A Very Rare Road Trip...
Click on photo to enlarge
6 A.M. tomorrow morning Peggy and I are leaving on one of our very rare road trips.
My 81 year-old mother recently moved to a little town in northern Utah, near the Idaho border, and I'm feeling very obligated to go visit her while I can.
Our daughter Jamie lives in the Lake Tahoe area and her brother left an old car around here that I put in running order for her, and we are delivering it on Saturday, which is her 22nd birthday.
As much as I personally dislike using cars, and infernal combustion engines, these obligations seem unavoidable, so we are combining them into one trip. We rented our friend and neighbor Cheri's car (she's disabled and rarely drives), and Peggy will follow me in that to Lake Tahoe, where we'll drop Jamie's car off (she hasn't been able to get away from her job to come pick it up), and then Peggy and I will drive on to Utah and visit with my mother for a few days.
In these serious times of global warming, climate change and resource wars, I don't take driving an automobile lightly, and the last time we took a road trip was in the summer of 2004, for a much needed music festival and visit to my other daughter in the Bay Area (although we did have to make many car trips to the hospital after Jimmy's accident).
Still, we don't own a car, and we don't drive in our daily lives, shunning automobiles as if they were some kind of fatal disease.
However, when we do find it unavoidable to drive, we make the most of it, and this time will be no exception.
I dislike freeways as much as cars, so we've mapped out a route for our trip that is, you might say, freeway-phobic, as if those damned superhighways carried the bubonic plague, or something worse.
Consequently, if you are looking for us in the next week or so, we'll be spending much of it exploring 'The Loneliest Highway In America', Highway 50 across Nevada, exploring geological formations, ghost towns, hot springs, bee-hive charcoal ovens, sand dunes, and much breathtaking scenery, flora, fauna and history, so I certainly hope this lonesome road lives up to its reputation (see photo below).
I'll get back to blogging around Monday, October 30th, and in the meantime please pardon my exhaust, I sincerely apologize.
But I do hope to have some nice pictures to share when we get home.
Click on photo to enlarge
Labels: automobiles, vacation
posted by Jim at 11:43 PM
12 Comments:
Hi Jim and Peggy,
I hope you both have a nice and safe trip to Utah. Send my warm regards to your dear Mother. And a Very Happy Birthday to Jamie!
I am looking forward to see the pictures!
Have fun, you two! It'll be like a honeymoon.
wishing you great photos, solitude on the road and good memories
Sounds like you will be seeing some wild and lonely places - beautiful. Enjoy!
wishing you a good trip, safe travelling
blessings
choke choke, GASP! how could you! I am reporting you to the Gore patrol, who will thrash you severly for wasting precios amounts of dinosaur poop! ( smiling)
I admire your willingness to give up cars, but there are necessary at times. Safe travels...
Mothers do require visiting. such a good son you are.
The loneliest roads are the best roads to travel on.
May you return renewed and refreshed!
(with lots of lovely photos :)
Awe you are leaving us again Jim, and so soon after your other long blogging absence. Boohoo. I look forward to seeing many pictures of your trip when you return and as always will miss you while you are gone.
I don't eat chocolate cake everyday, but I enjoy it when I do.
To shun cars but still use them occassionally (and really, if there were a train or bus truly available, I'd bet you'd take them -- we've lamented many times how there simply aren't options for us in the boonies to keeping one vehicle even if only used very occassionally -- which we use them more than that but we're always going in the direction of using less and less) . . . I'm having trouble finding fault here.
Have a great time! Be safe!
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