Homeward Bound

Sunday, October 24; Nasheville, Tennessee to Simpsonville, South Carolina

Well, this is it. Our last day on the road. No planned stops today, other than for food and nature breaks. We leave Nasheville and blast down I-40 towards Knoxville. Always a pleasure driving through Knoxville. Ruth and I traveled many thousands of miles by motorcycle over a six year period in this city and the beautiful, surrounding countryside attending the Honda Hoot motorcycle gathering each June. Many wonderful memories from those excursions.
Up and over the Smokies, down into Asheville and onto home turf. It was good to be home (sort of), but we both felt our trip was only half over. We could have easily spent 2 more weeks on the road. Well, I could. Roo and The Beagles........???
But the seed has been planted - we've both been bitten by the bug, and traveling this great land in this way is no longer just a dream.........

Final Thoughts: Wednesday, October 27

The words and pictures in this blog do not even come close to doing justice to what we did and what we saw. So many things not included here that gave deeper meaning to this trip in our hearts and in our souls. It opened our eyes to so many things and thus changed our perceptions of those things. Do this. Take a car trip of this magnitude or greater - expand your comfort zone. We can say that now, as we have taken the plunge. We found that we did have the time, because we made the time,  and then realized that our little world did not fall apart after all. Time, or the perceived lack of, is no longer a viable excuse for us.
Do this trip as a way to see what lies between point A and point B, not as a way to get from point A to point B. See what lies outside the suburbs of our exustence, both in terms of nature and people. The emotional catharsis I experienced in Arches National Park was possible because I left myself open and let nature in. The beauty of that place, of which I had not seen anywhere, rushed in and overwhelmed me. And so it was for the entire trip - being open, being flexible, and just being. I feel a different person for it, in all aspects of my life, the large and the small.
We are thankful for having had the opportunity to have done this trip. If you have the opportunity, we encourage you to do it as well - you will not regret it. Thank you for reading.

Peace,
Bob & Ruth
Duncan & Gretchen too

Damn Right I Got the Blues; Casey Jones; Tennessee Tacky

Saturday, October 23; Little Rock, Arkansas to Nashville, Tennessee

We awoke to a beautiful morning, finally. Today is a run day - and we have another state park picked out to do so. But that's a couple of hours away. Leaving Little Rock, we head on down the road towards Tennessee. We cross the Mighty Mississippi River in Memphis, home of the Delta Blues, and icons of the blues and rock & roll. Being a blues lover myself, Memphis is a must return to city next year for a Memphis Blues motorcycle tour. Elvis, BB King, Johnny Hurt, Buddy Guy and all the other great blues artists had their start or played frequently here in Memphis. Looking forward to that.

The Mississippi River crossing here is a far cry from our St. Louis crossing two weeks ago. St. Louis gave us the Gateway Arch, a beautiful park, and Preservation Heritage Jazz on the river. Memphis gave us traffic, highway, and a big, dirty city (at least the part we went through), barely being able to see the Mississippi as we crossed it. Damn right I got the blues!! But having our sat radio belting out great blues tunes made it alright.

On through Memphis to our Tacky Tourist stop of the day - the Casey Jones Railroad Village and Museum. Ooooweee. Tacky Tourist it was! Didn't even let The Beagles out of the van. Snapped a few photos of railroad memorabilia and off we went.


Casey's locomotive
The mechanical engineering of this beast is fascinating



Now it was time for a training run. An hour later we exited for the Natchez Trace State Park. A beautiful place for running, hiking, horseback riding, and swimming. Hunting too apparently, as we heard gunfire off in the distance. I made sure I ran in the opposite direction. I took a half hour run while The Beagles took Ruth for a walk. This was my first run since running in Moab at 5000 feet. I felt fantastic! What a difference a bit of oxygen makes. These trails were very hilly, but I was flying up and down them like I was on a running track. Quite the contrast from doing the hilly half marathon in Moab. After we cleaned up and had a small picnic, we rolled out of the state park and headed towards Nasheville, our destination for our final night on the road.

