On The Road With Bob

Well, nothing left but a short commute. ...

I hadn't intended to drive this far today, but it just kind of worked out that way. It's a long story, one that I'll tell in the morning. I'm beat.

I spent the morning traversing Nevada via US 50, "The Loneliest Highway" as it's known. A pretty enjoyable and amazing ride. Once.

I finally planned a more manageable day for myself, and reach Ely by 5:30. After the morning's visit to Meadow Valley Wash, I drove north and visited Great Basin National Park. Cleck below for pics and details.

Wheee! I just got back from the 40-mile round trip to Elgin, along the Meadow Valley Wash. This trip is at risk of becoming "Bob chases trains across America," though it wasn't meant to work out that way.

Anyway....

I'll be darned, the Verizon 'net connection works here. It works really well, too. In fact, it worked most of the way over from Cedar City.

Heading south for a bit toward Caliente and as far south as the road goes from there. The area experienced some washouts earlier this year, so I hear the roads got badly damaged. Anyway, we'll watch some trains for a bit, then head back north toward Ely and Great Basin Park.

"Utah!" say the license plates. I'm wishing i had been smart enough to stay somewhere else. It turned out that this was a little too far to go in a day, and the last couple of hours were done after dark. Not bad driving, but I kept thinking about the scenery I was missing. After another nice morning in Colorado, I had to rush across Navajo country and souther Utah to get here. Kind of a shame, that's beautiful country in its own way.

Sunday's itinerary takes me into Nevada; we'll hit Caliente and spend some time along the Meadow Valley Wash, a scenic spot on the railroad that I saw from the train 20 years ago and haven't made it back since. Then we'll head up to Ely, and visit Great Basin National Park. It's only 200 miles, but you either stay in Ely or you drive another couple hundred. Which I might do.

Anyway, click below for pics from today's travels.

I did just as I said, retraced my route back up US 500 to Ridageway, then back down a nearly parallel route through Telluride and on down to Cortez. The fall colors were amazing again, I guess I just stumbled into the peak weekend. That's probably why the hotels are full.

Coming south from telluride, you descend until you reach the Dolores River, and follow that down into Cortez. At the start of the ride, it's mountainous and colorful, and as you come out of the mountains, the scenery changes to more of the high desert look. An interesting transformation in the space of 50 miles.

Anyway, I gotta rack up some miles. Probably no more updates until this evening, but lots of colorful pics will be forthcoming then.

The fall colors here are too good to just drive away from, so what I'm going to do is double back up US 550 to Ridgeway, then down rt. 145 through Telluride, then Cortez, to Four Corners, through Navajo country, then through Page, AZ, and on up to Cedar City. I made a reservation in Cedar City and sunset isn't until 7:30 there, so even if it takes a while, it should be a good day.

The RoadCam should be working pretty well this morning, so check it in about an hour, and it should be pretty good for a couple of hours after that. If it cuts out, give it fifteen minutes, and then it should come back.

Finally had a chance to upload some pics from today. Click below to see 'em. There's about 1MB of pics there, so it may take a while to load.

By the way, I'll be uploading some bigger versions eventually, but these will have to do for now.

All the hotels in Durango are full. Just about. I was reduced to checking the questionable places on the edge of town. I tried a couple that had vacancy signs. They were full. The Adobe Inn was full. the Budget Inn was full. There was another place that had a vacancy sign, but it was so scary looking I just didn't bother.

So, of all things, I went online, and managed to make a reservation at a Super8. It was on the edge of town, but the other edge. So I have a place to stay.

Where to go from here is another question... I got way behind my route today, so I'll have to spend some time rethinking it. Might try a different route across Utah and Nevada, I don't know. The plan for Saturday was to cross Utah to Cedar City via the Burr Trail. Not sure that'll be feasible. We'll see. Colorado was so amazing, I might just head back the way I came. Wouldn't be the first time.

Pics to come, I promise.

1 - The Black Canyon is amazing.

2 - Fall colors might be better than anything I saw in 47 years of living in New England

3 - I'm way behind schedule. Currently in Montrose, I'll probably only go to Durango today.

You'll just have to wait for pictures. But there will be plenty.

I'm now in Hotchkiss, Colorado, which seems to have Verizon access. It doubt it will last long.

Today, of course, would be John Coltrane's and ray Charles' birthday, and it still is Bruce Springsteen's. It used to be mine until about ten years ago, when I caught on to the fact that they do you no good.

Some amazing scenery this morning, but you'll have to wait until later to see it. Beautiful fall colors south of Carbondale and on up through McLure Pass. Next major stop is Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, then south through Ouray and Silverton to Durango.

Okay, one quick upload before I get back on the road:



Damn, I just heard a train whistle.

Whew, what a day! Not many miles, but hard work. Especially since some of the roads turned out to be unpaved. My mapping program does that to me sometimes. But it worked out well, I got into Glenwood Springs before dark, and I hope to be asleep soon. But first....

Just a little update, in case I lose the 'net connection. It's a shame that the roadcam has such a wide angle lens, because the front range of the Rockies is looming ahead, and on the cam it looks like a little berm.

Anyway, I'm just outside of Canon City, CO. The route for today takes us through Salida, Hoosier Pass, Breckenridge, Loveland Pass, Winter Park, and then along the Colorado River to Glenwood Springs. Enjoy.

