A Journey's End- Thoughts and Thank You's From The Tired Travelers Three

This trip across the United States took us along 10,000 miles of road, through 30 states (and one Canadian Province), to some of the greatest cities and parks in the world, and reunited us with many friends and family members.
A special thanks to:
Auntie Sue in SLC,
the Moravec family in Estes Park,
Liz and Dom in Denver,
Sarah and Jessica, Kecia and BJ in Chicago,
Uncle Mark and Camp Dudley in upstate NY,
Carmel "Gram" Davenport, Mike and Ray Rosenzweig, the Knights, and the Seamans in Maine,
Shannon and Dolinda, Deanna and Jack in NYC,
Lindsay and Evan in Savannah (by way of Lafayette),
Shannon and baby Tyler in Jacksonville,
the incomparable Dutch family (Rae-Rae, Stevo, Claire n Susan) in Valrico,
Mike, Susan, Alison and Jessica Boone, John, Kathy and Sprague Boone in Houston,
Uncle Chris and Aunt Carolee in Santa Fe (by way of Charleston),
Meg and Bryan in Tucson,
Kim in Long Beach,

You all made our trip special, trusty, inviting ports in the storm, sometimes literally!
Thanks to our parents, the Dutches and the Galloway-Longs, for their moral and paternal support, concern and loving interest in our adventure, we could not have done it without you!

As gas prices rise and the economy sinks, the future of the quintessential American road trip looks uncertain, but do it soon; this country is so diverse in people, landscape, cuisine and customs, so rich yet poor, daunting yet friendly, safe but filled with opportunity for adventure. We hope you have enjoyed our stories and pictures, and thank you for reading about our memories-in-the-making, and wish that everyone can experience the joy, frustration, awe and nostalgia that we were so lucky to have experienced.
Love to you all, our friends, family and readers,
Andy, Emily and Moose.

Last Stop- Long Beach, CA

Speeding across the desert into the veritable armpit of California- Blythe, Indio and the whole of Riverside County, we made our way into Long Beach in the late afternoon. We met up with Emily's friend Kim Johnson, a Marin transplant to Southern California, and dined at Open Sesame, perhaps the best Lebanese food we've ever had the pleasure of enjoying. Chicken schwarma, pitas with house-made hummus and Lebanese beer was perfect for this little beach town, the main strip of 2nd St. bustling even on a weeknight.
We found a sports bar down the way where the ladies could talk and Andy could drown his Sarah Palin sorrows in Belgian beer, Moose sleeping on the cool hardwood floor. Our hotel, found after having parted ways with Kim, was the most nondescript Comfort Inn one can imagine, right down to the remote control affixed permanently to the sidetable.
No Pictures of this stop, unfortunately, as scarcity of time, subjects and the fatigue of travel made it impossible.
It felt good to be back in California, and when we traveled in the morning up I-5, over the notorious grapevine and into the central valley by noon, we were in high spirits over our return.
We made it back into San Rafael in the late evening, to find a somewhat pungent refrigerator holding back a few moldy veggies, our comfortable bed ready with fresh sheets, and about $30 of laundry to do. The work of travel doesn't end even upon arrival home!
Moose guarding all our luggage as we take it up the elevator in shifts!

It's Pronounced TUCK-son... trust me. Tucson, AZ.

Breaking camp in the morning, we blasted south through the heart of Arizona to Tucson, tolling the miles with the audiobook of Comfort Food by Kate Jacobs- well written and capable of taking one's mind off crazy drivers, ubiquitous road construction and the glut of fast food chains that line the highways of the west.

The view from our hotel just outside downtown Tucson, the Omni Tucson National Golf Resort, was a mix of startlingly vibrant rolling greens dotted with sand traps that were ironic by the sweeping desert and jagged Catalina mountains that wrapped around the valley. By far the swankiest of all our hotels, we were the youngest guests by about 20 years, a guess we assessed by the number of jerky-tanned, cigar chomping middle-aged men clad in Tommy Bahama shorts and scintillating gold jewlery flanked by their bleach-haired, surgery-enhanced wives/girlfriends/mistresses. Not that any of that could detract from the opulent beauty and grace of the place. We checked in, and immediately decided to stay an extra night, not only as a break from the road in a restful resort (after the dirt of the canyon's campground) but also to buy us more time with our newly married friends, Meg and Bryan, who's wedding we'd attended in Maine mere weeks before.
We caught up with them at their apartment in Tucson, and made our way to a popular local old-timey restaurant, El Charro, known for their traditional Mexican cuisine and long tequila list.
A few more drinks at a local bar on the strip populated with the bike-riding students of the local university, and it was time for bed, as Meg and Bryan had school the next morning (she in Masters of Public Health, he in the doctoral program for Hydrogeology- a right pair of smarties!).
Em and I slept in late, the large king bed a needed respite after tenting it before. We rose as the temperature did, slowly and without purpose. While waiting for school to end for our friends, we lounged by the pool, Andy occasionally dipping and reading the paper in the shallow end, Emily and Moose reading People and US under the fan in the small cabanas lining the pool. A late lunch of club sandwiches and chicken fingers completed the morning, before we headed into town to go for a drive into the mountains with Meg and Bryan.






