Had to get up early - this one was going to be a big one! Nearly 700 miles in one day was necessary. On the road by 8, and reached Tampa about 11 hours later, 8 pm. The extra hour came from moving through another time zone.
Pretty tired, but the drive had been relatively easy; Arrived at Stefan's house and went out for dinner with his and his g/f Joy, picked up some beers on the way home and went to bed soon afterwards.
9 1/2 hours - 659 miles!
View New Orleans - Tampa in a larger map
Showing posts with label Knackered. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Knackered. Show all posts
Saturday, 2 February 2013
Monday, 28 January 2013
Lubbock - Austin - 23/1/13
Managed to get out and be on the road by 9.15, a trip record. Today was going to be a lot of small roads - no interstates or freeways, so would be likely to take a while longer to cover a similar distance.
On the way out of Lubbock, we passed miles and miles of cotton fields - this was pretty interesting, as while we knew what they looked like, had never really seen them before. This spark of excitement soon passed as we drove through the next 100 miles of it.
Western/Northen Texas is the 'classic' Texas that you may think of: arid, desert-like and flat. There was some soil and clearly people were able to make a living from farming the land (arable and dairy/meat), but it didn't look easy, and as a result wasn't densely populated. The small towns we did drive through looked run down and not too wealthy - either filled with agricultural or chemical businesses. Chalk it up as our least favourite scenery.
What there was a lot of, however, was churches. The Lord has a strong presence here, as you might imagine, but they look nothing like a UK church. All single store, made of tin and wood, with only really a spire giving away it's true purpose: to save, praise be.
After a quick stop and snack, we came into Lampassas, the largest town we'd seen for a while - a lunch stop. Found this nice 'mom and pop' restaurant called 'Country Kitchen'. As you walked in, it was clearly very, very Texan. Nearly spit and sawdust, but not quite. B had brisket, pinto beans, potato salad and 'hush puppies', which are little corn maize balls. I had some fried chicken breast - both were pretty good, although I did get food jealousy after trying the brisket which melted in your mouth and very tasty BBQ sauce. This place also had an array of homemade pies - Pecan (pronouced p-khan over here), Cherry, Apple, Pumpkin, Lemon Meringue and a few others that we couldn't identify. This caused excitement, so after a mandatory purchase of p-khan and apple pies, we left.
As we arrived in Austin, it was rush hour. Nightmare traffic, close to LA levels, but made worse by Austin's completely incomprehensible highway system. Think Spaghetti Junction in Brum, but far bigger and by no means intuitive. After a bit of a struggle, we picked up the apartment keys and did a spot of food shopping. Met an American who has some good friends from Sheffield and loved our accents. Then, with heavy hearts, we tackled Austin traffic again to the apartment itself - again, rush hour, strange highway organisation, made for a taxing last few miles, taking about an hour to get through.
Lacking energy to do much else, we watched a couple of films before passing out. The drive in the main had been a cinch - just those last 20 miles or so had really taken it out of us after the 7 1/2 hours or so previously.
373 miles for this stretch:
View Lubbock - Austin in a larger map
On the way out of Lubbock, we passed miles and miles of cotton fields - this was pretty interesting, as while we knew what they looked like, had never really seen them before. This spark of excitement soon passed as we drove through the next 100 miles of it.
Western/Northen Texas is the 'classic' Texas that you may think of: arid, desert-like and flat. There was some soil and clearly people were able to make a living from farming the land (arable and dairy/meat), but it didn't look easy, and as a result wasn't densely populated. The small towns we did drive through looked run down and not too wealthy - either filled with agricultural or chemical businesses. Chalk it up as our least favourite scenery.
What there was a lot of, however, was churches. The Lord has a strong presence here, as you might imagine, but they look nothing like a UK church. All single store, made of tin and wood, with only really a spire giving away it's true purpose: to save, praise be.
After a quick stop and snack, we came into Lampassas, the largest town we'd seen for a while - a lunch stop. Found this nice 'mom and pop' restaurant called 'Country Kitchen'. As you walked in, it was clearly very, very Texan. Nearly spit and sawdust, but not quite. B had brisket, pinto beans, potato salad and 'hush puppies', which are little corn maize balls. I had some fried chicken breast - both were pretty good, although I did get food jealousy after trying the brisket which melted in your mouth and very tasty BBQ sauce. This place also had an array of homemade pies - Pecan (pronouced p-khan over here), Cherry, Apple, Pumpkin, Lemon Meringue and a few others that we couldn't identify. This caused excitement, so after a mandatory purchase of p-khan and apple pies, we left.
