Posted on 09/23/2017 5:16:04 PM PDT by Army Air Corps
My longest single "day" on the road was 20 hours -- 1,170 miles from Medicine Hat, Alberta to La Crosse, Wisconsin. Long drive, and a long story behind it. LOL.
If you're going to travel in one direction in Canada and the opposite direction in the U.S., I'd always recommend taking the westbound trip north of the border. Speed limits are lower in most of Canada, and the road is a two-lane highway for much of the trip ... so it's a slower trip. When you travel west you are "gaining" daylight hours as you move through each time zone.
Mine was 19 hours, driving a van full of kids to a robotics competition and pulling a trailer full of gear. (Nobody else wanted to pull the trailer)
I also did back to back 18 hour drives once.
Got out of the Navy, August ‘75 in Charleston, SC, hung out a while and then left for home (Phoenix) in June of ‘76, 21 years old. I-95 to I-10 in Jacksonville and then due west. Driving by myself.
Picked up some heavy nighttime fog in middle of LA, dark as hell. Didn’t matter, I was going about 90-95 with 100 feet visibility ... maybe. Suddenly, out of the fog, I saw the feint outline of a vehicle ahead on the right.....state highway patrol! Cop had no time to start his car and would never catch me in the fog. He flung his door open as I passed, jumped out and with the meanest look on his face pointed his finger right at me and then quickly swung it and pointed it directly at the shoulder. I surrendered.
He was not a happy cop! I just happened to keep my car registration paper with my freshly minted DD-214 so when he asked for license and reg I got it out and he noticed the DD-214.
“You in the service?!” he said. I said: “Well, I just got out and I’m headin home.” He says: “Is that right?”.
He goes back to his car for a second and then comes back and says: “You listen to me son, I could take you to jail right now. I’m gonna cut you a break but let me tell you something, I’ve got all your information and I’ll be listening to my radio all night and if I hear about you getting stopped again you WILL go to jail, you understand me?!”. I say: “Yes sir!”.... Whew! The South in the ‘70s was cool!
Then I get into Orange, TX at the LA/TX border. Hit Houston where I gassed up for 44 cents a gallon. That is the lowest I have paid for gas since that date to today. (Translates to about $1.90 a gallon now). Over 42 years ago!
Picked up at hitch hiker outside of San Antonio. Normal enough lookin Mexican dude, he talked a lot. I let him drive for 3 hours or so. Then, on the radio, I hear about 5 prisoners that had escaped from the TX state prison the day before, still on the loose. My hitchhiker is telling me what a good guy he is and won’t cause me any trouble, etc. Says it a little too much. When I picked him up he said he wanted to go to El Paso. Right on my way. We drive across most barren, unpopulated land I’ve ever seen between S.A and Fort Stockton. Late evening, dust storm blowing. Never seen so much land.
Ok, we get to Fort Stockton...about the only civilization between S.A and E.P. in those days...and by civilization I mean more than nothing! We get something to eat and rest up for a half hour. when its time to hit the road again my hitchhiker tells me he’s changed his mind and wants me to drop him off at some junction outside of “town”. Says he just remembered he’s got some relatives out the other way from EP and he decided to go there. I’m thinking back to the radio news about the escaped prisoners. I say: “Oh, ok.”
I drop him off and say goodbye. I lived to tell about it.
Now on to E.P. by myself. Makin great time. Between Ft. Stockton and E.P. there is, or was, also NOTHING! Nobody cares how fast you go. Now the NM/TX border, I swear my odometer said I put on 900 miles just in Texas! Big state!! Now Las Cruces, now the NM/AZ border, next the lights of Tucson. I’m beat, I’m draggin ass real bad, still 110 miles to go. 2 hours tops. It’s about 8:30pm local time. Too short a distance to quit, gotta press on...Casa Grande to my left, 60 miles to go, can barely keep eyes open. Finally, the outskirts of Phoenix! I turn right, off towards Mesa.
I roll up to the old homestead, mark the mileage and the time: 2314 miles in 59 1/2 hours. I drove all but about 3 hours. I think I slept once for 3 hours or so and took a couple 1/2 hour breaks. I was a superman at 21!
I can't handle back-to-back long days on the road. My cross-country driving secret is to sandwich two 18-hour days around one shorter day (8-12 hours), then use Day 4 (if necessary) to finish the last leg of the trip.
Yep. We went through the dessert southwest with such attachment on the way to California to see the ocean.
2. Election Season 2016 in Trump Country ... Dallas, TX to Topeka, KS to Raleigh, NC over five days. Less than 25 miles of this trip was taken on any interstate highways. All U.S. highways and back roads. If I told you that the ratio of Trump to Clinton signs was 500 to 1 I’m probably underestimating the Trump count.
Our back to backs were enough to get where we needed to be.
The 19 hour was tough. The last couple I made sure the shotgun passenger stayed awake and kept me awake.
That’s remarkable. Personally, I would never drive even 100 yards down the highway if I needed someone else to keep me awake!
Very interesting. I don’t think I saw even 10-to-1 for Clinton in deep blue states like New York and Maryland!
But you never turned in the illegal alien escapee! ;) Thanks for your service!
