed from AAA, but in the end, I followed the GPS and was glad I had done so. It routed me on US 14A through a bunch of tiny Northern Wyoming towns that skirt the border with Montana, but ultimately you pass through the Bighorn Mountains on your way to Ranchester, WY where you pick up I-90 again. This was a very rewarding and dramatic drive. The terrain between Lovell, WY and the mountains themselves was rolling and rutted with ravines that clearly were the result of millennia of erosion from mountain streams. At a certain point, the weather changed and suddenly, I found myself climbing up grass covered mountains and into a bank of clouds that was quite eerie to drive through. And still the road continued to rise. Switchback after switchback in the dense soupy clouds promised some dramatic view eventually if the clouds would just break, and eventually, they did. Near the summit at around 10,000 feet of elevation, the clouds started to break and I could see very beautiful mountains with cattle grazing on grassland and very dramatic rock outcroppings for many miles in every direction. It was also suddenly 36 degrees out and there was snow on the ground. This was just too good, so I stopped at pullout where there was a historical marker for an ancient Indian religious site, and took pictures and let Abner feel the snow on his toes. Pretty great.

This was followed by descent down the east side of this same range of mountains and eventually we picked up I-90 which we followed until US 16, the highway to Custer, SD and the Black Hills area.

First we came to the Crazy Horse Memorial. This place is huge but a work in progress. The monument itself will eventually show Crazy Horse sitting on his horse and will be over 600 feet wide and almost 600 feet high. Crazy Horse’s face is 87 feet high and largely complete. At that size, it is almost 50% bigger than the presidents’ heads at Mt. Rushmore. Unfortunately, at this point, you cannot get close enough to really appreciate the scale because the public is prevented from approaching the area they consider the blast zone. There is a fairly large facility you can visit with movies and all kinds of exhibits about the project so you come away with a fairly good sense of what it will eventually be, but completion is a long way off.
Mt. Rushmore, about 17 miles away, is something else entirely. This mountain has become such a big destination that there is a large complex of buildings in front of it facilitating visits from large numbers of people. First you drive through what looks like a bridge toll booth. It costs $10 to park in their garages. These permits are allegedly good for a year (well, a calendar year) but the reality is that most people only use them once. Something of a scam I think. Nonetheless, once you are parked, there is a lot to see, unfortunately not with your dog as a companion. Abner had to stay in the car while I roamed around the Rushmore monument. The mountain itself is very impressive in the flesh. I have seen hundreds, if not thousands of pictures of it over the years including Hitchcock’s use of it as the setting for the climax of North by Northwest, but nothing prepares you for seeing it up close. The heads are scaled for bodies that are 450 feet tall. Faces are around 60 feet tall and are high enough above the viewer that they are quite impressive.

The Park Service has built an amphitheater at the base where nighttime sound and light shows are done, and then just back from that is a large information center where you can walk through exhibits describing the blasting and carving that created the monument. I would have to say that this was one of the better info centers of this type I have ever been through. There isn’t so much information that you cannot stand to make your way through it, and it has just enough interactive stuff to keep the interest of an adult.

Since Abner was waiting in the car, I didn’t spend a huge amount of time walking on the Trail of the Presidents or any of the other side areas, but I sure enjoyed seeing the mountain and going through the exhibit. As the afternoon wore on, and the sun was getting low, I decided to walk Abner in the small area they set aside for dogs before driving the last 20 miles or so to Rapid City, where we would spend the night.

In the morning, after a pleasant night at the La Quinta-Rapid City (really a great chain for very reasonable prices, from my experience, if you are traveling with a pet) I stopped into the visitor information center across the freeway from the hotel, and to my amazement, they had a gift shop where I purchased my 5th and final snow globe of the trip. This one has Mt. Rushmore in it and instead of glitter or snow, metallic stars in red, blue and silver flicker around the heads of the Presidents.

Rapid City to Rochester MN

The drive from Rapid City to Rochester MN is not a particularly interesting one. Once you leave the western part of South Dakota, the terrain changes to a flat and barren one pretty quickly. I had driven cross country in I-80 in the past and was pretty uninspired when crossing Nebraska, and concluded that going north didn’t help much. It is a long straight drive across SD to the Minnesota border just north of Iowa, and the terrain isn’t a whole lot more dramatic as you cruise across the Southern edge of Minnesota either.