As we arrived in Austin, it was rush hour. Nightmare traffic, close to LA levels, but made worse by Austin's completely incomprehensible highway system. Think Spaghetti Junction in Brum, but far bigger and by no means intuitive. After a bit of a struggle, we picked up the apartment keys and did a spot of food shopping. Met an American who has some good friends from Sheffield and loved our accents. Then, with heavy hearts, we tackled Austin traffic again to the apartment itself - again, rush hour, strange highway organisation, made for a taxing last few miles, taking about an hour to get through.
Lacking energy to do much else, we watched a couple of films before passing out. The drive in the main had been a cinch - just those last 20 miles or so had really taken it out of us after the 7 1/2 hours or so previously.
373 miles for this stretch:
View Lubbock - Austin in a larger map
Friday, 25 January 2013
Las Vegas - Flagstaff - 20/1/13
Up at 8.30, out of the door ~10, on the road heading for the south rim of the Grand Canyon and then onto Flagstaff, Arizona.
We decided to travel down some of Route 66, just to say that we had, but it turned out that there wasn't much to see there apart from desert, desert. And some more desert, with a bit more desert thrown in for good measure. It was exceedingly beautiful, at least at first, but after a while the brain stops noticing things that don't change so much - and you do get used to it after a few hours of seeing nothing but the road stretching out in front of you in a straight line to the horizon with huge expanses of brown dirt and/or grass in every direction.
Route 66 is famous because it was one of the original trans-American highways and originally ran from Chicago due south before bending towards the west coast in the midwest and then pretty much arrow straight towards Los Angeles and the Pacific coast covering a total of 2,448 miles. Good ol' wikipedia.
We were hoping to see some of the old towns that used to be vibrant and no longer - so called Ghost Towns - but there was nothing completely derelict. This may seem a peverse wish, but there is something fascinating about it - there are a lost of great resources on the intertubes with superb photos of these ghost towns and simply looking at photos is really eerie. Actually being there would be something else! Some towns did seem half dead - as you drove through them there were many many buildings un-lived in and businesses closed, but there were still people living there at the other end of town; these tended to be Indian towns in the main (in reservation areas) and it was sad to see the living that some people were only just scratching out.
It was reasonably warm when we left Vegas (~14-16C), but the further and higher towards the GC that we traveled, the colder it became.
First stop was the Hoover Dam - an incredible structure that was almost overshadowed (in my mind) by the interstate bridge which was ginormous. The concrete support arches for the bridge were as wide as a car is long and about as thick. The Dam itself however, lived up to expectations. It had looked tiny from the air, but was fully 800-odd feet high, with either end in a different timezone as the site chosen was more or less on the border of Nevada and Arizona, the latter being in the amusingly (to my mind) named 'Mountain time' zone. The overflows of the dam were gigantic. Hard to describe the size of them - perhaps twice the length of a football field and as deep as a 30+ storey building. Looking down that famous curved face of it was great experience. Aware that time was pressing (and the up until now completely neglected time zone meaning we effectively 'lost' an hour), we jumped in the monster and zoomed up the highway.
We arrived at the GC national park at about 5pm, just as the sun was starting to sink to get some pictures and check out the monstrous gash in the planet's surface, although we definitely thought that it was a shame that we hadn't managed to get there earlier - even 30 minutes would have been better; however on the plus side to see the shadows cast across the ravines and the sun setting behind us lent the visuals something that we otherwise maybe wouldn't have seen. It was really *really* cold up there, snow and ice everywhere, especially when the wind blew hard. It went right through you - rather like when we get the wind from Siberia coming across the UK.
The cost of getting into the park was $25, and lasted for 7 days - shame we only had about 45 minutes before the sun set. It was just getting dark as we left the rim and to drive to Flagstaff. The roads were a little icy in places, and in one place in particular, the ice covered the road for a metre or so. This was a pretty weird experience, considering that a mere 3-4 hours previously had been driving across a baking desert.
We were both flagging badly at this point and didn't arrive at Flagstaff until around 8.30 - part of the reason for misjudging the time so badly was aforesaid timezone issue as well as the large detour that we made to the south rim of the GC.
We stayed in an local hostel, which was fine for the night at $44 for a private room. Pretty much crashed out as soon as we arrived and fell asleep shortly afterwards around 10.30.
View Las Vegas to Flagstaff in a larger map
We decided to travel down some of Route 66, just to say that we had, but it turned out that there wasn't much to see there apart from desert, desert. And some more desert, with a bit more desert thrown in for good measure. It was exceedingly beautiful, at least at first, but after a while the brain stops noticing things that don't change so much - and you do get used to it after a few hours of seeing nothing but the road stretching out in front of you in a straight line to the horizon with huge expanses of brown dirt and/or grass in every direction.
