08/10/2022
#3. Driving 40,000 Miles to Find Chicago
For my birthday month, and for the 25th anniversary of my publishing efforts, I've been discussing my published books, 18 in all. After my "apprenticeship" period, I had moved into a phase which I described in my journal as "nuanced, expressive, solid". While my earlier works had been heartfelt, of course, I'd needed to come out of my shell more, and express ideas in a fuller form. One of my writing and publishing efforts really stands alone like no other.
In 2006, my job in Charlotte was phased out and I wanted to go travelling ahead of my 40th birthday. I got out of an apartment in Charlotte and sold my condo in Columbia, packed the car, and took off. In all, I was on the road for six months and 40,000 miles across the US, Canada and Mexico. It was the trip of a lifetime. Along the way I took notes and lots of photographs, sending out emails and posting on my website for friends and family. Later, after moving to Chicago, I edited it all into a travelogue, "Driving Home: A North American Tour" (2008). This was the tale of a life-changing, death-defying "crazy" road trip that went on, and on, and on.
What are the coolest cities in North America? How many miles can I drive in one day? How far is it from Mexico to Canada weaving through the Rockies? How many oceans and rivers can I see on one single trip? Would every Starbucks have that great little chicken salad sandwich with cranberries? How smooth would that "Cherry-a-51" have been (read below)? These are the kinds of questions pushing me to explore every corner of North America I'd ever been interested in seeing...and a few more still.
Driving Home: A North American Tour
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0054QR0X0
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/2940148286851
Exerpt from Chapter 12: Vanishing Point (M.R.M. Parrott, February 2007)
(Mon, 5th) I surely wanted to sleep longer, but I started off again, rolling South through the Washoe Valley toward Carson City. To pick up on the admittedly vague story above, that I was processing what I was seeing of this region - I drove through their valley that morning, down the road where they lived, had a quick look at their home, and just kept going - call it morbid curiosity. I had no interest in being seen or getting into a meet-n-greet, but what was surprising was how things had really not been glamourous for her. Somehow back then, as a rapidly (perhaps rabidly) developing artist, actor, writer and philosopher, I'd let myself feel outclassed by what she did, what they did. Only, I hadn't been outclassed - not at all. I'd done nothing wrong, but felt I had back then, and thus wrongly assumed I'd been left with the short end of the stick.
Except, I'd honestly been quite unhappy with her, and in leaving me, an emotional surprise, she actually freed me. Gosh, I was only 24, after all. Memory was now being revived in a way which was more accurate (a thought process which would rumble around in my unemotional "back brain" for days, actually). Other than carrying a definite scar (and wondering if I'd ever really trust a woman again), I had no real emotion left over it all after these many years, anyway (really). Being here, I felt strangely relieved about that bit of my past, and it had been one last little filament of tension, a tiny splinter in my mind somehow loosened, another kind of "vanishing point".
So, I continued on to tiny Carson City and took a few photos around the capitol. Along the way, I spotted a Toyota dealer and pulled in to get the oil changed, watching the local folks as I waited. After, I took the road up to Lake Tahoe around lunchtime, and toured it a bit. I was really impressed when I dipped my feet into the super-clear (and ice-cold) water at the Lake Tahoe Nevada State Park's beach. Boy that water looked inviting, but after warming my numb feet, I rolled on. I followed the road around and poked the car officially into California, though not very far, then turned back and headed back out through Carson City and on to US 50.
Eventually, I made a stop at what seemed like a Nevada Freak Show (a particularly colourful Wal-Mart) for a few supplies, and then I was past Fallon. Before long, I was onto "The Loneliest Road in America", whose scenery was much like I'd seen elsewhere, yet there was so much of it, and somehow it was wider than ever. I crossed mountain range after wide valley after mountain range after wide valley and so on, and on - the formations on the floor of the Great Basin. Mystified, I stopped a few times to marvel at the vastness, the distant vanishing points on the long road, disappearing far into the horizon either way. I noticed my vanishing frustration over the stresses of the travel itinerary and pounding pace I'd set for myself, as well. The photos and few words here just can't describe how wide and remote this landscape felt, and how it evaporated so much that had bothered me (you have to get out there and experience it for yourself). Indeed, I was really pleased, because now, I thought, I've really travelled in "America". As in the other deserts, I'd been somewhere totally different.
At one point, I stopped again to shoot closeups of a salt flat and walked out away from the road, then turned back toward the little green machine. The car was dwarfed by the huge landscape, little more than a green dot on a white landscape and hazy sky. Taking a shot of it against that super-wide valley made me fall in love with it all over again - it was a Corolla like so many others, but this one had been so dutiful and flexible. That little Toyota had raced along 30,000 miles of roadway in three nations in less than four months (by that point), up mountains and across deserts, through melting heat and blistering cold, and had barely offered a hiccup (other what what I'd caused). A guy and his car, right?
