Jaci Dawn

I had a brilliant idea back in early March (before I knew I had breast cancer): instead of purchasing airplane tickets to fly to Florida and see all my son’s children together, I would ask my brother if he was up to a road trip. After all, his son had just moved to within two hours of our daughter-in-law and we haven’t been on a road trip together in 14 years. That road trip was to Colorado to see my son’s first born.

I don’t mind flying, but it’s very expensive right now, there have been a number of cancellations and complete mix-ups in the news, and I thought a road trip might be a little cheaper than a solo flight out (and a lot more fun). In the end, I think the road trip cost nearly as much as the flight would have but it *was* a lot more fun – and we saw a lot of the beautiful country contained within the borders of the United States.

I have been living in the State of Oregon for 46 years. No sales tax and no self-service at the gas pump. I pumped gas briefly during the winter of 1978 but someone else has done it for me since then.. This was about to change as our legislation went around the vote of the people and passed a bill allowing self service at most pumps beginning the 5th of August. I figured I had a couple weeks on the road to relearn how to pump gas on fancy “new” (to me) machines.

Also, we had five boxes of “stuff” in my attic that belonged to our son that probably needed to be delivered to his heirs, and since they were all six going to be in one spot… I could easily haul all those boxes in a rental car. Long story short, breast cancer was dealt with and the road trip was on. All I had to do was drive myself the 8+ hours to Reno and home again. And, meantime, my brother unloaded a couple of boxes of his son’s belongings to deliver to Florida as well.

I left home on the 23rd of July. That went smoothly, but getting the rental car on the morning of the 24th was a two-hour ordeal. We only made it as far as Ely, our high school home town. I haven’t been there since 2012 when we finished cleaning out our father’s estate. Ely had a stop light then. Today it doesn’t. (There’s a stop light in East Ely.)

We got serious with travel on the 25th. A short stop in Pioche, NV, to take photos.

We decided to drive through Cedar City, Utah, and down through Kanab, over the Glen Canyon bridge, and on into Flagstaff. The drive from Cedar City to Kanab is a spectacular road through winding canyons formed by sandstone and granite. The walls of the canyon are pink and white with an occasional dusting of coal deposits. Iron is mined near Cedar City. From Kanab to the Glen Canyon Dam, the road takes one over mountain passes and smooth meadows carved out by ancient glaciers. The views can be breath-taking.

We paused to watch a storm build over Arizona.

Glen Canyon is intense. The water in Lake Powell is extremely low. The architecture of both the bridge over the canyon and the dam are a marvel or engineering.

July 26th found us on the road with hopes to make it to Amarillo by evening. HaHaHa. We made it to Tumcumcari, New Mexico, in part because we had to dawdle a little in Winslow and we stopped to see The Crater (Barringer Meteorite Crater). I was not impressed with Winslow, but they do have a bronze statue of Glen Frey near “the Hitchhiker” and that’s pretty cool.

The Crater, on the other hand, is impressive. You can see where it churned up earth long before you reach the site. It was formed around 50,000 years ago, is over 4,000 feet across and over 700 feet deep. You can’t see into the crater bottom without a telescope (or a 300mm camera lens).

It was far too hot to go on a guided tour and we didn’t stay long, but I count it as a highlight of our trip.

We caught up with a storm as we hurried on toward Tucumcari: lightning lit up the sky ahead of us for miles, culminating in this:

We finally arrived in Tucumcari where I booked us a room. An old man and his dog sat outside the lobby in the shade. Charlie, the dog, wanted chin scratches, so I obliged. When I came back out from the lobby, the old man was in a very agitated state: TARANTULA! I don’t think he was amused by my reaction: I hurried to get my camera and tell my brother to get his before the spider moved on. THEN we ushered it off the sidewalk. Texas Brown Tarantula, very common.

We decided we were running short on time, so the leg on the 27th was pretty much a straight drive through to Paris with a couple side trips to drive on the original Route 66. We spent the night in Paris, TX.

The first image is actually in Tucumcari, but the hat on the “Eiffel Tower” replica is ALL Paris, Texas.

July 28 – Our date for arriving in Florida. And we did drive straight through, except for a slight detour in Vicksburg, Mississippi, to tour the area where the battle of Vicksburg happened. Vicksburg is a sobering reminder of a young Nation torn in two, brother vs. brother, nephew vs. uncle, and trenches dug within feet of the “enemy”. It was a bloody siege. The North prevailed with General U.S. Grant defeating Confederate General John C. Pemberton. The day we drove through and looked at the monuments of the different units that fought (and died), the air was close and musical with the song of cicadas. I could imagine the screams of men and horses, the boom of cannons, the smell of gunpowder, blood, and sulphur, and the fear that must have prevailed in those trenches. The battle raged for 47 days.

That was our last tourist stop on the first half of our trip. We arrived at my destination after ten PM on the 28th.