Route 66 is famous because it was one of the original trans-American highways and originally ran from Chicago due south before bending towards the west coast in the midwest and then pretty much arrow straight towards Los Angeles and the Pacific coast covering a total of 2,448 miles. Good ol' wikipedia.
We were hoping to see some of the old towns that used to be vibrant and no longer - so called Ghost Towns - but there was nothing completely derelict. This may seem a peverse wish, but there is something fascinating about it - there are a lost of great resources on the intertubes with superb photos of these ghost towns and simply looking at photos is really eerie. Actually being there would be something else! Some towns did seem half dead - as you drove through them there were many many buildings un-lived in and businesses closed, but there were still people living there at the other end of town; these tended to be Indian towns in the main (in reservation areas) and it was sad to see the living that some people were only just scratching out.
It was reasonably warm when we left Vegas (~14-16C), but the further and higher towards the GC that we traveled, the colder it became.
First stop was the Hoover Dam - an incredible structure that was almost overshadowed (in my mind) by the interstate bridge which was ginormous. The concrete support arches for the bridge were as wide as a car is long and about as thick. The Dam itself however, lived up to expectations. It had looked tiny from the air, but was fully 800-odd feet high, with either end in a different timezone as the site chosen was more or less on the border of Nevada and Arizona, the latter being in the amusingly (to my mind) named 'Mountain time' zone. The overflows of the dam were gigantic. Hard to describe the size of them - perhaps twice the length of a football field and as deep as a 30+ storey building. Looking down that famous curved face of it was great experience. Aware that time was pressing (and the up until now completely neglected time zone meaning we effectively 'lost' an hour), we jumped in the monster and zoomed up the highway.
We arrived at the GC national park at about 5pm, just as the sun was starting to sink to get some pictures and check out the monstrous gash in the planet's surface, although we definitely thought that it was a shame that we hadn't managed to get there earlier - even 30 minutes would have been better; however on the plus side to see the shadows cast across the ravines and the sun setting behind us lent the visuals something that we otherwise maybe wouldn't have seen. It was really *really* cold up there, snow and ice everywhere, especially when the wind blew hard. It went right through you - rather like when we get the wind from Siberia coming across the UK.
The cost of getting into the park was $25, and lasted for 7 days - shame we only had about 45 minutes before the sun set. It was just getting dark as we left the rim and to drive to Flagstaff. The roads were a little icy in places, and in one place in particular, the ice covered the road for a metre or so. This was a pretty weird experience, considering that a mere 3-4 hours previously had been driving across a baking desert.
We were both flagging badly at this point and didn't arrive at Flagstaff until around 8.30 - part of the reason for misjudging the time so badly was aforesaid timezone issue as well as the large detour that we made to the south rim of the GC.
We stayed in an local hostel, which was fine for the night at $44 for a private room. Pretty much crashed out as soon as we arrived and fell asleep shortly afterwards around 10.30.
View Las Vegas to Flagstaff in a larger map
Tuesday, 22 January 2013
San Francisco - Santa Barbara - 15/1/13
Tuesday morning we were up early again so that we could check out of the Hostel, have breakfast in a cafe next door and pick our car up. It was a monster. I'd ordered a 'standard' SUV (Jeep Grand Cherokee or similar. Turned out to be a Chevrolet 'Tahoe LT' V8) so that we could travel in comfort (estimated distance ~4000 miles). It's one of those ones that require climbing into. That kind of size. It's bigger than a Mercedes SUV that we have in the UK. What is a 'full-size' SUV you may ask? I'm going to tell you anyway. Bloody gigantic. Roughly the size of a Mercedes Sprinter van, or Ford Transit. Enormous. Big enough so that we, in our frankly silly-size car, feel slightly intimidated.
We headed south around 10am out of SF with a minor detour due to one-way systems and, er, navigational hitches, headed for Highway 1 - the Pacific Coastal Highway. Weather was bright and sunny, if a little chilly, but as we got further south it warmed up to around 15-20 degrees.
Our view on the right whilst driving was the Pacific Ocean, on the left, National Parks consisting of forests, vertical cliff faces, ravines and awesome vista . Stunning. Better than stunning. Slightly frightening at times with sharp turns that clearly, if not taken, led to a couple of hundred feet straight down into the drink. Neither of us were sure how a piece of arnco might withstand a 2 tonne SUV impact. We stopped at a place called 'Big Sur' around 2pm for lunch. Burritos were chosen, and of American portions. Both of us managed to eat about half before being too full. Big Sur wasn't actually that large, as we soon left it and emerged onto the coastline again.
