Road trip?" was all Pop had to ask a few months ago and now the always switched-ON city of Las Vegas was fast disappearing in the rearview mirror. The sun hadn't yet peeked over the mountain, but we were already rolling down the highway.
Long-distance drivers know the feeling, the desire to get out there on the highway and put at least a few hundred miles or so in their rearview. To drive out across land that's miles between houses, where rolling green waves of national forests and mountain crags appear over the horizon. Where you have unlimited visibility and you can see out across the desert to the horizon 360 degrees around you.
We had a full tank of gas; an electric cooler in the trunk full of Dr. Pepper and apples; a Ziploc plastic baggy of Root Beer Barrels hard candies and See's red-and-white-striped peppermints; and two or three road maps, one of which was of the whole country. On it was a raggedly drawn, green Magic Marker oval that ran through a large portion of the states that were going to be somewhat of our route.
We were ready.
We were setting out to circumnavigate the country, departing to do the Lap of America.
Eventually our trip would take us from Las Vegas, Nev., to Glenwood Springs, Colo.; to Lincoln, Neb.; to Marshall, Mich.; to Franklin Hills, Mich.; to DuBois, Pa.; to Washington, D.C.; to Spartanburg, S.C.; to Sun City Center, Fla.; to Mobile, Ala.; to Tyler, Texas; to Austin, Texas; to Lordsburg, N.M.; and finally back to Las Vegas.
Seventeen days, 7,000 miles and 22 states.
Could we stand each other for that long of a time? Together in the car? Or would it be a case of "By the time they got to Phoenix" they'll be flying home?
Was this trip going to be a Neal Cassady/Dean Moriarty "On the Road" blast across the continent (Cassady also drove "Furthur," the Merry Pranksters' psychedelic bus), or would we end up a Bob Hope and Bing Crosby On the Road to... movie?
As it turned out, it was a little of both.
WE PUT POP'Sbig cruising dark-gray metallic sharklike Chrysler 300 up on the Interstate, set the cruise control and let 'er eat.
With clear weather we pointed it northeast, away from the glitter and neon and out into the subtle red, orange, brown and beige tones of the desert. We were on a highway that you could see disappear miles ahead, over the horizon. The rhythm of the drive began to establish itself.
With the speed control set on 70 m.p.h., the cruising gray machine began to click off the miles. A faint blue line on the distant horizon becomes a high, flat-topped mesa and then scenery behind you.
I drove from the first fuel stop in Richfield, Utah, through beautiful canyon and mountain country where we could see snow on some of the distant peaks, to Green River, Colo., where we stopped for fuel again. Each day we both took a turn behind the wheel. Pop drove the most; it was his ride.
As a bit of information to Interstate travelers, Utah and quite a few other states are now using new marked and unmarked Hemi-powered Dodge Chargers as their state police highway patrol cars. By using our speed control's mechanical consistency and a speed only slightly above the limit, we sailed through every revenue-collection point the gendarmes had erected before us.
We drove on until about 5 o'clock in the afternoon. We stopped while there was still plenty of sunlight left; we never drove at night. Our halt that first night was 600 miles from our start that morning. We stopped at a Hampton Inn in Glenwood Springs, Colo., a ski town and the final resting place of John Henry "Doc" Holliday of Wyatt Earp and O.K. Corral fame. Throughout the entire trip we stayed at either Hampton Inns or the nearly identical Holiday Inn Express hostelries.
The next morning, as we came out of the Colorado mountains at Denver, the land got very flat, and that was the last we would see of hilly scenery until we got to Pennsylvania. We made our first deviation from the green line on the map when we took a more northerly route through Nebraska to avoid the storms and flooding that the news was telling us was happening in Kansas. We did notice that there was standing water in many of the fields along the high way.
When Pop orders his lease cars, he continues a habit he started years ago when he ordered his company or assigned cars: if it was an option, put it on. Consequently, he had all the bells and whistles except the Hemi engine; he went for the 3.5-liter V-6 instead.
We did have the Sirius satellite radio to entertain us, although only two buttons were set. One was set to what is called "Sirius Sinatra," a selection of Frank's best plus other 1940s and '50s standards.
The other button brought us all NASCAR talk radio, all the time.
While this would probably drive a normal person right over the edge, Pop at one time (actually for 10 years) was the factory connection of all the Dodge teams in NASCAR, and his comments were an interesting addition to now radio personality, retired driver and personal friend Buddy Baker's stories. As soon as the channel began to repeat a program, "Sirius Sinatra" would be selected. After all, even talk radio with people you know gets old after a while.
When we stopped that night in Lincoln, Neb., we had rolled another 634 miles under our tires.
AS WE DROVE across Nebraska and Iowa, with only farm silos, grain elevators and church steeples breaking up the flatness, Pop made the comment, "You aren't a very good driver, look at all the bugs you're hitting." It was true, both Nebraska and Iowa did seem to have an especially large population of beetles and other insects that chose our windshield to die on. Cleaning the windshield was a major project attended to at each gas stop.
Pop also commented that at 84 years old this was probably going to be his last major long-distance driving trip; from now on he'd take a plane, and this was the last time he was probably going to be seeing a lot of these people we were vis iting.
Sometime during the day we got a cellphone call from my brother, Ron, in Detroit to both check on our progress and remind us that when we got to Spartanburg, S.C., we were supposed to pick up a big screwdriver that he had left there.
I happened to be driving across Illinois, and as we approached Chicago the traffic definitely got heavier, especially the semi truck traffic.
We stopped that night in Marshall, Mich., after we'd put 700 miles behind us.
In three days, we'd almost gotten to our first major objective, mainly to get to my brother's house in Detroit, before the movers showed up and Ron had left on his way to his new house in Texas.
Stay tuned and see what adventures befall our two intrepid travelers next.
Will the car keep running? Will the weather stay clear? Will they run out of Dr. Pepper?
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