Made it!

I successfully arrived in Palo Alto yesterday! I meant to post earlier, but I ended up spending about 5 hours unpacking and setting up my room yesterday and then I ran errands most of today. I'll post an update tomorrow with some highlights about Stanford. But I thought I'd post some wrap-up stats about the trip tonight:

• Total miles driven: 3300+
  
• Average gas mileage: 31 MPG
  
• Total states: 11 (PA, WV, OH, IN, IL, MO, KS, CO, UT, NV, CA)
  
• National Parks visited: 3
  
• Official "trip tunes": Green Day's Bullet in a Bible
  
• Favorite city: Boulder, CO
  
• Favorite roadside stop: Flying J
  
• Official trip roads: I 70 and I 80
  
• Official trip hotel: Holiday Inn Express
  
• Best invention ever: Bags that compress
  
• Best roadtrip idea ever: Blogging about it!
  

On the road

I spent almost the entire day today on the road. I covered about 700 miles through Utah and Nevada.

A couple observations:

• For some reason, I just can't get into the Patrick O'Brien books (Master and Commander, etc.). I tried to listen to one of his books on CD today and gave up after about an hour. It's a little weird because I used to love the Hornblower series and other historical fiction books about the British Navy. I'm not sure if my dislike of O'Brien's books is a result of me "maturing" or some difference between his books and other series that I've enjoyed.
  
• After giving up on the O'Brien book, I started listening to Dan Brown's pre-DaVinci Code book "Digital Fortress." It's about the NSA, codes, and international espionage. What's not to like? Unfortunately, I'm about halfway through it and I can safely say that it is a terrible book. The plot has serious holes, the characters are flat, and the dialog is contrived. Nonetheless, I'm enjoying it so far. Despite its flaws, the plot moves fast and it's an interesting concept.
  
• I bought the "Last Kiss" soundtrack last week. I really like Joshua Radin.
  
• I finally caught up on the news today. The ABC news "docu-drama" about 9/11 is outrageous! I'm glad the DNC, MoveOn, and half a dozen other liberal organizations are on the ball with urgent list builders, oops, I mean petitions, to stop it...
  

I'm spending the night in Reno, which is only about 4 hours from Palo Alto, so I should be there by mid-day tomorrow. Horray!

National Park Day

Today was the official "National Park Day" on my roadtrip.

First, I visited the Colorado National Monument near Grand Junction, CO. The Colorado National Monument was an incredible maze of steep cliff faces, canyon walls, and stark spires. I wound my way through the Monument via the 23 mile long Rim Rock Drive. This road was created at great peril during the Great Depression by Civilian Conservation Corps workers. It hugs the top of the canyon walls and provides amazing views along nearly its entire length.



The next stop on my mini-tour of National Parks was Arches National Park near Moab, UT. I've heard mixed reviews of Arches. One friend reported that it "changed their life" while another thought it was kind of ho-hum. I vacilated between both points of view over the course of my visit to Arches. At first, I was distinctly unimpressed -- after the Colorado National Monument, parts of Arches seemed pretty bland. But the Windows Arches were absolutely incredible. I'm not sure they changed my life, but they were definitely pretty impressive.





In addition to the digital shots above, I also took some pictures with my old 35 mm film camera. I'm excited to get this roll of film developed when I get to California. I think it's been in the camera since college so it should have an exciting montage of shots! I love my digital camera, but I have to admit that I was struck by nostalgia using my old 35 camera. Unlike a digital camera, photography with a 35 mm camera is neither instant, light, nor free. But it gives you much better control over the shot. More importantly, my 35 mm camera has an awesome zoom lens that I got for Christmas a few years ago. I never really paid too much attention to the zoom capability before, but it was incredible how much farther the 35 mm camera can zoom than my digital camera can. I think I'm going to start using it more again -- particularly for landscape shots.

Speaking of pictures, here's a random photo from yesterday. Apparently, the Colorado Department of Transportation feels very strongly that people shouldn't drive up this hillside.

Colorado

I spent almost the entire day today in Colorado. I have to say, I was quite impressed with the Centennial State. It had clean roads, generous speed limits, beautiful moutains, and bountiful farmers markets. What more can you ask?

I spent the morning driving across the last stretch of plains before hitting the Rockies. The last stretch of plains are actually pretty incredible. The Rockies just rise up in front of you as you approach Denver... Unfortunately, my approach to Denver was marred as I got completely lost exiting I-70 into the city. Luckily, I eventually sorted myself out and managed to park at a fairly convenient spot downtown.

My first stop in Denver was at Union Train Station. Unfortunately, Denver's Union Station was nowhere near as cool as St. Louis's Union Station. The reason? No mall. After seeing both of these stations, I have decided that every old downtown train station should house a mall. Think about it -- all of today's vibrant train stations have a thriving mall:

• Grand Central Terminal
  
• Union Station in Washington DC
  
• Union Station in St. Louis
  
• South Station in Boston
  

You get the point...

After Union Station, I took a taxi to the Denver Aquarium. I'm proud to say that the Aquarium was definitely worth the price of admission. It had sharks, tigers (yup, tigers!), barracudas. It even had stingrays.