Summer of ’73, just graduating high school in Southern California. The trip to Canada camping was planned for a year. 3 weeks with my best friend and anticipation that lasted a lifetime. The first stop for gas somewhere north of Hearst’s Castle, we were washing the windows. Some grizzled gas station attendant came out and ripped the paper towels out of my hand, cussed me out for taking too many. Walked away huffin’ & puffin’ something about long hairs. We stuffed as many Oreo cookies in our mouth as possible “ start the engine, ready?!” Decorated the gas pump pretty fair with that Nabisco treat, with him chasing after us. The old fool.
In our haste we made a wrong turn. Our venture to the safety of the freeway brought us to a dead end. There was no way there without passing the gas station again. We stopped laughing. In an old VW with the torque installed by Parker Brothers we made our move. He’s running to meet us wielding a wrench half the length of his arm. He unloads as we’re making a sharp turn. It hits the ground bounces up and hits the side with a pretty good dent. A souvenir from youth. And we laughed again and often.
I've traveled one way back east driving my myself and that was fun....
probably our riskiest drive was leaving from Spokane wa at 3:30 in the afternoon in late December and drove straight thru to LA and the Rose bowl...we had to chain up twice going thru the Oregon mts...we took turns driving and it actually went pretty well for 23 straight hrs...
then there was the time when the 3 kids and us were traveling to go back east and didn't realize that the Sturgis rally was going on....
we couldn't find a room until we pulled into Sioux Falls at 6 am....
one time our timing belt went out just outside of Big Timber MT...it took hrs to get hauled to Billings and had to spend the night...
but that didn't fix things...our car ran funny so we pulled into Buffalo Wyo and the guy fiddled with the engine and got it going...
.we left there to go stay in Wall SD but hit a dead deer in the road on the way....
car was still not running well so we had to pull into Mitchell SD for them to do something with the car..
finally we pulled into good old Sioux Falls to the dealership and they finally got the car going....
Well, we had a few memorable trips, and I can’t really say it’s a favorite, but certainly memorable. I was about 13. We had originally planned a 4- week trip to the Seattle World’s fair, and then on to Alaska, but had to shorten that and wound up revisiting Yellowstone.
All along the way we met people when camping out that were on their way to Seattle. Often we would be camping out at a campground with the same people and sat around the bonfires sipping cocoa or soda pop and listening to music.
We were in an 50s model Oldsmobile with a small travel trailer. Prior trips used a teardrop trailer. My Mom, Dad, divorced sister, and her 3 kids - one in diapers and one in training pants were all traveling/camping, so we rented a trailer-teardrop wouldn’t have been as good for that many people. Wolverine Mountain was a popular song that played frequently on the radio.
Outside of Cody, Wyoming, we had to stop due to a hailstorm with softball size hail, and the roads were too slick. We unhitched the trailer at the campsite and went back to town to get some chains.
When we got back we found that we were locked out of the trailer - sister decided she needed to take a bath in privacy and warmth - used the trailer’s oven for heat instead of using the crappy cold bath room shower of the campground.
We actually had to sweep about a foot of accumulation off the picnic table and benches before we could use it. It was odd weather to me as it was the end of June, but lucky we did have warm clothes with us.
However, one of my most memorable experiences happened about 6 years earlier in Yellowstone. I had gone to the restroom, and when I opened the door to leave, was looking directly at a bear about one foot away. Screamed and slammed the door in the bear’s face.
Finally, parents got to wondering why I hadn’t returned, and walked closer to the facility, hollering my name. I hollered back and told them there was a bear snuffling around the door, and I couldn’t leave.
A bunch of campers got pots and pans and started beating on them making a lot of noise and moving slowly towards the facility. Eventually, the bear took off.
We took a camping vacation every year when I was a kid. We also went to the lakes/fishing holes of S.West Mo. most weekends. Sometimes went to Bennett Springs, or Cassville for the trout fishing.
Most weekends, we went to Forsythe or Rockaway Beach - that was before Silver Dollar City and Branson. The riot at Rockaway combined with competition from Branson pretty much ended that resort. They never recovered.
Back when I was 19 years old, I worked at a gun shop in Fostoria Ohio and we traveled all over the eastern half of the US working half a dozen gun shows in 1975. It was quite a trip, first one was in Shreveport in Febuary. Went from 30 degrees to 85... Did I mention the humidity? Phew! And 28 hours straight through.
Wasn’t really a problem, more a precaution. Coffee and Mountain Dew was flowing through my veins
Crossed Washington state through majestic scenery, the Idaho panhandle, and the western mountains of Montana. The couple in the MGB with no top needed breaks from sun and wind burn every 200 miles or so. Hit the flat lands of Montana.
Growing up in the east coast I had never seen nor imagined so much flat country, just fields and sky. Traffic was almost non existent. We could have parked in the middle of the road and had a leisurely picnic without disruption. Any approaching traffic could be seen from miles away. My turn driving the MGB...weird sense of not perceiving speed, 60,70,80 miles an hour were all the same in the unchanging landscape. Not even telephone or power lines for long stretches. Hypnotic, had to keep scanning side to side and talking to my buddy and checking the rear view mirrors.