Following the written directions, we find our campground right in the midst of tourist heaven - Opryland! Good lord, does Tennessee have a lock on all the tacky tourist destinations? Even our campground was all glitz and flashing lights! It was all a huge adjustment for us, having been on the road for two weeks, avoiding urban areas and being surrounded by beautiful, vast openness; to come back east to claustrophobic congestion, population density, and......flashing lights! It was really hard to resist turning around. Really, really hard. Well, we had to make the best of our last night on the road. So out came the bottle of wine.

Tommorrow is our last day on the road. The Beagles sense it, and are longing to be back on their couch.

Leaving the Great American West behind

Friday, October 22; Elk City, OK to Little Rock, Arkansas

Wow!  Another huge storm on the Great Plains last night. Raining lightly this morning, but the skies east look awful serious. We cook breakfast on the porch of our cabin, stow our gear, and herd The Beagles into the big, white Prairie Schooner. On the road again.

The old alignment of Route 66 parallels I-40 here, and we drove on it for about 15 miles. Then the skies opened up again, and it was very hard to see the road. So we bid ado to Route 66 and hopped on I-40 at the next interchange. It rained hard all the way to, and through, Oklahoma City. As we floated through Oklahoma City, the skies began to clear and turned partly sunny. Looking to our left, we saw the old alignment of Route 66 turn northward toward Chicago and disappear in the distance. Goodbye, friend. We look forward to seeing you again.



Our campsite-Little Rock KOA



The Beagles
"Can we go home now?"



Western Oklahoma is all prairie. Beautiful, desolate, immense. Eastern Oklahoma, however, provides the traveler with a totally different topography. As we roll towards Arkansas, the land becomes rolling to hilly, trees and grass appear. Colors turn from brown to green. Dark soil replaces sand and pale dirt. Up ahead, a sign "Welcome To Arkansas" greets us. For us, a rather sad moment. Even though we are still west of the Mississippi River, we are no longer in the Great American West. No cowboys, no longhorn steers, no ghost towns, no desert or cactus here. As college football fans, we realize we are in the home of the Arkansas Razorbacks, a Southeastern Conference football team. Doesn't get any plainer than that.

Onward we motor to Little Rock, our stop for the night. Only then do we fully realize how close to home we are, and our epic journey is in it's final stages.

The Mother Road

Thursday, October 21;  Bernallilo, New Mexico to Elk City, Oklahoma

" If you ever plan to motor west

            Travel my way, take the highway that's the best.

Get your kicks on Route 66........"

Whew! What a storm last night - high winds, lightning, torrential rain and hail. And wouldn't you know it, we were tent camping! Well, I was. Ruth slept in the van with The Beagles. We pulled into camp after office hours, so we couldn't even upgrade to a cabin. Thankfully, the rain didn't start until after the tent was up. I cooked dinner under the pavilion while the rain came down all around us. No one around. Place was like a ghost town, everyone holed up in their behemoth RV's. Nothing to do after dinner but hunker down and try to get some sleep as the storm intensified. Ruth was worried me and the tent wouldn't be there in the morning. Not to worry. I've got plenty of experience camping in storms, but thank god for earplugs.

Friday dawned rainless, but overcast. Ruth crawled out of the van and was happy to see I wasn't floating somewhere in the next county. The Beagles however, didn't even stick their noses out the door. Man's best friend. Hmmmm. Our trusty, old Coleman tent came through again - not a drop of water inside anywhere.

" It winds from Chicago to L.A.

             More than 2000 miles all the way.

Get your kicks on Route 66........"

Packed up the wet tent, walked The Beagles, ate breakfast, then we were on the road again. A long day today - New Mexico, Texas Panhandle, and into Oklahoma. Heading into Albuquerque, this was the first big city we'd gone through since Denver a week ago. Couldn't wait to be through it. As we cleared the big A, the skies also cleared, as if to say " You're out of the city, clear sailing ahead. Enjoy." We pick up I-40 East towards Tucumcari, NM. This part of I-40 covers the old alignment of Route 66 until a few miles outside of Tucumcari. Then the old Mother Road reappears. We exit onto it, and for the first time we are actually traveling on Route 66! We're really excited.