Many miles later, and after a stop to laugh at a tree full of shoes (didn't contribute any, myself), I turned South through the Toiyabe National Forest and made it to the "Extraterrestrial Highway", across many more valleys and ranges of the Great Basin. Finally, I reached Rachel NV just after dark. I'd expected a much larger town (a town, anyway, and one with gas available, let me note), because Rachel is an oft-mentioned (poorly described, I now realized) place of interest within sight of the mountains bordering Area 51 just to the South (which doesn't exist, officially). I pulled in and parked in the dusty little watering hole and stepped in to join the locals, and a few visitors like me, whom I could hear inside. It was Rachel's only restaurant and communications hub, the Little Ale'Inn, and I'd arrived just as everyone was talking about flare training pilots were doing overhead. Of course, everyone kept the ET and "cover up" themes and jokes going throughout any conversation related to things nearby. Unlike Roswell, Rachel had the charm of reminding you that you were authentically...nowhere.
The Alien Burger and a Miller Lite really hit the spot. I chugged the beer and asked for another, and the cute and funny server/bartender (I wondered why she was there, actually) was definitely the most entertaining element, but another visitor was playing a guitar, very soothing. The server joked about a drink someone had come up with (Southern Comfort, some kind of energy drink, cherry juice), and its must-be-repeated slogan, "The Cherry-a-51: So smooth, you don't even know you've been abducted!"
Although I neglected to try the drink, already with that perfect buzz from the chugged beer, I was entertained by it all, warmed by listening to everyone chat while the fellow continued with guitar. I really wanted to stay up late and hang out with these folks and get silly - surely, before long I would have tried a Cherry-a-51 (so smooth, you don't even...), but I was really, really worn out, and was so tired so fast, that I could barely stand. The night air in the desert was as cool and soothing as the guitar inside, and I simply turned the car around to a better angle outside the restaurant, and went to bed early. (490 mi.)
(Tues, 6th) Eleven hours I'd slept - and who knows, maybe I had been abducted in the night, because I felt great, like a top, like a champ. Sleeping in the shadow of Area 51 had been rejuvenating, it seemed. After a quick pit stop inside that strange diner/bar and alien gift shop, I got going by 9:30am, patiently rolling the 45 miles to the nearest gas in Ash Springs (thankful I'd had just enough to get there!). I felt like the "Road Warrior" again, there in the sandy desert pumping gas alone, then heading North off the ET Highway onto the Great Basin Highway, US 93, and more of the Humbolt National Forest.
I worked my way across more spectacular valleys and mountain ranges under the clear blue sky, and stopped for an early break at Miller's Point in the Cathedral Gorge State Park. At the time, it looked like a small Badlands-type formation of water erosions. Eventually, I made it to the Great Basin National Park, but as I'd just spent three days driving across much of the wonderful Great Basin itself, I simply freshened up in the visitor's center and chatted with the cute, red-haired "Ranger babe" (not to sound sexist, but she was really cute) and I grabbed the official NPS brochure for my collection.
As a side note, here, some folks collect the "passport stamps" provided at all National Parks, I suppose as a token or a record of their visit. As I'd forgotten and neglected to get that habit started way back at the First Flight Memorial on my first day, now was no time to get it started (lest I obsess about that, too!). I'd consoled myself that my photos and words are more important tokens of my priceless visits the parks, and far better proof. Still...
So, anyway, I pushed on Eastward, back into Utah now, across a huge dry salt lake as I got nearer to I-15. It was another vanishing point, this time in reference to the 1971 film of the same name (in which a white muscle car was shown racing all over the salt flats in Utah). Once I finally got onto I-70 East, now pointed back toward Denver, and not far south of Salt Lake City (could have returned for another look), I rested a bit at a high mountain rest area, almost a perch, and reflected on what I wanted to do, both for the night and over the next several days. I walked around a bit in the light snow cover to loosen up.
Before dark, I got going again and drove another 40 miles or so to Green River UT, to gas up and grab some fast food. After that, it was a short drive to a nearby rest area for the night, up high and among the dramatic red canyon formations of Southeastern Utah (a state which continually surprised me with its wide-ranging beauty, far beyond Oregon's or Wisconsin's). Those extra miles that night would pay off, I thought, and it would put me in a good starting place for the next few days of adventures. (540 mi.)
Haven't you ever wanted to just drop it all and take the trip of a lifetime? That's what writer and photographer M.R.M. Parrott did in the Fall of 2006. He sold his Columbia SC home, left his job and apartment in Charlotte NC, and hit the open road. Parrott travelled across the US, Canada and Mex...
