Today my body has decided that 3am is a good time to start the day. Oh well, there are some things I've been putting off and the next four hours until society starts to wake up should give me ample time to handle them.
One is to put down in words my trip from Livermore CA to Chicago IL roughly one month ago during the last week in September. I had just finished my internship at Sandia National Labs and was heading back to grad school in Chicago. I drove roughly 2-3000 miles solo, camping and couchsurfing nights. I also drove a fair amount across local "blue" highways rather than using the interstate. There are some images
here.
Day one - California to Lovelock Nevada
I left Livermore at a leisurely time with a couple of thoughts on my mind.
- I'm not sure exactly where I'm sleeping tonight
- I really need a real car sound system for this drive
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| Sunrise near my house in Livermore |
The first added some excitement the second was an interesting problem. Usually to find something like a car audio deck I would ask google maps for an electronics store in my city. Now I had the option of looking at any city along my route, provided the store was sufficiently close to the highway. This change in what was convenient was a novelty that really kept true during most of the trip. A lot more is available to you when you're driving through a country, you just need to make sure that you can get in and out in time to still make progress.
So I packed up the car, threw in my new tent and sleeping bag, hooked up my phone to the car (I was broadcasting my GPS position during the drive) and headed East.
To Rocklin, CA! What a great city, real class, you know? I found my historical museum (sadly only open three days a week), my city hall, and various city cars and maintenance vehicles sporting my name. From here I sped on the 5 to Sacramento, where I picked up a sound system and headed East into Nevada.
Nevada isn't known for it's beauty, especially along I-80. It was nice to be out driving though. I had come from a fairly stressful state of science-block where I was relatively unable to make progress on my project and so it was nice to, minute by minute, know that I was accomplishing something that had to get done (drive across the country)
I stopped at a regional park outside Lovelock, Nevada. Lovely place actually. A local biker gang had also stopped at the same site and so there were cruiser bikes, bald bearded men, and confederate flags all around.
I tried sleeping in my hammock for a while and while it was blissfully comfortable I also couldn't relax enough to sleep. Flopped down to the tent I had set up "just-in-case" and slept until dawn. And really, what a lovely dawn. Waking up outside is such a pleasant experience - you arise fresh and energetic rather than sluggish. I packed up, walked around the park for a while and then headed East. Next stop, Salt Lake City!
Day Two - Lovelock Nevada to Salt Lake City, Utah
Utah is beautiful - even along I-80. As one enters it's still desert like Nevada but perhaps redder and more colorful with bits of green artistically placed to show contrast. Also present in Utah - Salt. Vast plains of salt. Presumably this resource may have been one of the reasons why the Mormons of yesteryear stopped near the Great Salt Lake to settle.
I also stopped near the Great Salt Lake, perhaps an odd counterpart to the Great Freshwater Sea of Lake Michigan that I was headed to. I walked around, waded through it, washed off some of the terrible stink I had built up over the last 36 hours. As I walked away and the water started to dry I found that I glittered from the salt.
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| Salt Plains of Utah |
Salt Lake City is full of Mormons. It's actually a great city - fine architecture, has a center, completely bikable with great transportation, right next to a mountain and very outdoorsy - but without a doubt the feature that it is known by is that it is the center of the Latter Day Saints people. Destination of their migration long ago and location of the Mormon Temple, Salt Lake City is strongly influenced by LDS culture. Very family oriented, no bars, everything is closed on Sunday (it's a ghost town), and, I felt, a strange cultural segregation between the half of the city that is Mormon and the half that isn't.
I was staying with Derron, a recent Ohio transplant to the City, who I connected with on couchsurfing.org . It was great to have a shower, a couch, and someone to talk to. Derron was probably the only person I had a full conversation with during the trip. He was a great guy and as always I strongly recommend couchsurfing when traveling, especially when traveling solo.
I respected sabbath and stayed an extra day (it seemed appropriate). It was nice to relax, read, restock on food, and take some time. I was about to head off the map.
Day Four - Salt Lake City Utah to Thunder Basin Grasslands, Wyoming
Sandia is reimbursing me somewhat for my travel expenses. I need to fill out this form that asks what city I was in each night and how much the hotel cost. On this form I just entered "Wyoming" as the city - hopefully they'll understand.
I drove east a bit more (even more beautiful driving than the west side of SLC), entered Wyoming and was struck, as I had been warned, by it's monotony. It's like Nevada only flatter.
Wy-287, bound for Casper, Wy and then the great grasslands. This transition was substantial.
It felt like leaving the city for the forest except that you're already two hundred miles from the nearest city that isn't a truck stop. You're leaving behind certain comforts of security and an expectation of modernity but you gain in beauty (immensely) and get to experience a slightly different way of life. It really is stepping back into an older America. The roads are narrower, the towns on the highway are filled with people living lives rather than manning gas stations. There are parks that people care about and a landscape that wasn't chosen for it's flat, direct route across a 3000 mile country.
Casper looked nice but, being short on time I drove past it hoping to reach a suitable place in the Grasslands before sunset. I've only camped a few times and, when I have, it's always been at a camping site. I was a little wary of the "pull off to the side of the road and pitch a tent" idea. Don't the other cars driving past bother you? Do you feel safe being so exposed? Why wouldn't someone just come and steal stuff from my car? These questions were completely unnecessary.