                                      "Now you're going through St. Louis, Joplin Missouri,  

                                                  and Oklahoma City looks mighty pretty,   

                                        and you'll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico.

                           Flagstaff, Arizona, don't forget Winona, Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino........"



Traveling is like sexy lingerie, fast cars, and TV kitchen gadgets. None of these are truly necessary, but they all make life a little more interesting, a little spicier than it might otherwise be, yes?  Old Route 66 could be lumped in that same category. No longer necessary to efficient cross country travel, the road has been replaced by nine interstate highways with no stoplights, no places of special interest, no appealing weirdnesses. Just mile after mile of asphalt in one direction or another. After the first few hours the ordinariness of it all is like watching the old test patterns on TV (remember those?).

But from all my research and now experience, Route 66 was never ordinary. From it's commissioning in 1926, the first highway to link Chicago with Los Angeles, US 66 was, to townspeople along the route and travelers alike, something special. This was the first transcontinental highway, but back then, it was little more than a transcontinental rut that usually filled with water and mud on the least occassion of rain. Paving would come much later. Soon it was being called the "most magical road in all the world." And by any standard, that's just what it became.



The Palomino Motel - Tucumcari, NM

Has seen more prosperous days





Entering Tucumcari, NM on Route 66



Tucumcari, NM



So here we are on the iconic Mother Road. The old road is much narrower than modern roads, and of course, at least on this section, the pavement leaves a lot to be desired, but is very driveable. We roll into Tucumcari, NM, a bustling town during Route 66's heyday from the 1930's through the mid 1950's, but now struggling to survive. We stop for lunch at a diner that has been serving food to travelers since the 1930's. What a thrill to be traveling in the footsteps (wheeltracks?) of travelers from 80 years ago. Very cool old neon signs everywhere - lot's of dilapidated buildings alongside the road as well. Renovation is slowly going on in Tucumcari as well as other small towns that got left behind with the advent of the Interstate System. A lot of them are riding the wave of nostalgia, as wealthy baby - boomers who remember those cross country trips with their families along Route 66 pump money into it's revitalization. Route 66 clubs and revitalization organizations abound. There is even a movement afoot to get the federal government to recommission the old road. Good to see all this happening. After lunch and a cruise through Tucumcari, it's back on I-40, into Texas and a storm that could drown a fish.

As we approached Amarillo, the skies opened up with torrential rain, a real frog strangler. Traffic through Amarillo was a bear as well. It rained about halfway through the Texas Panhandle, then let up - drying up completely as we approached the Oklahoma state line, and our final Route 66 stop in Glenrio, Texas.

" Won't you get hip to this kindly tip

                                 When you make that California trip......

   Get your kicks on Route 66."

  



1930's auto service center
Glenrio, TX - Route 66



What remains of the old motel where The Grapes of Wrath
was filmed - Glenrio, TX - Route 66



We couldn't exit onto the old alignment quite yet, as this section of Route 66 is unpaved, and all the guide books warn you to stay off it during or immediately after a rain unless you are driving a four wheel drive vehicle. So we stayed on I-40 into Oklahoma, then turned around and caught a paved section of 66 into Glenrio.

Nothing exceptional about Glenrio. Just another Route 66 ghost town left to wither away in the hot Texas sun. An old motel and a couple of buildings beyond repair are all that's left of this once lively Route 66 stop. About 20 people still call Glenrio home, so it still retains a viable post office address. Glenrio's claim to fame is that a portion of the film, The Grapes of Wrath, was filmed here. Leaving Glenrio, we cross into Oklahoma ("where the wind comes whistling down the plains........" C'mon theater people!!) and arrive at our campground in Elk City. And guess what? Another gully washer is brewing - but we've got a cabin tonight!

Song lyrics from:

(Get your kicks on) Route 66

Nat King Cole & The King Cole Trio

A sad fare-thee-well; Tacky Tourist; Bad, bad, bad, bad vibrations; A very sacred place.



