2000 Miles...Pretty Much (photo heavy, fair warning!)

According to Google Maps, the drive from California to Kansas, fastest route, should take 1 day and 3 hours. I managed to make it take 4 1/2 days instead, since I was actually driving the vehicle and didn't have a clone drone companion to help spell me through California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and most of Kansas. There's a lot of road out there!

The mountains, I've found, after a few years of driving or being driven around in them, are beautiful. But I'm a flatlander who grew up in Florida and after attempts to think differently, my conclusion is that mountain driving is just not my thing. Giant vehicles hurtling themselves around blind, twisting, ascending and descending curves make my hands slippery and my heart pound. Where is the horizon? Somewhere up the road. 

Beautiful Lake Tahoe

Every curve has a surprise potentially awaiting.
Usually road work.

No, these aren't the Rockies yet, just rocky.

One thing about a long road trip is the incredible changes in the land being traveled. Nevada has salt flats, Wyoming has green outcroppings of geological makings, Utah tosses up spires of whatever they are made out of. 

The salt flats of Nevada

 Using my camera rather than my phone allowed for photos on the fly. In some of the most dramatic country I couldn't spare a hand for the camera, as traffic would bunch up at some crazy speeds, requiring all eyes and hands focused in concentration. I swear it wasn't tears I was wiping out of my eyes. 

It's beautiful. Scary to drive (for me) but very beautiful.

Maybe everyone has a Donner experience. Approximately six miles before I got to this monument, I was in a tight, four laned line of a lot of semi's and cars, road work cones on either side of us making us a one lane, with cliff edges on the other side of that. Gripping the wheel white knuckled, suddenly the semi right, and I mean right in front of me PULLED OUT TO PASS THE OTHER SEMI in front of him. It was like a bad movie as I slow-motion swerved toward the cones and cliff edge to avoid being scraped off the road by a wall of semi. Obviously, that didn't happen, and I didn't soil my pants either, but I'm pretty sure I was hyper-ventilating until I reached the next place I could pull off and calm down. Of course it was Donner Pass. What else?

That was really the only super scary moment in almost 2000 miles. Not bad!

Had they only known that six miles up the road was
a rest area! With a phone! History will never know
how things might have been so different.

I also decided that everyone else on the road was completely confident and relaxed. 

Car camping definitely brought the Turtle to mind; her bed, her kitchen, her clean bathroom! But, as last time, out in the middle of nowhere's bigger towns, I had to appreciate WalMart's overnight camping policy. This was the most camper friendly parking lot I'd seen, with maybe 15 campers and trailers tucked up for the night. All felt safe and the Beasty wasn't at all uncomfortable with the seats down and sleeping bag, pillow and blankets. Until 4:30 in the morning when this semi came in and parked 4 feet away from me, roaring generator and all. 

Hey buddy! Semis go over THERE. 

After getting an early coffee, it was easy to get back on the road again.

What I tried to capture with a quickly grabbed camera
is not always the most apparent in the photo.
I was going for the swirled cone here. 

A rest area that was just as hot as it looks along what is called
The California Trail.

My admiration for the fortitude and/or insanity of the pioneers who traveled this land to reach California increased along the way. And for those who chose to stop before reaching that fabled land? I get it. Sort of. 

Barren stretch of waterless alkali wasteland indeed.
This is where the words of Phil Collins kept making the rounds in my head.
"Please get me out of here, I'll do anything!"

It's amazing how long you can drive along flat, wide open spaces, feeling them going on forever, when BAM, suddenly you are in the mountains again. 

Driving the Beasty instead of the Turtle changed everything. For one thing, I'd probably still be on the road if I was driving the Turtle. Guilty thoughts of betrayal went hand in hand with increased speed. One thing for sure, driving the Turtle is for meandering, not trying to get from here to there in any compressed time frame. Of course, I didn't exactly fit the time frame even with speed a reality. 

That is water, way over there. And not much traffic to worry about.

The profound vision of one person can, literally, change the whole game. 

I liked the name Stonehouse better

It'll be fun!

This was in Nevada, after the smoke from the California fires
were a ways behind me. It's hard to see but flames were shooting high up
in the air and no one was around. 

Nature does a bit of roadside decoration

The railroad tracks I rode on last year ran alongside the highway on and off
for many miles. Oh, I remembered it well.

Here come the mountains again!

I don't remember why I took this photo.

Nice solar panels!!

Up in the mountains there are a LOT of places to pull over and take a breath. I was really surprised, and took a lot of breaths. 

Am I the only person who thinks this is maybe not the
best way to advertise your town?

Yep, that's salt

That thing with four things on it? I don't know what it was, the four
things were ball-like and it was the tallest thing on the road for miles

That is not snow, it is salt. Piles and miles of salt.

Salt flats, then green in the hills. And incredible stretches of nothing but that. America is huge. 

The green in the hills...why? PFM, unless some geologist tells me different.

I never saw an Amtrak train but I did see a few trains moving goods across the country. I'm not sure why this one was so vivid, but circling the hills, it looked like a toy train set-up. 

Taking a photo of the 'new state!' signs is something I couldn't do for any place but Kansas. Because they show up in really weird spots; going up a mountain pass, speeding along a mountain pass, being in bumper to bumper traffic on an interstate slowed by road work. 

Before entering Kansas, I left Interstate 80 to go down the edge of the Rockies before joining Interstate 70. Driving along, the voice of She Who is Usually Obeyed said, turn left. This was not an interstate exit. This looked like the exit you take to go to Auntie Bell's farm house. Owl Canyon Road? What? 

A dirt road, a really BAD dirt road, literally in a canyon was my route? There were a couple of vehicles along with me, one in front, one behind, who also had listened to the voice (because strangers in this strange land would not have voluntarily taken this way to go) so I figured, if we all ran out of gas maybe one of us would have some beef jerky to share before the vultures found us. 

On and on, for maybe 10 miles, we wended our way to hopefully somewhere. Then, suddenly, there was another interstate! We were saved! Hooray! 

Yep.

Just another cute bus with a nice little family
cruising the highways and by-ways.

Old and new

 The last rest area I stopped at had this on the walkway. The long journey almost over, mountain induced sweaty palms long behind me, it was just what I wanted to see. Because love really does make all the rest of the good things in life happen. Get your love on today!!

After the last few days here in Topeka, it all almost seems like someone else took that drive. Who is that woman? I'm glad I did it, I'm glad it's done. Next time I see the mountains on that stretch will be from railroad tracks or 30,000 feet in the air. All you need is love.

Have a traveling Thursday. Do something telling.