The broad valley below the Catalinas bcame dotted with lights as the sun fell rapidly away, and we descended back the winding trail to town in search of pizza. As it was, we discovered Mama's Pizza, and the "large" pizza that we could barely fit into the back of the car- the diameter was in the vicinity of 2ft, making it a pizza fit for 9, to be consumed by 4.
We enjoyed the takeout and beers back in the hotel, talking and laughing until it was finally time for the scholars and the travelers alike to retire for the night.

Für Europäer Nummer ein Campingplatz Mather! South Rim, GCNP, AZ.

After the bone-dry, scrub desert of New Mexico's northern plateaus, we made our way west to the Grand Canyon, to our reserved site at Mather campground, one of the National Parks system's largest campgrounds. Surrounded by what seemed to be the entire fleet of RVAmerica's caravans, all manned by Europeans vacationing in the land of the weak dollar, we set up out tent for the last time on the trip. Andy and Moose made camp, while Emily drove to the Canyon's gift shop/grocery store/cafeteria for wood, meat and cookies.
The butterscotch scent of the Ponderosas blended with the woodsmoke, layered with the smell of cooking sausage and beans, to make a perfect olfactory contribution to the night.
The next morning was a lazy one, spent sleeping in, finishing the night's porknbean plates, organizing the luggage and deciding how much of the increasing heat cold be beared.
As it was, we made our way to the Rim Trail, 2 miles or so of which is paved, running literally along the rim of the canyon's gaping yaw. Moose attracted the attention of the visiting Euros, most of whom reached deep into their fannypacks for tiny cameras to document this wooly beast.

Moose, nonplussed by the attention, was more concerned with what he must surely have considered to be the biggest damn hole he'd ever seen, and a little too close for comfort.
After walking in the heat, trying to grasp the magnitude of this many millions of years-old marvel, and trying to decide if the food at the cafeteria could really be any worse than that of the nicer-looking establishments in the park. We decided to scope out the grocery part of the store while munching mediocre sandwichs, plotting out hamburger, beer and wine dinner. Once a mental list was agreed upon, we decided to beat the heat with tickets to the most watched IMAX movie in history, Grand Canyon. In the 34 minute show, Emily and Andy both had small panic attacks: the swooping arial shots that plummet into the depths of the gorge were a little much for him, while she found the scenes of rafting the Colorado in replicas of the little wooden boats Maj. John Wesley Powell and his crew used in 1869 frighteningly real. A definite must see, especially when the weather dominates one's experience.
We made our way back to the camp store, stocking up on burger, cheese, wood and beverages, before returning to camp for an early dinner and lights out in preparation for the day's drive ahead.

Teddy Rooseveldt's Big Hole in the Ground: Grand Canyon National Park

La Fiesta: Santa Fe, NM

Having felt the heat of the Texas sun, and having enjoyed the splendor and ease of the Omni's in both Houston and Austin, we three travelers decided to bypass the single night of camping Palo Duro State Park (a little south of Amarillo) and take a more direct route to the Santa Fe, stopping for a brief sleep in Clovis, (a little west of Muleshoe...) New Mexico.
We rose fairly early for the jaunty trip through somewhat pretty scrubland north, making good time on a desert-windswept two-lane passing small hamlets and Native pueblos (edified with more double-wides than adobe).

"Whoever designed Santa Fe must have been drunk, and riding backwards on a mule." Will Rogers' poke at the circutous, similarly-named alleys and round-about strips called streets came to mind as we wound our way off the highway and into downtown Santa Fe. A brief check-in with the Hotel Santa Fe (majority owned by a local tribe who know style and panache), and then we worked our way to the High Road to Taos, a scenic route north that leads ultimately to Taos Pueblo, with smaller, familial pueblos along the way, like the village of Chimayo.











Chimayo is centered around the Santuario de Chimayo, famed for the healing El Posito (holy hole of sand) in the chapel's oldest wing. Built in the early 1800's as a Spanish Catholic church for the local farmers and converted natives, the sanctuary now acts as the end point for the most walked pilgrimage in the United States. Tens of thousands of believers walk to the church, many seeming to leave their crutches and oxygen tubes behind, cured by the sands of Chimayo.







