After spending a few days at Sarah’s place in East Texas (Nice house sis!) I headed west. It took 2 days of driving to actually get out of Texas, gives you a sense of the scale of Texas!
My first real stop was Roswell, New Mexico. The people there are pretty nice and sociable, I didn’t run into any real crackpots (probably all hiding in the desert) but the town definitely thrives off the UFO thing. There are a lot of great places around town with an alien/ufo/scifi theme without really overdoing it. My favorite place was Farley’s Food & Fun Pub, the entire bar top consists of older motherboards and expansion cards encased in glass or something. I saw quite a few Apple II, 286, 386 and Pentium Pro motherboards along with various expansion cards that I recognized all while watching the football game and enjoying drinks and food (The Fajitas were delicious and the portions were huge). The only bad thing about this town is that nobody seems to sell post cards!
After Roswell I decided to head to White Sands (the location of the first man made nuclear detonation!), the area is still very high security (roadside thermal, visual spectrum, radiation and other scanners I couldn’t identify) but there is an excellent view of the entire area as you pass through the mountains into Las Cruces on US-70 westbound. Unfortunately the public isn’t allowed anywhere near the actual detonation site or the Trinity Obelisk.
While traveling to my next destination the signs at a rest stop informed me that the NRAO Very Large Array (As seen in Contact when Jodi Foster is sitting on her car with headphones listening for aliens) was relatively close so I modified my route appropriately. I got there in the middle of the night but there was nearly a full moon and a clear night. I got some excellent photos before heading west through the Cibola National Forest and Gila National Forest on US-60, I averaged about 40 MPH due to all the deer and elk that just hang out in the middle of the road, after my recent deer strike it was quite scary.
After spending the night on the side of the road somewhere just across the border in Arizona I drove through Petrified Forest State Park (ooh, pretty), Flagstaff (nice town, beautiful landscape) to the Grand Canyon.
The drive itself was pretty amazing, you drive from an elevation of about 3,500 ft in New Mexico to 6,900 ft in Flagstaff. The route out of Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon takes you as high as 8000 ft before dropping back down to 7000ft at the rim of the Grand Canyon. I definitely had one of those airplane headaches by the time I got there. It’s impossible to describe what it’s like, there are places where you can walk out onto some very precarious positions (no railing, one wrong step and you’re falling 3,600 ft to your death), it really is breathtaking. I recommend sticking to the areas with safety railing if you’re afraid of heights.
The trip from the Grand Canyon to Las Vegas is fun, I drove it at night and it’s downhill all the way to the state line, a drop of 6000ft. The view of Las Vegas at night coming in from the mountains is pretty amazing, you can see the lights in the sky from at least 100 miles away but the actual city is hidden until you make it through Black Canyon (where the Hoover Dam is).
So here I am in Las Vegas, it’s pretty much exactly how I remember it. The weather is excellent, drinking is pretty much free, the hotels are cheap (currently staying for $14/night, thanks hotwire.com), and the night life is great. One friend showed up in town for this weekend and some other friends will be here over the next three weeks. Looking forward to basking in the warmth here until the frozen tundra of Minnesota warms up again.
Sitting at a rest stop on the Indian Nations Turnpike at 3:30am about to pass out. I’m heading down to Texas for a few days to renew my drivers license (new picture required, boo!) and to see my sister Sarah’s new place. After that I’m headed west, I plan on stopping at all the usual attractions (particularly the Grand Canyon) on my way to Las Vegas where I’ll be meeting quite a few friends for Halloween and my birthday, woot!
I did meet an awesome girl in Minnesota 2 weeks before I left that I’ll be flying out to Las Vegas so we can hang out for my birthday, I’m almost tempted to return to Minnesota early as much as it’s going to suck in the middle of winter =(
Still waiting it out in Minnesota for my insurance company to finish repairing my van and reimburse me for the stolen property. Minnesota is cold and crappy as usual, at least there are some decent people here to make it manageable.
Update 10/6/2011: Flew down to Orlando, picked up the van, drove back to Minnesota, hit a deer, wasted another week with my van in the shop again, got it back, leaving next week!
Daytona Beach was great. I saw the last space shuttle launch, I got a great tan, I met a ton of great people (shout out to The Tavern!), and the weather is pretty much as good as it gets.
My van was stolen but the police have located it, my insurance company is picking it up to determine how much damage was done and what’s missing so I can file a claim for the expensive bits that are missing.
Woo, after 20 hours of driving (+4 sleeping) I’ve traveled from St Louis to beautiful Tampa. Spent the day on Apollo beach reading a book in my camping chair, enjoying the sun, breeze and scenery.
My friend Sam from Minnesota is going to be in town tonight with the band he plays in and another friend is in town on vacation that I wasn’t even aware of.. Chilling at the bar now waiting for them to show up — should be fun!
I’m handling some family issues that involved traveling through Joplin, MO to pick up one of my sisters. The destruction there is just jaw dropping. I’ve driven that sister down to Texas and we’re now at another sisters place until the end of the week or so.
It’s pretty warm out (95F – 102F) most days but the humidity is low and this is forested area. I’ve been sitting outside for hours with my laptop without getting hot. Quite the contrast to walking outside in Minnesota and instantly being drenched!
So, I was in Joplin last week, Minneapolis this week. Yesterday Joplin was hit by a tornado that wiped out the hotel I stayed in, the gas stations I filled up at, the Wal-Mart I shopped at and the house one of my sisters was living in. I was finally able to get confirmation from a friend of my sisters that she’s alive and well. The current death toll is 90, with more expected once they’re able to go through the debris.
A few hours before this a tornado hit Minneapolis on the northern side, about a mile from where I was staying. Fortunately that one only killed one person and damaged a relatively small area (compared to Joplin).
I created a nifty little widget on the left that shows my current location, and the weather. I track my location via Google Latitude then use a perl script to find out where I am, locate a nearby zip code, and present that to a standard weather.com weather widget. Pretty nifty and I don’t really mind if people know what city I’m in =)
This is really the kind of bar where the owner said “fuck you, I’m doing what I want”. It’s cozy on the inside, hasn’t changed a bit since the 70s, juke box is free because it’s filled with music the owner wants to hear. The patio is huge, lots of picnic tables and fire pits and a nice bar type area (stools and a bar height counter).
Definitely glad I chose to stop here. The people are typical Texans.. intelligent, social and fun to talk to