Ute Pectroglyphs - Moab



Wednesday, October 20



Well, the day has come, as I knew it would, as it always does, to say goodbye to my love. The return leg of our trip must begin, and I must leave Moab behind once again. We both felt the sadness of leaving this place, Ruth & I; Moab has found a permanent place in our hearts. We spent five wonderful days here, but we are so comfortable with this town it felt like we'd been living here for five years.



So where does Moab fit into our future? Or does it? Short term: we have already commited to returning here in the spring of 2012 for the Canyonlands Half-Marathon. I want to complete both races this town has to offer in this idyllic setting, and as mentioned earlier, Ruth has "unfinished business." Also at that time, we plan to do a motorcycle tour of the ancient Anasazi Pueblo ruins sites between Moab and Canyon de Chelly, Arizona. And of course, revisit Arches & Canyonlands National Parks. We're very excited.



Long term? Well, it has always been a goal of ours to experience living out west for a year, if not longer, in a small western town devoid of all the "luggage" living in urban and suburban environs requires one to carry around. Moab is such a place. We'll see. As one local put it to us: "We're 30 years behind the times here." In today's crazy, fast spin cycle, seemingly out of control world, that may not always be a problem.



And so off the four of us go. Fare thee well, Moab. We'll see you again soon. Pointing the Prairie Schooner on a southward heading, down UT Hwy 191 we fly. Our destination for tonight is Bernallilo, New Mexico, just north of Albequerque. But first, we must play tourist at the Four Corners Monument and the Aztec Pueblo Ruins.



Roo doing the "Four Corners Dance"



Four Corners Monument had to be the most tacky tourist stop on our trip, not to mention a ripoff paying $6.00 to snap your picture while standing in four states for two minutes (the corners of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona meet here).The place was rundown, although some renovation was going on. The monument is on Navajo Tribal Land, and for some unknown reason I felt very uneasy when I got out of the van. Even the dogs were acting strangely. I didn't mention it to Ruth, but as she came along side me, she said "Let's hurry up and take a picture and leave." I said "what's wrong?" "I don't know" she replied. "We just have to get away from here fast." So we did. Picture taken, we boot scooted to the van and made tracks pardner. Neither of us said anything for a while, but when we left the Navajo Reservation, Ruth said "I'm ok now." Very strange.

 

Four Corners Monument



The Aztec Pueblo ruins in Aztec, N.M. were a different story. These ruins date from the 1000's to 1200's A.D. They are an ongoing archaeological site managed by the National Park service. Being able to walk through and touch these ancient pueblo dwellings as the original inhabitants did was truly amazing. We sat in a beautiful wooded picnic area adjacent to the ruins and had a quiet, peaceful lunch. A feeling of peace, serenity and sacredness emanated from this place. It was hard to leave.

 

Roo sculking about an Aztec ruin



Back on the road, we head southeast down NM Hwy 550, a scenic drive that takes you right through the New Mexico desert, beautiful in it's own right. As dusk approaches, we see the expansive brightness of Albuquerque and it's suburbs. Back in the big city. But hey, tomorrow we get our kicks on Route 66...........



Arches National Park - Moab

Tuesday, October 19

We awoke to a beautiful sunny day, the high expected to be around 75 degrees. We packed up the van for a full day of some serious hiking. The Beagles stayed in today, as Arches does not allow pets in the park.

Off we went - really excited in anticipation of what the day would bring. We'd heard and read so much about Arches N. P. that we just couldn't wait to                                                                              

experience it for ourselves.

 

Windows Arch
North & South Windows

 

Balancing Rock





The Three Sisters

 



Arches N.P. is only one mile from Moab. The park boundaries actually butt up against the northern city limits. The city father's had the foresight, after the new UT Hwy 191 was built, to make the old alignment into a cycling, running and walking path. It starts right at the city limits and its sole purpose is to take cyclists, runners and hikers (no motorized vehicles allowed) to Arches and Canyonlands N.P.'s. Imagine that! I ran on it on our final day in Moab. Awesome!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           We pay our entrance fee

and immediately begin ascending a huge cliff face. Geological beauty everywhere! If Canyonlands made us breathless, Arches made our hearts stop!! We probably drove a mile or two before the first arches came into view. What a sight! Magnificent stone arches standing in the middle of the desert amongst red rock cliff walls. Small arches, medium arches, and huge arches are everywhere. We could only imagine what the early pioneers crossing this way on their way to California must have thought seeing these strange rock formations.



