Lou Ann's Great Adventure
Summer 2001 Cross Country Drive
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• The Idea for a Cross Country Road Trip
• Why a Trip Website?
• The Route
• The Vehicle
• The Traveler
• The Itinerary (this is where you'll find my pictures ... just click on the dates!)
• Trip Statistics
• Personal Recommendations
• Letters from a traveler
• Travels with Charley
• Pictures of Aspen Trees

The birth of the idea!

During the summer of 2000, I had the opportunity to fly from my home just outside of Washington, DC to Colorado.  The initial purpose of the trip was for a professional conference in Colorado Springs.  (Focus on the Family's Teachers in Focus Conference.)  Before going to the conference, I spent several days with friends at their cabin just south of Crested Butte, in the Gunnison National Forest.

To get from the airport in Denver to the cabin in Crested Butte required a rather lengthy drive through mountainous area, including crossing the Continental Divide at Monarch Pass.  Well, this east coast girl has NEVER had the opportunity to drive anywhere but the "eastern seaboard".  I figured that the drive would be boring and long, so I brought a book on tape, only to find out that the rental car was only equipped with a CD player.  So, I figured I could hit the "scan" button on the radio dial for the next six hours.  But as I drove away from the Denver city limits, I found that no radio stations would come in.  I mean NONE!!  All of this "forced" me to watch my surroundings in silence.  I must say that I was amazed.  I had never seen such beautiful sights!  I really was taken with the fact that the landscape was SO different than anything in my experience.

Upon my arrival at my friends' cabin, I gushed about the wonderful drive.  We talked at legth about the possibility of me using my next summer vacation to do a cross country drive.  I talked about the possibility without ever thinking that it would really happen.  Well, what do you know?

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The reasons why I wanted to make a website about the trip.

As my fall activities began, and I started pondering such an excursion, I spent some time surfing the web.  I did searches on key words such as "road trip" and "cross country drive" and so on.  I gained invaluable information about how to plan a cross country trip just from reading the mostly novice web pages created by other cross country travelers.

Now that I have completed my own trip, I would love to present my own version of a web page about a cross country drive.  My desire would be for anyone who is surfing the internet while planning their own road trip to stop at this site and gain ideas to add to their experience.  Please feel free to e-mail me asking any questions or for any recommendations.

The other reason for putting together a website is to give my family and friends an opportunity to peruse information about my trip at their liesure.  You can choose to read all of this drivvel or not.  You can choose to look at the pictures or not.  If you are a "spreadsheet person", you can look only at the charts that I've included with all of the wonderful numbers.

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My friend in Crested Butte and I sat with a map of the United States spread out across the table, discussing possible routes for a possible cross country drive.  The route that we fantasized about back in August of 2000 ended up being almost the exact route that I took when doing the actual trip.  It was centered around a long time desire that I've had to drive the entire Pacific Coast of the United States.  The other stopping points were centered around the "must-do's" like Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone National Park as well as friends and family who live in several different areas of the country.

The general idea was to leave my home outside of Washington, DC and head up to Ohio (to visit friends for a couple of days) and then on to Buffalo, NY (where I grew up) to spend several days with my parents and some more friends.  Then I chose a northern route across the country which eventually put me in Seattle.  From Seattle I left to do the drive that I've been dreaming about for years.  I followed almost the entire Pacific Coast through Oregon and California to San Diego.  From San Diego, I went north into Las Vegas and then to Carson City, NV, where I have relatives.  I am fascinated in the fact that there are roads that traverse the entire country.  One of those roads is route 50, which runs over three thousand miles from Ocean City, MD to Sacramento, CA.  I am most familiar with route 50 because it is two blocks from the school where I teach in Arlington, VA.  I know it as "Arlington Boulevard".  Anyway, I picked up route 50 in Carson City, and alternated between 50 and I-70 most of the way back across the country.

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No, I didn't take a new car on the trip.  I actually considered buying a convertable (I have a passion for convertable Mustangs) ... just because of the romantic idea of cruising the west coast with the top down.  I'm glad I didn't do that ... the coastal areas of Oregon and California were quite pleasantly cool.

I decided to take the car that I've been driving for almost nine years.  It's a '93 Nissan NX (pictured above) which I purchased new in February of 1993.  This car has never given me any problems except for normal wear and tear.  A new clutch was needed after 120,000.  I had it painted during the summer of 2000 (it had been driven through four Buffalo winters, and the salt had begun to do some cruel damage.)

The car had 135,757 miles on it the day I left.  The day I returned it had 147,293 miles.  I didn't have a single problem with it.  I had three oil changes throughout the summer (Hot Springs, SD, San Francisco, CA, and Colorado Springs, CO) and had it washed once (Lemoore, CA).  Beyond that it needed literally no maintenance.

Oh, and by the way ... my car has no air conditioning.  It never has had air conditioning.  I bought it in Buffalo.  It didn't seem necessary at the time.  It was a bit frustrating at times this summer.  I would say that the worst place to be without air this summer was Nebraska.  ;-)

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Yup!  I went alone.  I wanted very badly to make the trip.  Since I am a school teacher, I have a wonderful summer break.  None of my friends can get that kind of time off of work.  Besides ... I LIKE my friends.  I'm not so sure that I wanted to subject any of my friendships to eight weeks of 24/7 togetherness.  I had plenty of family and friends who I saw along the way.  So, going it alone seemed the best plan this time.  It worked out well.

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Here it is!  My trip in spreadsheet form.  :-D

The dates which appear as links will link to separate pages which contain pictures that I took on my own camera.