After a long day on the road we arrived in Rochester, which as far as I know, is known for little other than being the location of the Mayo Clinic. I had booked a room at an Extended Stay American Inn that I had found from still another pet-friendly accommodations website. Checking in didn’t prove to be very pet friendly. . .or any kind of friendly. Most of the hotels where Abner and I had stayed to this point, wanted to see the animal with whom you are checking in, but that certainly didn’t turn out to be true at Extended Stay. The desk clerk was spending a lot of time with a young Asian man who was checking in for a group of 5 people, and was speaking to him in the loud voice some people seem to use when they are talking to someone for whom English isn’t a native language. I don’t understand what makes people think that shouting unfamiliar words at someone will make them comprehend something otherwise incomprehensible, but there you are. As she was finishing up with the Asian man, she looked up and saw Abner. She immediately looked around the small lobby and asked whose pet he was. I would have thought the answer to that question would have been obvious in view of his leash, one end of which I held, but nonetheless, I informed her that he was with me. “You have to remove him from the lobby immediately” she informed me brusquely. She went on to tell me that he wasn’t allowed in the lobby, elevator, or any other public spaces in the hotel, and that I would have to take him to our 3rd floor room through the fire stairs at the end of the building.

I was a little shocked at her rude response to my bringing my dog into her “dog friendly” hotel, but took him to the car again so I could complete check in.

I won’t bore you with the details, but this wasn’t a good experience. Among other things, the 3rd floor was the pariah zone. This was where they put pet owners and smokers. The carpets in the halls were filthy and the public spaces positively reeked of tobacco. The stench in the elevator and the hall from which it was entered was so strong that the only times I used it were to take luggage up and down using the one and only luggage carrier in the whole hotel.

If you are traveling with a dog, avoid this hotel. Besides everything else, the seemingly reasonable price evaporated when I added the charge for Abner as well as the charge for Internet use. In 7-1/2 weeks of travel, this was the only hotel I stayed in that charged extra for Abner, and one of only two that charged for Internet access.

Rochester to Ft Wayne

Without doubt, the toughest day on the road was September 13th. I checked out of the hotel relatively early knowing that I had a long day ahead of me and that my parents were expecting me for dinner in Fort Wayne, IN. In fairness, I should mention that the woman who checked me out of the hotel couldn’t have been nicer in marked contrast to the harpy from the previous evening. We quickly got on the freeway east toward LaCrosse Wisconsin. The route, still on I-90 would take us through the Southern quarter of Wisconsin, through Rockford, IL, through Chicago and its extensive suburbs and across Northern Indiana on the Toll Road that skirts the Michigan border, before finally getting onto I-69 for the final shot south to Ft Wayne. What I hadn’t fully counted on was weather and traffic. The day became more dismal the farther south and east we headed. We made one brief drizzly stop in Madison to get gas and for me to grab some lunch before the final long haul to Ft Wayne. Traffic had been minimal (this was a Saturday and until Chicago, we hadn’t gone through a city of any size since Portland) but the weather was getting worse by the hour.

When we were on the toll section of the Interstate heading toward downtown Chicago things really got ugly. The rain became considerably heavier as did the traffic. There is a toll booth you have to go through at the intersection of I-90 and I-294 that is kind of a perfect storm for traffic. Not only does every car that doesn’t have a transponder for Illinois’ version of EZPass have to pay a cash toll at a pathetically small number of open collector’s booths, but this is also the interchange with a major north/south toll road as well as the corner of O’Hare International Airport. Even on a good Saturday this is apparently a messy bottleneck and with what had become a heavy rainstorm, it was a debacle. We crawled for about 40 minutes to get through the toll booth whereupon something like 6 lanes had to merge to two or three before getting past the airport traffic and getting on a moving expressway toward downtown.

For the next several miles through the north end of Chicago and its burbs, 90 and 94 merge and become a freeway again with very poorly marked express lanes. It is actually easy to find your way in and out of the express lanes. The problem is that unless you are already familiar with the sequence of exits, the signs telling you where your next exit opportunity will be are virtually useless. Still, with traffic as heavy and the rain as bad as it was, I decided to try a section on the express lanes. This worked perfectly but I chickened out and exited after one stretch and got back onto the main part of the road. Eventually, I saw signs for the Dan Ryan Expressway (I-90) splitting with I-94 and was fairly sure that I should be on it. As I approached the split, my GPS reassuringly told me that I was to get on the Dan Ryan and the voice commanded that I exit right. Unfortunately, the exit for the Dan Ryan is a left exit. Screwed!