The grasslands were great. Around 20 minutes before sunset I pulled off to a side road which quickly became a dirt path. Three minutes later I stopped and pitched a tent. Absolutely no one in their right mind would ever think of coming down here. I doubt if any human had been there in a month.
The night that I spent camping in the open grasslands was the most emotionally comfortable and satisfying night I've had in a long while. I hung out with some cows, ran around a bit, watched the sun set and then, realizing that I had nothing to do in the dark, lay down and eventually went to sleep. My bag was warm, my pad was soft, and there was moonlight dribbling down into the tent.
A awoke at 4am feeling good and decided to head East again. Next stop, somewhere in South Dakota - didn't much matter where.
Day 5 - Wyoming to South Dakota
Early morning is a great time. Anything you accomplish then is like extra credit - you didn't have to do it but you are anyway and it feels great. I drove east through Wyoming and entered South Dakota. I reached the Black Hills and drove through that. I found small towns and walked around when they were waking up, looking for some breakfast. I eventually found myself in Rapid City, the second largest town in South Dakota, population less than 60,000. For the folks back home that's a little over twice San Juan Capistrano less than Laguna Niguel, half of Berkeley and tiny next to Chicago.
I found breakfast in a nice place. Everyone there looked, from my perspective, to be from a movie set. Perhaps we were in a logging town. People there have pickup trucks and I get the feeling that they actually use them with some regularity. Men wore moustaches and everyone drank coffee.
A tweet I sent out at that time says "I have finally found a land where my phone has no internet, that land's name is South Dakota." Even in the grasslands I got an occasional signal. It was only in SD that I was disconnected. But, where T-Mobile does not go Starbucks does and, as any mobile-dependent traveler knows Starbucks offers free WiFi. I wish I had couchsurfed in South Dakota - it would have been fun to get to know people. Everyone seemed very genuinely friendly but I only interacted with them as a customer.
I drove east to the Badlands (pretty) and then farther East to the town of Mitchell where I found a small campsite run by the town. Hardly measured up to my previous night but it was a place to rest. I ran into some recent graduates from a university in Maine and we had a chat. We were crossing directions you see and it was good to know what was ahead of each others' paths.
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| Outside the Badlands |
This conversation I had with these people from Maine was the most familiar conversation I had during the trip. I, from Southern California, could relate much more easily with these students from Maine than I could with anyone else I encountered. It's odd how the various subcultures in our country are arranged. Some, like South Dakotans, the Amish, surfers, are entirely locally isolated while others such as Bikers, college academics, various religions, are isolated culturally but not geographically. Others like the Mormons inhabit both categories. How is it that we all live in such proximity to each other and yet our views are so diverse?
Day 6 - South Dakota to the Rural Midwest
At this point I was back on the interstate (I-90) and I decided it was time to make some distance. For distance the interstate is king. You put on cruise control, start streaming This American Life podcasts, and watch America unfold beneath you.
I was leaving the rugged mountains and deserts of the west and entering the lush greenery of the prairies and farms of the Midwest. The next state was Minnesota. I was really enjoying this state, too much so, I decided, not to give it's local highways a try. I pulled off the road, consulted my map, and found a route to Madison Wisconsin that used only locals. I gassed up (you never know the prices on these smaller highways) and headed off.
This was a fantastic drive through beautiful farmland (not the flat plains of soy we're meant to believe), punctuated by idyllic Amish children walking on the side of the road, stands in small towns selling harvest vegetables and honey, and passing the occasional tractor on the highway. I cut through Iowa and then into Wisconsin. Settling into Madison.
This was 5pm, ahead of schedule. I took a brief run through Madison's city center to stretch the legs. It's a nice looking city. Like SLC it's big enough to have variety but not so big that it's unnavigable. I had a couchsurfing host lined up but decided in the end to book it to Chicago.
Night of Day 6
Entering Chicago was bizarre. There were cars everywhere and lights. Several highways intersected each other simultaneously. Gone was the relaxing driving of the past week. Gone was the satisfying calm of being self contained with food, shelter and transportation. Here now was reality, a different reality that contained, I thought, where I was supposed to end up. When I showed up at my house there were my old friends welcoming me and wanting to talk. They were very energetic.
To them I apologize if I was less than conversational - I hadn't really spoken or socialized in the last week, not sure if I wanted to. I hadn't had to deal with people or the complexity of living with them. Life was so simple. I had a goal "head east" and I had two needs "find food" "find a safe place to sleep" and the rest of my thoughts were my own. Would you all mind if maybe I just camped outside in the yard, didn't talk to anyone and perhaps sat in my car for a few hours?
It's been a month now and I'm back into the full swing of complex life which you'll be happy to hear I'm enjoying. I'm accomplishing things that I find interesting and that will, I hope, be useful to others some day. Still though it would be nice, if I get a chance, to drop things for a week and let my mind put down it's burden for a while on a long drive. Maybe I'll find a nice place to sleep.
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| The Windy City |
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| I stood here for 10 minutes and didn't see a soul. |