We met Em's Uncle Chris and Aunt Caralee (camping in the Southwest for several weeks and serendipitously in the Santa Fe area the same time as us) in Chimayo, where they were staying that night. We decided to meet up at the plaza de Santa Fe the next day for lunch, art museums and the native vendors who line along the sidewalk.









We enjoyed the day's festivities, as well as a jaunt to the Institute of American Indian Art, as a modern, cponceptual art gallery called SITE Santa Fe, about as different as two art galleries can be.



The four of us (Moose kindly waited in the hotel room with I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry on the HBO to keep him happy) dined in one of Santa Fe's oldest restaurants, El Farol. in an old adobe home. One can tell the authenticity of an adobe dwelling by the sheer thickness of the mud walls; the doorways at El Farol were framed by smoothed plaster over bricks at least 10 inches thick. Tapas, concieved and flavored with the mixed heritage of traditional Spain and New Mexico, with sangria and a sugared fig dessert, was the perfect finishing meal to our brief foray into the Southwest.

We awoke early the next day for our long-ish drive to the Grand Canyon.

Driving Through Goat Country: West Texas Pictorial

Why Austin is so F-ing Cool!

Staying at the Omni Downtown really gives Austin, and Texas for that matter, some perspective; The 20-story glass Austin Centre houses both the Omni- a lavish hotel and conference center- as well as offices for city workers, financial planners and other white-collar movers and shakers, but amidst the busy suits and polished hotel staff, below the marble columns and modern glassworks, sits a little plaque explaining the history of that site. There, in 1839, the residence of the President of the Republic of Texas was built, only to burn to the ground several years later. Next the first residence of the Governor of the state of Texas was built there, only to be replaced a short time later with a more opulent mansion further out of the growing town. Now, glass walls shining in the hot Texan sun, heads of state and celebrities stay in the air-conditioned, fashionably decorated suites, most passing the plaque and unaware of the site's history.
Texas, Austin in particular, always throws one for a loop with its quirkiness, while at the same time enchanting with southern charm and easy, good times.

Our first day was spent at the town lake, a large body of water that effectively splits the town in half. A long bike n hike trail circles the lake and its several bridges (including Congress St. bridge, home to the largest bat colony in the US) lend Austin a jovial, active feel as runners and dog owners take in the sights and relax in the cooling evenings.
Moose, however, found little enjoyment as he was once again thrust into the midst of the dog park and Andy's vain attempts to get him to swim. He much preferred having his picture taken with personal hero, Stevie Ray Vaughn.


We enjoyed all that famous 6th St. had to offer- live music, exciting food, lots and lots of Lone Star (that great Texas lager) for two days, enjoying the Whole Food's landmark store, tasty homemade barbeque at Lambert's, an Austin institution, and Chuy's, a Tex-Mex mecca.
Alas, having traded for two more day's at Casa de Los Dutch in Florida, we had to depart this wonderful city al too soon, heading through infamous west Texas.

FLA to Austin, TEX via Houston

Gustave, the Teutonic storm that bore down on the Gulf Coast, was not on our minds when we decided to grace the Dutch household with our presence for several extra days. The morning we left (ok, so it was the afternoon) we were bound for Mobile, Alabama, right smack-dab in the middle the hurricane's projected path. Mobile, not exactly a vacation destination, had our requirements for a stop-over night: 1) a Subway 2)free HBO 3)a middling-to-decently clean bed.
We awoke 14 minutes after 4am, right as all hell broke loose and Souther coastal residents took to the roads northward. Any other time, driving Interstate 10 would have taken maybe 7 hours from industrial Mobile to Uber-industrial Houston- with that route closed to westbound traffic from where we were, we instead wove our way north along backroads, inching east across Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana for 14 hours, through Podunk towns, piney villages and odd, economically depressed hamlets barely worth the cement and rebar it took to make them.
Finally, having crossed into Texas and turned south through Jasper (about as nice as its reputation may have you believe), we arrived in Houston in the evening in time to meet up with part of Andy's Texas clan, the Boones.
Mike (Andy's Granny's son) and his wife Susan, their daughter Allison and her husband Homer, Mike's brother John and his wife Katherine (totting young Sprague), Susan's mom and brother, and John's college friend Ted all welcomed us with a feast fit for a royal court. We ate and laughed, talking with the other young Boone gal Jessica in Chile via internet videoconferencing, enjoying the comfort that family always engenders.
We retired to the Omni (a resplendent business hotel in the Heart of the Energy Corridor of Houston) for a nice night's rest before hauling to Austin, our Texas haven, in the morning.

Susan, Mike, Moose n Em.

Andy n Allison.

Lil' Sprague.