Update from Salida, 10:15 am... I lost the 'net connection along the Arkansas River, but it was a great ride. Click "Continue Reading" for a couple of cam pics.

Photo highlights from Wednesday's drive from Clovis, NM to Pueblo, CO.

This morning, I driove west from Clovis to Belen, NM, following the route of the Santa Fe railroad. Absoultely beautiful country, great roads, it was a blast. Unfortunately, I was out of cell phone range most of the way, but here are a couple of (quickly-chosen) frames from the RoadCam.

A few pics and comments from the trip up to this point. Click below for the full article.

Well, I lost the Internet connection about an hour before Amarillo, and just got reconnected in Clovis, new Mexico. You didn't miss much. It's only 3:30 local time, I've already checked in for the night, so I plan to upload a bunch of pics after dinner.

Tomorrow, we head into slightly more scenic country, first heading west and following the railroad to Albuquerque, then heading north through Santa Fe, Raton Pass, and up toward Pueblo, Colorado. Thursday we'll hit some mountains.

Well, it's morning, and I still have a car.

A reminder that I'm now on Central Time, so the timestamp on the RoadCam might not match the time on your clock.

Today should be fairly easy, just 400 miles, ending in Clovis, NM. Unless I decide to go farther.

A long day, I drove more than 800 miles, but it went well. Aside from the closed section of road in Georgia, I didn't run into any delays or traffic, and made good time. I wasn't planning on going this far, but the Red Sox game came on the radio at 7:00, so it was easy to drive another 3 hours. Finally, I was getting tired, so I decided to call it a day. That's when the trouble started....

Well, so far so good. I can see that the roadcam drops out for long periods, especially across Mississippi I didn't have good coverage. Now I'm in the middle of nowhere, 40 miles east of Monroe, Louisiana, and it works. Anyway, you haven't missed much; today I'm concentrating on racking up the miles.

Didn't see much hurricane damage. I was sorely tempted to head south and take in some of the sights along I-10, but it was just too far out of the way.

Hopefully I'll get some time later this evening to upload some pics and that sort of stuff.

What was I talking about? When you have a GPS, there's always an alternate route. I tried to follow the detour, but that was just futile. To top it off, there was construction on the detour. SO I finally turned around and found a route to the south, it was about 20 miles, and I'm back at I-20. Of course, there was construction on that route, too, but it wasn't too bad.

Last night, I was on I-285 in Atlanta, and there was a sign saying "Left 4 lanes closed ahead." But it was only a 3-lane highway at that point. I guess 2 or 3 more lanes were merging from the right. That particular delay wasted about a half hour to go three miles.

So, I think this means that every road in Georgia is officially closed for construction.

Well this is a new one for me. I got up before dawn so I could get out of Atlanta before rush hour traffic. That part worked okay. As I approached the Alabama border, I see some construction signs, "left lane closed ahead." I reach the point where the left lane is closed, and there's another sign.... I-20 westbound closed ahead. Use US78."

So, I'm now sitting on some side road, stopped in traffic, and it looks like about 20 miles of this before I can get going again. Presumably, some genius truck driver flipped his rig on I-20, that seems to happen a lot in the south. At any rate, if anybody out there can find what what caused this mess, drop me a note.

Seriously, traffic is NOT moving. But there seem to be no alternate routes. Just gonna have to waste a couple of hours here, I guess.

Well, it's Sunday night, and I'm here visiting with friends. Tomorrow, the push west begins in earnest. Over the next couple of days I'll be making a beeline for Clovis, New Mexico. Why, you ask?

I've visited 47 of the 48 contiguous states, and wouldn't you know it, the one that I'm missing is Louisiana. So, Katrina or no, I pretty much had to include it in the route. A little checking around showed that the Interstates are all open, and I considered taking the ride along I-10 so I could provide some of those devastation photos that you crave. But the problem was that I don't know how far I'd have to go before I found a motel room. And if I had to sleep in a rest area, I might be attacked by desperate cannibalistic survivors. No thanks.

So I'm taking I-20, clipping along the northern part of the Bayou State, checking it off my list, and moving on. The real fun begins after we cross Texas, so one way or another I'm going to try and hit Clovis in time to get a good night's sleep Tuesday. That's about 1200 miles away, so it'll be two days of pretty much nothing but highway driving, I-20 from Atlanta to Sweetwater, Texas. After that, I'll only use the Interstates when there's no alternative.

Bob McCarty demanded that I allow comments on my posts, and I'd like to. But there are issues comments from of spammers and other undesirables such as Yankees fans. I just won't have time to moderate comments while I'm on the road. Then I hit on an idea... I'll make Bob a moderator, and he can comment all he wants. I haven't told him yet, so don't spoil the surprise. Seriously, I'll enable comments as an experiment, and hopefully Bob can help keep things manageable.

That's it for now, tune in again.

You know you've driven the Turnpike too many times when you find yourself making a point to stop at the Okahumpka Service Plaza, because you remember that the Dunkun' Donuts there carries blueberry filled doughnuts.

But for some reason, blueberry filled doughnuts are disappearing from all the DD's in south Florida. Just one more reason to move on.

In March of 1991, my friend Fred "Bubba' Pattison was reporting from the 12 Hour Race at Sebring, and was struck ill. Click below to read his report, filed on the Compuserve Motor Sports Forum.

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I was just packing stuff, and I came across my collection of National Parks maps from earlier journeys.