Stopped for lunch at some tiny cross roads collection of a gas station, general store and a bar/restaurant. Had actual raised wooden sidewalks. Well hell, this was the west of the movies. Cowboys with guns. All of us had hair no longer than just brushing our collars, if that, regular jeans and buttoned shirts, a presentable group any where. So we entered the restaurant which was in the front and divided by a wall from the bar area but it had a fairly wide opening connecting the two.
Well we had a big round table and being the place had no wait service grabbed a few menus from the counter guy. While we were getting comfortable and using the facilities a drunken Indian with, swear to God, two black velvet paintings of Elvis, entered and started moving towards us. The counter guy came out and frog marched the Indian with a few salty remarks about having been warned before.
All this while two young fellas at the closest table to the bar entry were giving us squinty once overs. Guess they were to young for adult beverages and resented that fact. After passable cheeseburgers and fries, we had coffee and planned our next leg with an eye towards maybe something interesting ahead. Not for miles and miles and miles. Set out for the next run.
Hours later, did I mention how big Montana is, we came to Chester. Back then a town of about 1100 folks, a few restaurants, 5 or 6 beauty parlors or so it seemed, and grain elevators the dominated Chesters skyline. Nothing else higher than two stories. Flat...turn 360 degrees and the horizon stayed dead level with a hint of mountains way way in the hazy distances as tiny bumps. Found a place for dinner. Family type restaurant. We all needed to make calls home and took turns at the weirdest telephone. Wall mounted with a big sea scallop shell hood thing in an opalescent finish, kind of like an oil slick on the pale pink hood. Ma Bell's strange market research that didn't travel well outside of Las Vegas.
Well dinner was fairly good and evening was fast approaching we thought we'd look for lodging. Bad news the MGB had traveled only a few hundred yards before we had tonpull into a giant parking lot at a food store. Engine overheated from the long leg and never really cooled off. Artist and his gal were driven by the med student to the local garage while my Bell labs buddy and I sat in the inert sports carL No luck for the MGB, nearest place for possible tow and service was Great Falls. My buddy and I settled down in the MGB for a long wait. Pole lights went on and out of nowhere thousands, tens of thousands of insects zoomed in on the two light poles. There wasn't a single tree or bush for them to land on so they hit the dirt. Another surreal vision being surrounded on all sides by this quivering pavement. That was just the beginning of weird that night.
With the dead car we had no radio we took turns snoozing off and on. Saw some headlights approaching us, a pickup truck with a bunch of kids in the back, they slowed down to a crawl passing us. About half a mile down the road then made a u-turn and headed back our way, slowly circled the car, with NJ tags, with the oldest by shouting, “ Hey maw, look at the hippies!”
Ok, remember I mentioned Easy Rider, well an uneasy feeling came upon us. Here we were, two strangers sitting in a parked foreign car by God, with duffel bags and a tent strapped to the tiny truck. They must have had a CB because within a few minutes we had a few more truck visitations along with catcalls. Sport for the locals. A while later two police cars pulled in. Sheriff or what not slowly exited the car with his hand on his pistol as did his deputy on the the other side of us. Approached within ten feet and started questioning us. Who were we, where did we come from and where were we going. Told him all that and he comes back with, “ So you all just picked up and started running all over the country carefree and shit, huh?” Well that straightened us right up and got us to thinking what the hell is going on?
And then he asked for licenses and registration. License we had, nada on the registration. So now he's really suspicious. Asked me what I knew about Joplin. Not being smart mouthed, just tired, I said the only Joplin I knew of was Janis Joplin. Suspicions confirmed, he had two GD hippies both wearing glasses running around in his town with a possible stolen vehicle and up to God knows what. Damn, felt like I should be singing “Proud to Be an Okie from Muskokee”.
Out of the vee-hickle and slowly start unpacking the back of the car. At this point we had two guns on us. Well things looked pretty bad just then but then they got worse. We unpacked the duffels as we were commanded, and out come the girlie things belonging to my friends petite gal pal. Not only were we car thieving hippies gallivanting about the country, we were also degenerates and maybe even kidnappers or rapists.
“Uh huh, sure this little gal went to Great Falls with her boyfriend along with some guy from Minnesota and left you two with this broke down foreign piece of crap”.
My life was flashing before my eyes when there was some radio chatter from the cruiser. At this point we were sitting with our backs to the car, hands laced behind our heads as the the deputy searched the rest of the car, with us hoping the artist buddy didn't have any weed stashed there.
After a bit a State Trooper, guessing at that, pulls up and tells the sheriff the two burglars from Joplin had been caught, and oh, by the way Great Falls confirmed that our friends had asked the local PD about an all night tow service to Chester.
We did finally get the hell out of Chester, feeling there could be a country western song about all this. Uneasy Rider indeed.
At a job in my 20’s, I didn’t get the vacation slots I had requested and had to take all my 3 weeks at once the next April.
I had a relatively new Celica and got a tent, took a road trip to the Smoky Mtns and camped in Cade’s Cove. It was just beautiful and really memorable, my first long, independent vacation.
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