Vacation: two weeks in a mini-van with those you thought you loved.
A Dodge Caravan is an extremely inefficient weapon for hunting deer.
Even an insurance company that actually provides quite good service rarely (never?) looks quite as good in practice as they do in the commercials where their adjuster is writing a check before the police arrive.
The aforementioned Dodge Caravan, carrying three people totalling around 450 lbs. with one weeks’ worth of summer laundry plus camping gear and bearing a high-profile luggage carrier has a terminal velocity on a 5% grade of approximately 68 m.ph., meaning that one actually needs to give it gas to go down the hill while staying with traffic on the long Western U.S. passes with speed limits of 70 or 75 m.p.h.
However, on a grade of 6% or steeper, no such terminal velocity has been found, and lower gears, brakes, a parachute, and a weather anchor may be required to keep it from hurtling off into space or the side of a mountain.
Teens are every parent’s punishment for having been one.
There is a unit of time greater than eternity: the afternoon spent crossing Iowa in a car. (Somewhat longer is the afternoon spent crossing South Dakota on I-90.)
Murphy was an optimist.
Did you pick up the deer once you were done talking to the police and everything? Most of it is usually still good and can give you some wonderful meals.*
[sub]*This isn’t actually in jest as my family did do this. Only my father was called when other people hit the deer. We had lots of meat for awhile.[/sub]
Actually, the blasted critted got up, at some point, and wandered off. I’m hoping that if she had internal injuries, she bled out quickly, as I had nothing handy with which to put her down, but when the cop played his spotlight over the field, we could see no sign of her. (She may have been just bruised and shaken. I braked hard and the damage she did to my grill and radiator did not indicate that I had to have hit her with a killing blow.)
Mrs Alien & I drove from San Francisco to Albuquerque via Yosemite and the Grand Canyon in 1999. 1600 miles in four days. Fantastic! We enjoyed it so much we’re doing a similar thing in November.
In the UK, when you leave town the furthest distance to another town shown on the sign post is usually only 50 miles, unless it’s London in which case it’s 100. On the last leg before Albuquerque (I think as we left Flagstaff) it said “Albuquerque 320”. On that leg, I managed an hour driving on cruise control without touching a pedal.
From London, you can’t go 320 miles and stay in England.
Never saw a single deer, buffalo, cowboy, Indian, bigfoot, or other large Merkin wildlife.
I’ve seen deer in the area around the exit ramps between Washington DC and Baltimore. I’ve seen them in the backyards of NYC suburbs. It’s sad you didn’t see anything out west; I guess there are just too many hiding places.
I’ve driven across the U.S.A. several times and have yet to find a way across middle America that is not extremely painful at some point. For me, the worst was West Texas. If there had been a gun in the car, I would’ve shot myself to end the agony.
I crossed Iowa in the summer and was saved by the incomprehensible mind-boggling amount of corn growing there. It was like looking into the infinite heavens on a dark night. How could that much corn be consumed on this earth ever? I am still in awe.
From the ages of seven through fifteen, I spent three weeks in the back of a station wagon every summer (47 U.S. states, 9 Canadian provinces, one Mexican state) so I’m a seasoned traveler. The best idea I ever came up with I initiated this trip: I got individual CD players with an adapter to plug in to the cigarette lighter and a three-outlet extension to plug into the lighter–and then failed to buy batteries. Each kid had their own music to play without interrupting the other so the kids were content. On the other hand, I controlled the power: if anyone got too rambunctious, I simply pulled their jack out of the adapter and let them sit with road noise for a while. (Admittedly, this would not work with really young children, but my kids are somewhat used to traveling.)
Made lots of weekend trips with my family while growing up - mostly around Michigan. Took the ferry across Lake Michigan & another ferry across the Georgian Bay. Several trips to Mackinac Island.
The Grand Road Trip was the summer after my senior year in high school - we (both parents, younger brother & me) took about a month to go from Indiana to California, up the coast & across the Upper Midwest back home. In a full-sized van pulling a 15-ft camping trailer. We were VERY ready to go home - especially after Mom got pneumonia & pleurisy in the wilds of Montana…
Summer of 1999 - Indiana to southern CA & back in 2 weeks - with husband & inlaws in a minivan. Stopovers in Salt Lake City & Las Vegas. Separate hotel rooms were the saving grace. That and LOTS of books!
I saw a moose last week, be happy you didn’t hit one of those. Dear god those things are massive. Now I’m in midtown. Next week, I camp again. Travel is cruel. Travel for work is worse. I’ll take the wilds of Northern Minnesota over NY.
My own idle observations on travel:
New York is fond of scaffolding. They have temporary structures that date back to the early 1800s.
A law was passed in the early part of 1764 declaring that all taxi cabs in Manhattan must have one squeaky disk brake. They did not know what taxi cabs were, nor disk brakes.
Never sit in the back of a DC9-30, unless your ears have been damaged due to years of Heavy Metal.
Ah, yes, long road trips are great. Last summer, my (now ex-) wife and I drove from Seattle to Carmel (and back), going through the Olympic Peninsula, Portland, the Oregon coast, Eureka, and San Francisco. Fabulous trip. Most fun I’ve had in years.
Of course, we’re divorced now, but I don’t think the trip had anything to do with it.
When I was a child, my grandmother often told the story of how she and her family came to southwest Kansas in a covered wagon. The trip was long and arduous. The family suffered great deprivation and hardship.
It finally occurred to me to ask her where it was they’d come from, and she told me “Topeka”.
The worst was crossing Kansas in 100+ heat in a car with no A/C. We were drinking gatorade by the gallon, and it was so hot your skin felt like it was dusted with sand from all the dry salt from sweat that immediately dried before it was even noticed.
I lost my hat out the window.
We almost stopped to spend the day in an airconditioned hotel, but what would that do to our time? You’ve gotta make time on a road trip.
Then we hit Colorada and hit the a cold front, suddenly it was all gray and ominous (and hot), and then we had to pull over because we were in practically solid sheets of rain. In the middle of a scrub desert in Colorado.
