Rules of the Road (Not Mine)

We drove to and from New Orleans from St Paul in late August and early September for a mystery convention.  The convention and New Orleans were pure magic!

Our skill set for driving 20+ hours has diminished over time.  We stopped just south of St Louis on the way down, but somehow thought we could drive straight through on the way back home.  Let's be honest, we are little old people now who need our naps.  We need rest stop breaks.  Driving through an entire state which seemed to be a construction zone with narrowed lanes and either barrels or little stakes lining the road while trying to stay awake...very bad.

We did plan to drive Route 66 next year for the it's Centennial.   I think we are both no longer interested in a long road trip together.  It took a few weeks before we could drive to Cub and back together.  

Even now, because we are using my car, my husband makes a point of hanging onto the handbar my Jeep has like a monkey.  Hang on, buddy, we're about to turn a corner!

 

 Kudos for travel planning prep.  My spouse often uses Google maps (?) to walk the streets of places we are going to visit.  Who knew you could use that same feature to drive the entire length of the road you're going to travel?  He knew the streets, the roads, the road signs for the entire route down.  Been there, drove that.

 

As an extra bonus, he used Mapquest to give himself some turn by turn instructions.  That he tweaked.  Fine enough if he was the passenger and could interpret his notes.  But he kept asking me to read his frankly cryptic notes and somehow I was responsible when they weren't quite matching the road.

 

We were really pushing it on the trip back. We should have stopped at hour 12, before it got dark.  We did not!  I needed coffee and pop and then a break to keep going, with increasing frequency.  Nope. Wasting time.  Messing with Google's estimate of how the long the trip should take.

 

 Again, I'm a little old lady and don't like the cruise control in my spouse's car.  Instead of just pushing a button on the steering wheel to turn it on and off, you have to do some maneuvering with a lever to the side of the wheel.  Click and move up or down to turn on and off? Zzzzzz.  So when I was driving, my comfort speed that I could maintain was 60 miles an hour.  Tsk.  Messing with the travel time estimate again!  At some point only he could drive because he could go 70, cruising along, right?  Until he started getting sleepy.

 

The finale came entering Minneapolis at like 5 in the morning.  Mr Big at the wheel. Suddenly I noticed we were crossing two white lines for the special traffic lanes and were heading for the large concrete wall at the side of the road.  A sharp call out of his name woke him up, and I drove the rest of the way.  Oh yeah.  60 mph or bust, baby.

Review: Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck

 

 I've decided to read more Classics in 2022, and I picked Steinbeck's Travels With Charley as my first.  

Over the years as I've looked for books I might like about traveling, or books by Steinbeck I might find approachable (having been ruined in high school by The Pearl and The Red Pony) this book has come up.  

Travels with Charley follows John Steinbeck's adventures traveling cross country with his large Poodle Charley. Steinbeck imbues Charley with a great deal of character and wisdom.  The dog graces the landscape with his musings, leaving notes for future canine travelers.  Despite his gentle nature, Charley is an excellent watchdog.

Steinbeck asked that a camper be custom built for his trip.  He wanted the comforts of a ships cabin.  While I was reading the book, I had a picture of the Rocinante being relatively small inside, so I had trouble at one point picturing nine people aboard, conversing and having drinks.

As it turns out, the camper was huge, and the truck itself is very large as well.

I was astounded at the beginning of the story at the amount of clothing and food and tools and other supplies Steinbeck packed.  If you camp you try to keep the weight down, but he had no such thoughts, so it seemed.  Then, astonishingly, when he was first on the road he stopped someplace and seemed to pick up every kind of booze available.  To be sure, as he traveled, that alcohol was well parceled out, leading to many pleasant conversations in unlikely places.

Steinbeck's writing style here is conversational, as if you're sitting right across from him listening to his tale.

There's a dreamy style to some of the description:

"The customers were folded over their coffee cups like ferns".

He speaks of the urge to just go, and  be moving somewhere, anywhere along the road.  Many many times he saw the envy people had of him, of their own wish to be able to just climb in and take a road somewhere.

He prefers to travel the side roads and old highways, which are filled with towns and shops and interesting people.

He worries about "superhighways"  "When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing."

There's the beauty of road trips, right, taking all the old roads where you can, and seeing how people live and work.  As soon as you take a section of freeway, your mind just shuts down, there's nothing to see at all.  You may get there faster, but it's as if you haven't been anywhere.

There's a map of his route along the north of the country, and back through the southern half. 

Highly recommended for a winter's read, or anytime the open road calls you.

Traveling Tuesday October 5, 2021

 

Here's a snippet from the Illinois "Here It Is" map.  Just getting out of Chicago is always a thrill.  Our fearless navigator (me) would be reading the directions, looking at road signs, trying to stay just enough ahead of the driver's (Mr DOA) ability to make turns, switch lanes, try to gawk as he drove.

For those moments when we somehow went astray, we had our faithful Rand McNally Road Atlas, which in addition to having excellent road maps of each state, gives you the larger picture of where you are in your journey.  I'd never go on a road trip without it.

We also took advantage of the AAA maps and guides to help keep us on the proper road.

 

To help you keep on the Route, always look for the displays of Route 66 Signs.  Some are better at prominently displaying them than others, with Illinois being the best of the best.

There were changes to the Route over the years. When we had the choice, we chose to take the old, original Route.  Our Here It Is maps guided us here as well.

So, we knew our main goal for the trip was to travel the original Route 66 as closely as possible.  We wanted to stop at every Roadside Attraction!  However, sometimes our route veered away, from such outstanding visions as the World's Largest Ketchup Bottle (we mention that we missed it (sniff) every single time we talk about Route 66 and going again "to see the parts we missed".  One of our decisions early on was not to go more than 6 miles off of our Route to see an Attraction.  Thus the tragedy of the Ketchup bottle.

We soon found that we couldn't see everything or we'd never leave Illinois.  It is packed. It celebrates Route 66.  Sorry these are a little wonky. The pages don't really fit on my scanner.

Next week, a selection of Pictures From Our Trip, Illinois. 

 

 

Read More About Route 66:

https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/route66/route66_1926_to_1945.html

 https://www.route66roadtrip.com/route-66-maps.htm 

 https://www.route66news.com/route-66-attractions/