5400 +

It started on Sunday June 19th and ended on Wednesday June 29th.  The total mileage was a little over 5400 miles in 10 days.  People always ask me why I drive across the country, or why don’t you just fly?  Here is why.

We left on Sunday night, the plan was to drive just a little past Vegas and then find a place to sleep for a few hours and then get back on the road so we could drive through Utah during the day.  Well, we drove a little too far, apparently the rules at Walmarts in Utah are different than anywhere else in the country.  You see, normally you can park your car or RV at Walmart and get some rest.  This was the first time ever where I saw 3 separate Walmart’s with “no overnight parking” signs!  There was a time when Walmart actually advertised that they allowed this.  We figured it was because of the number of campgrounds that were available in Utah or something like that.  So long story short, we drove until 5:30am before we found a place to stop for the “night”.

The coolest thing is that we ran into some friends along the way, they were driving up from Arizona back home to Washington State.  So we decided to all meet up and camp one night while in Utah.  This put us a little behind schedule but we just moved some of our travel plans and it all worked out for the better.  Why was it better?  Well, we were suppose to be in Nebraska on Tuesday, instead we were driving through Utah’s gorgeous landscape.  While we were in Utah, Nebraska was having HUGE thunderstorms and there were 2 tornadoes on the route we were planning on driving through!  So we missed those by a day!  We drive through Nebraska on a gorgeous Sunny day and into the night.

Wednesday we are in Iowa.  I would like to personally thank the highway patrol officer who tailgated me for several miles just waiting for me to do something wrong.  He then tried the old trick of pulling off into a rest stop and then coming back out to see if I would speed up!  Mr. Highway Patrolman….. it’s called “cruise control”.  Meanwhile cars are speeding by me, big rigs are going well over the speed limit past us but apparently they don’t have California license plates so they’re okay to drive through Iowa.

We end up in Michigan on Wednesday early evening.  Visit with family, and then Thursday we are off up to Mackinac Island where we are scheduled to photograph all weekend.  I hadn’t been there in years so it was fun to see the place again.

With narrowly missing thunderstorms and tornadoes on our way to Michigan we decided to take a different route back.  Basically following Route 66, but the new roads, didn’t have time to follow all of the old 66.  We did make one stop in Joplin, Missouri.  This is where an F5 tornado went through just about a month ago.  The destruction was unbelievable.  I can’t describe it.  But from destruction comes humanity.  Over 32,000 volunteers showed up to help with the clean up and to begin the restoration of Joplin.  There is hope!

The rest of the trip went off without a hitch, made it back to California safe and sound.  So why do I drive?  Because otherwise I would not have all of these new experiences, I would not have seen Joplin from the air, I would not have been tailgated by a cop and I would not have been able to meet up with friends I don’t get to see as often as I’d like.  I do it for the adventure it brings.  Everyone should go on at least one cross country road trip in their life, experience America for it’s good and bad.  My guess is that you will always find more good. 🙂