The items in the list of "Stops Along the Way" which appear as links will take you to other people's websites about these places.

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Here are some things I thought might be worth mentioning:

I traveled 11,536 miles ... from leaving my parking lot in Lorton, VA through returning to the same parking lot.

I visited or traveled through 26 of the United States, and one Canadian Province.  They would be, in chronological order:  Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Ontario, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia.  The states which I came into twice are only listed once, thus, some of the states in the list may not border each other.

I was away for 54 days.

I put 320.176 gallons of gas in my car to travel those 11,536 miles.

My awesome little car did an average of 36.03 miles to the gallon.

I spent $482.10 for gas for this trip!

The cheapest gas that I got was $1.219.  I found this price twice:  first on July 6 at a Citgo in South Bend, IN, and second on July 8 at a Speedway in Cloverdale, IL.

The most miles that I traveled in one day was 685, from my uncle and aunt's house in Carson City, NV to Green River, UT, very close to Arches National Park.  That day's drive included the section of route 50 in Nevada called "The Loneliest Road in America".

Most Beautiful State: A tie between Oregon and Colorado!

Least Beautiful State: Kansas

Favorite City: San Francisco (hands down!!!)

Least Favorite City: Las Vegas (also hands down!!!)

My most memorable moment was probably coming around the corner in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and seeing George Washington's face standing nobly on the side of the mountain.

The moment I most want to be non-memorable would have to be going to the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota.  What a waste of time!!

The best food that I had was surely a tie between the Sunday brunch at the Broadmoor and my mom's!!  :-)

The best fast food that I had were the salad shakers and the fruit parfay's at McDonalds.

The worst fast food that I had (even though I LOVED the antenna balls that they sell) was just about everything at Jack-in-the-Box ... such grease!  Yuck!!

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Personal Recommendations

In South Dakota, at any of the rest stops or visitor's centers, you can purchase a tape/CD about South Dakota road trips.  They will essentially drive with you on whatever road you are on, telling you the history and geography of the areas as you go.  You can then return the tape/CD to any rest stop or visitor's center, either in person or by mail to get all but $5 back.  The recordings were very well done (take this from someone who listens to books on tape every single day while commuting in DC metro area traffic!!)

Yellowstone is NOT the only park you can go to where the wildlife wanders out into the streets.  There are several other parks (with far fewer humans) that have wild bison, bears, deer, etc. that will wander out in front of your car.  If you don't want to deal with the people in Yellowstone, but are very interested in the wildlife being truly wild, look into other places like Custer State Park in South Dakota.

Each day, spend some time familiarizing yourself with the main routes that you will be driving, especially in very populated areas.  You can't necessarily drive a car while trying to follow a map spread across your steering wheel (especially if you're driving a stick shift).  I know this for a fact!!

AAA all the way!!!!!!  Their Travel Guides are amazingly useful!  They have maps of cities, and locations and descriptions of sites.  They are totally worth the membership dues, even if you don't need the lock out help (like I did at Twin Peaks in San Francisco) or a tow or anyother kind of emergency service!!

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Letters from a traveler

I took with me my IBM Thinkpad i-series 1421 laptop computer.  I was able to send e-mail about my trip to friends as I traveled.  I will include copies of the e-mails here ... but the names have been deleted to protect the innocent!  ;-)

Prologue - June 21, 2001 - Lorton, VA
Chapter 1 - June  25, 2001 - Hudson, OH
Chapter 2 - June  30, 2001 - Lancaster, NY
Chapter 3 - July 5, 2001 - Lake, MI ("up north") :-D
Chapter 4 - July 7, 2001 - Chicago, IL
Chapter 5 - July 10, 2001 - Wall, SD
Chapter 6 - July 12, 2001 - Casper, WY
Chapter 7 - July 15, 2001 - Boise, ID
Chapter 8 - July 20, 2001 - Bothell, WA (Seattle)
Chapter 9 - July 22, 2001 - Florence, OR
Chapter 10 - July 28, 2001 - NAS Lemoore, CA
Chapter 11 - July 28, 2001 - NAS Lemoore, CA  (sort of a continuation of Chapter 10)
Chapter 12 - July 28, 2001 - NAS Lemoore, CA  (a continuation of Chapter 11)  :-)
Chapter 13 - August 2, 2001 - Las Vegas, NV
Chapter 14 - August 6, 2001 - Green River, UT
Chapter 15 - August 10, 2001 - Crested Butte, CO
Chapter 16 - August 13, 2001 - Garden City, KS
Chapter 17 - August 16, 2001 - Lorton, VA
Epilogue - June 6, 2002 - Lorton, VA

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In preparing my trip, I remembered a story that I must have received via forwarded e-mail years ago.  The story was about a family who had a beloved lawn ornament (??) which disappeared one day and reappeared several months later.  Along with the anonomously returned plastic duck was a photo album ... containing pictures of the duck from its travels all over the world.  Well, I decided that I wanted to steal something and take pictures of it around the country.  So, I chose the small, stuffed, trombone-playing, straw-hat-wearing frog kept on the computer monitor of one of the pastors at my church.  (!!)  With the help of one of the church secretaries, I got the frog, named him Charley (after Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck), and traveled with him.  When I arrived back in DC and gave the frog and the album back to the pastor, I found that he hadn't even noticed that the thing was missing.  Here are some of the photos that I took of Charley.  :-D

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My favorite sight to see is the beautiful aspen trees in Colorado.  I compiled my pictures of aspen on a separate page.  Enjoy!

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