We arrived in Santa Barbara at Arlene's house (found via Air B'n'B, a great site for finding unusual places to stay) around 6.30pm, after travelling for 8 hours with a half hour break and had covered 361 miles. It was dark and Arlene's place was in the hills above the town and not trivial to find, stuck way up some winding lanes amongst millionaire's houses. All of Santa Barbara looked nice, wealthy, but these houses were a cut above, although Arlene's wasn't as she and her husband had moved here about 50 years ago when it was still quite a small place. Arlene was lovely, probably in her 70s, but didn't look it, fit as a fiddle with a house that was a treasure trove of things that she had collected over the years and enchanting & welcoming. We chatted to her for a while but, feeling hungry, headed out to the Enterprise Fish Company restaurant, recommended by Arlene. When we arrived, it turned out that they had a special on Lobsters for $29 (usually $50) - it was cooked to perfection, served with liquid garlic butter, shoestring fries and grilled vegetables. Frankly, awesome. No other words. I washed it down with Sierra Nevada ale, one of their dark ones, and was suitably tasty while B stuck with a cranberry juice that was, perhaps needless to say, one of the best she or I had ever tried. Still feeling that a small corner could be filled, pudding was a molten chocolate cake (recommended by the waiter - a hot sponge with melted dark chocolate in the centre), served with vanilla ice cream, strawberries and dusted with icing sugar. It sounds heavy, but was deliciously light. B says that she was in heaven.
Got back to Arlene's around 10.30; she was asleep and we flopped into bed completely shattered. It had been a long but fabulous (darling!) day of driving.
View SF to Santa Barbara in a larger map
We headed south around 10am out of SF with a minor detour due to one-way systems and, er, navigational hitches, headed for Highway 1 - the Pacific Coastal Highway. Weather was bright and sunny, if a little chilly, but as we got further south it warmed up to around 15-20 degrees.
Our view on the right whilst driving was the Pacific Ocean, on the left, National Parks consisting of forests, vertical cliff faces, ravines and awesome vista . Stunning. Better than stunning. Slightly frightening at times with sharp turns that clearly, if not taken, led to a couple of hundred feet straight down into the drink. Neither of us were sure how a piece of arnco might withstand a 2 tonne SUV impact. We stopped at a place called 'Big Sur' around 2pm for lunch. Burritos were chosen, and of American portions. Both of us managed to eat about half before being too full. Big Sur wasn't actually that large, as we soon left it and emerged onto the coastline again.
We arrived in Santa Barbara at Arlene's house (found via Air B'n'B, a great site for finding unusual places to stay) around 6.30pm, after travelling for 8 hours with a half hour break and had covered 361 miles. It was dark and Arlene's place was in the hills above the town and not trivial to find, stuck way up some winding lanes amongst millionaire's houses. All of Santa Barbara looked nice, wealthy, but these houses were a cut above, although Arlene's wasn't as she and her husband had moved here about 50 years ago when it was still quite a small place. Arlene was lovely, probably in her 70s, but didn't look it, fit as a fiddle with a house that was a treasure trove of things that she had collected over the years and enchanting & welcoming. We chatted to her for a while but, feeling hungry, headed out to the Enterprise Fish Company restaurant, recommended by Arlene. When we arrived, it turned out that they had a special on Lobsters for $29 (usually $50) - it was cooked to perfection, served with liquid garlic butter, shoestring fries and grilled vegetables. Frankly, awesome. No other words. I washed it down with Sierra Nevada ale, one of their dark ones, and was suitably tasty while B stuck with a cranberry juice that was, perhaps needless to say, one of the best she or I had ever tried. Still feeling that a small corner could be filled, pudding was a molten chocolate cake (recommended by the waiter - a hot sponge with melted dark chocolate in the centre), served with vanilla ice cream, strawberries and dusted with icing sugar. It sounds heavy, but was deliciously light. B says that she was in heaven.
Got back to Arlene's around 10.30; she was asleep and we flopped into bed completely shattered. It had been a long but fabulous (darling!) day of driving.
View SF to Santa Barbara in a larger map
Monday, 21 January 2013
San Francisco! 11/1/13
Arrived at SFO about 6pm. Neither of us had had any sleep for about 24 hours, as the plane was pretty uncomfortable. Had a quick bite to eat at a sushi place up the road (delicious), then passed out around 10. Our hostel was pretty much in the centre of Downtown, 5 minutes from Market Street.
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