Delicate Arch





Landscape Arch

 

Arches is a very large park. You can hike to all the arches, but you must drive to get to the various trailheads. Some hikes are very short, some are long and strenuous into the backcountry. Backcountry permits are required to hike to some of the arches.

We hiked and hiked to as many arches as we could. Windows Arch, Delicate Arch and Landscape Arch are the Big Three of the




An arch shaped cactus found by Ruth on the side of the trail
How cool is that? We named it Cactus Arch.

 

many that we visited. Delicate Arch is the most photographed arch in the park, appearing in many commercial advertising photos.

Later in the day, as we hiked to Landscape Arch, we took a spur trail to a smaller arch. Upon reaching Pine Arch at the end of the spur, with a beautiful vista beyond, Ruth and I stood next to each other, under this arch, with tears in our eyes. The overwhelming beauty and enormity of this place, this park, was just too much. It really tugged at our hearts.

Drying our tears and reveling in the joy this park evoked on our emotions, we backtracked and proceeded on to Landscape Arch. We took photos of where, in 1991, a 60 ft. slab of rock broke off from the arch and fell to the ground while hikers were underneath! They did manage to get away before tons of rock hit the ground where they stood. This shows the fragility of these arches, how nature is both creating and destroying them over eons of time.

Unfortunately, it was time to head back to Moab. Getting dark, we were out of food, out of water and out of energy. Time to feed The Beagles, clean up, and head out to the Moab Brewery for some 3.2 beer (it is Utah you know), and great food. Will we be back to Arches? Absolutely!! So much we didn't have time to see in this sacred place.

"Damn! This is stinkin' hard!"




This says it all

 





Canyonlands National Park - Moab

The "Prairie Schooner"
Entrance road to Canyonlands N.P.

Monday, October 18
My legs felt pretty good after yesterdays half-marathon. A bit sore - not unexpected - but I had lots of energy after a good nights sleep. Maybe it was because of the excitement I was feeling about what was on tap for us today - Canyonlands National Park.

Canyonlands National Park is divided into three districts: Island in the Sky, The Needles, and The Maze. Island in the Sky is the closest to Moab (33 miles), so we opted for that. The red rock desert and canyons surrounding Moab are incredibly beautiful. But nothing, nothing, prepared us for what we were about to experience in Canyonlands.

Island in the Sky is so named because it is a huge flat top mesa that is connected to the rest of the desert "mainland" by a narrow land bridge. The Colorado and Green rivers carved out the deep canyons that frame this mesa over eons.


Roo under an arch overlooking a canyon in background

 Paying our ten dollar entrance fee, we made our way to the visitor center to watch a short movie about the park. Fascinating. One point they emphasized was how little rain this area receives. Today was partly to mostly cloudy as we left the visitor center and made our way over the land bridge to Island in the Sky.

We were breathless. no other way to describe it. The park road has pullouts where you can park and hike to stunning vistas - a different one around every corner. Let these pictures wet your appetite, then make your vacation plans and GO!!

As we hiked down this one trail, the skies suddenly opened up - rained about 15 minutes - we got soaked and we loved it! It rarely rains in this desert, but it rained while we were here! What a gift!



On the edge of Island In The Sky



The Green & Colorado Rivers
Natures artists still at work

 

I'm not that relaxed........
5 ft. behind me is a drop of
hundreds of feet to the canyon floor below!!

 The deep canyons surrounding us continued to impress. Before we knew it, it was late afternoon and time to get back to town. As we left the park we asked a ranger when was the last time it rained here. His answer? Until today, no significant rainfall for 8 months!Wow!

Tomorrow, an emotional experience in a place that just blew us away.................