And so, in driving rain, I plowed on southward into the bowels of the south side of Chicago. What became apparent fairly quickly was that I-94 would soon take a sharp bend to the east and eventually I would have an interchange with the Indiana Toll Road and thus would be back on the correct route. The problem was the rain. It just kept getting heavier and heavier and soon I saw a sign saying that the freeway was closed at the 130th street exit due to flooding. Great. So having no idea where I was other than possibly on another planet, I got off before hitting a sold wall of stopped traffic and began to make my way across town on surface streets, many of which were somewhat flooded as well. I have a reasonably good sense of direction, so I didn’t ever really get too far off course but the GPS had to adjust its advice rather frequently during this sodden odyssey. In the end, I found my way back to the freeway well past the flooded closure and continued toward the interchange with the Toll Road, thinking that if I could just make it there, everything would be OK. Wrong. I eventually made it onto the Indiana Toll Road only to enter what is without doubt the heaviest rain and windstorm I have ever been in. I think this was more rain and over a larger area (well over 200 miles) than the storm of 1986 that caused so much flooding on I-80 in Cordelia, CA that I was stuck in my car waiting to get through for more than 12 hours.

The traffic had abated considerably once I got past Chicago, but the storm was so bad that it was impossible to see more than a couple car lengths ahead. The wind was also very strong and lighter vehicles were hydroplaning everywhere. Talk about defensive driving. There were many stretches where the maximum that I could drive was about 35 mph. The wake and huge amounts of water thrown by the big trucks made it very dangerous to pass them. Besides the fact that you couldn’t really see where the lane markers were without staring and the side stripes on the outside of the lanes, the wind off the trucks buffeted cars like mine and the hydrodynamics of them created sheets of rain that were even more blinding than what the storm itself was sending.

The noise from the rain hitting the roof was so loud, and the need to concentrate on driving was so great that I turned off the radio for the entire drive through Chicago and Northern Indiana.

The rain finally let up and turned into a slight drizzle about 5 miles before I had to get off near Portage, IN. As I headed south to Ft Wayne, all I could think of was that I wanted to get to my parents’ house before the storm caught up with me again. Abner was beyond stressed out by this time. He had been panting and drooling all day and had pretty much saturated his bed in the back of the car.

We finally got to Ft Wayne around 8:30 at night, having been on the road for almost 11 hours of hellish driving.

It was humid in Ft Wayne but the weather was quiet and the storm never made it that far south. Abner and I went for a soothing walk around the neighborhood in which I grew up after dinner with Mom and Dad so in spite of an awful day, it ended ok.

On Sunday, Mom and I took Abner walking around Foster Park. My folks’ house backs into a portion of this park and there is a really nice paved walkway all the way around the perimeter that is a great walk on a pleasant Sunday morning. It almost was enough for Abner to calm down after the horror of the day before. I think he remembers my parent’s house from two previous visits there so he seemed pretty much at home.

Later in the day, my father asked me to go to his office with him to do some work on his computer to get his blog up to speed and clean up some file messes on his computer. We also checked out some of the new construction going on downtown and then went back to their house for the remainder of the afternoon.

That evening Mom and Dad decided to go to the country club for dinner and tried to call to get a reservation but couldn’t get through to the grill. We went anyway and had a nice dinner albeit a surreal one. We were literally the only ones there. The staff outnumbered the customers. The manager said that he was two minutes from closing when we walked in because there hadn’t been a body in the place all day. Sitting there in an otherwise empty room was like something out of a Stephen King novel where you are the only people left on earth and there is no explanation as to what happened to everyone else.

Ft Wayne to Indianapolis to Asheville

Monday morning, by 9:00ish, we were on the road toward Indianapolis to see my sister and her husband. They are planning to move to China late this year due to a promotion my brother-in-law is getting from his employers. They will be living there for three years so I thought it would be a good idea for me to see them before they leave. Timing though, wasn’t the best. Dave’s parents had been staying at their house for the last couple weeks because his mother had to be in Indianapolis for some medical procedures. The visit had become complicated when her doctors decided to do more things and over a longer period of time, so things in Lisa and Dave’s household were a little out of the ordinary. On top of that, they have a 9-year old Bassett hound whose sibling died in the spring and a 5 month old bloodhound who is very much a puppy and just getting used to dealing with life. My showing up with Abner in this situation was more than the other dogs were prepared to take. We ended up leaving Abner outside by the pool with Lisa and Dave’s dogs inside while we went and had a quiet lunch so we would have a little time to chat.

The original plan had been for us to stay for two days, but Lisa and I agreed that it made no sense given all the uproar around her house and the fact that Abner and I had been on the road for almost 8 weeks and were ready to be home. So after lunch we got back on the freeway and headed for Asheville.

The trip home was uneventful aside from another hideous traffic glitch in Louisville, due in part to massive power failures caused by the remnants of hurricane Ike. After another very long day, I pulled into the garage in our building at around 10:30 at night, took Abner and a minimal amount of my crap from the car, and after 53 days on the road, went upstairs to sleep in my own bed.

I have photos to post, but haven’t downloaded them from the camera yet so it may take a few days to get them up on the blog.