Motoring Ping.
When I got out of the Navy in 1988, I drove my Mustang GT from Seattle to Florida with my Himalayan cat. On the second night, he walked around the hotel room to each wall, looked up the ceiling and meowed loudly one time for each wall. He did that in the room I was sleeping in every night for the rest of his life until he died in 2000.
Lots of fun reading. Lots of Americana. It is what Americans did and do — road trips!
I have been on dozens of road trips since I was a kid. All very memorable.
The most memorable was the time my friend and I made the run from LA to Denver Colorado without stopping. Around 1100 miles.
The highlight of the trip was when we drove through Glenwood Canyon at around 3AM. It was in June and the Colorado river was at its peak level and had been flooding the highway. We didn't know this.
We were the only souls on the whole highway because the police and had road-blocked the highway in Grand Junction and we had somehow slipped through. Must have been a matter of minutes because I remember driving over a bridge with the police looking over the edge at the rising water just a few feet from spilling over and onto the highway.
This was before the highway was developed in Glenwood Canyon and the highway snaked along with the Colorado river just a few feet away in some sections. As we weaved in along the base of the canyon, I remember looking to my right at the river and noticing the water splashing higher that the roof of our car.
Occasionally as we made our way around the bend, the river would be up on the highway pavement and in a couple of instances it was completely across our lane and we'd have to slow down to avoid hydroplaning and spinning off into the oncoming lane or worse, off to the right and into the churning river.
So what were we to do? — power on and drive through or turn around. We decided to continue driving and eventually made it safely through the canyon.