After my quick visit to the Aquarium, I walked back downtown to the pedestrian-only 16th Street Mall. This brings me to my second generalization of the day. I think that all cities should have pedestrian-only malls. I could be wrong, but I think that almost all of my favorite cities have started pedestrian-only areas.

• Burlington, VT (of course!)
  
• Charlottesville, VA
  
• Madison, WI
  
• Philadelphia, PA
  
• Boston, MA
  
• Denver, CO

After Denver, I drove north for a quick visit to Boulder. The highlight of the trip to Boulder was it's thriving Farmer's Market. I bought three organic gala apples and a grass-fed natural hamburger. Yum. As I wandered around downtown Boulder, I couldn't help but think how Boulder is quite possibly the most hippy/liberal place I've ever visited (which is saying something after living in Burlington for two years). So it was no shock when I bumped into both PIRG canvassers and DNC canvassers asking for money just moments after finishing this thought... Of course, I jest. But I think Boulder would be a pretty cool place to live. Imagine waking up every morning with the Rocky Mountains out your backdoor?

I left Boulder on a southwestern trajectory through the Rockies back to I-70W. I definitely only brushed the edge of the mountain range, but it was still pretty incredible. It reinforced my belief that I much more awestruck by mountains than by water (rivers, lakes, etc). I'm hoping to push into Utah tomorrow and pay a visit to Arches National Park. Then only two more days until I reach California!

The Great Plains

I spent most of today driving through the Great Plains in rural Missouri and Kansas on I-70W. But I did make a couple of exciting stops in Topeka and Junction City.

First, I stopped at the Topeka Zoological Park. I visited the zoo primarily to see their enclosed rain forest. Unfortunately, the rain forest turned out to be about 50 feed in diameter and there was nary an animal to be found. Fortunately, there were lots of animals in other parts of the zoo, including tigers, alligators, apes, giraffes, and snakes (but not on a plane!). The only bummer was that the zoo really seemed like a remnant of an earlier, less enlightened age. All the exhibits seemed to be a little too small. And the zoo primarily consisted of "sexy" animals (see list above) that generate visitors. There definitely weren't many obscure species living in this zoo....

After the zoo, I drove through a maze of strips malls to the Combat Air Museum in the southern end of Topeka. The Combat Air Museum had a fascinanting collection of military aircraft. But it seemed like the museum had seen better days. It was hidden in a back part of Forbes Field Airport, which made it really complicated to find. So it wasn't too surprising to not meet any other visitors during my stay. Nonetheless, it was a cool museum that I heartily recommend to anyone that visits Topeka!

Unfortunately, I can't stay the same about the other museum I visited today. In Junction City, I took a little detour to the U.S. Cavalry Museum on Fort Riley. The Cavalry Museum sounded really good on paper. But there were a couple problems:

• It's actually located on Fort Riley. So getting to the museum requires waiting in line at the entrance to the base and procuring a visitors pass. On this sleepy Tuesday, this process took almost half an hour. I wonder how long it takes on the weekend?
  
• After I obtained my visitors pass and was admitted to the base, it turned out to be really hard to actually find the museum! There were no signs for it. So I drove around in circles for 15 minutes before I actually found it.
  
• All the exhibits at the museum were a little faded and seen like they were a bit past their prime.
  
• Fort Riley was a key base for the cavalry during the "Indian Wars" in the late 1800's. So I expected the museum to have lots of information about the cavalry's role in "winning" the Plains and defeating the Native Americans. But the museum seemed to have lots of information about every war EXCEPT the war that Fort Riley was directly involved in. Very strange.
  
• Finally, the biggest bummer about the Cavalry Museum was that the whole process took so much time that I didn't get out of the museum until 4:15 pm and I missed closing time at the Geary County Historical Museum nearby (the home of the famous historical undergarments exhibit).

So in summary, if you happen to pass-by Junction City KS ignore the temptation to visit the U.S. Cavalry Museum.

Some random observations from the past few days:

• Almost every single hotel billboard I've passed advertises that the hotel has free Wireless Internet. This is definitely a big change since my last long roadtrip during college when I have this vague memory of plugging in my laptop at hotels to dial-up the Internet through AOL. Thankfully, dial-up is a thing of the past on this roadtrip.
  
• The highway speed limit throughout the midwest seems to be 70 MPH. You wouldn't think the extra 5 MPH makes a big difference. But it really does -- the miles just fly by!
  
• I'm bummed that I haven't passed any windmills since PA. Nick -- any BP wind farms near I-70?
  
• I've become quite enraptured with the travel plazas that line the highways here. "Flying J", "Pilot", and many others. The best part is that each chain of travel plazas will rent you books on tape that you can return at their other plazas. So I rented "Saturday" (by Ian McEwan) at a Flying J travel plaza today. I actually already read it, but I think it will be fun to listen to. Anyway, it's got to be better than country music radio.

St. Louis and the Gateway Arch

I spent most of today in the "Show Me" state. I arrived in St. Louis around lunchtime and headed immediately for the Gateway Arch.

I was expecting for the Arch to be impressive, but I think it was even more impressive than I expected. It's 620 feet tall at the top and it towers over everything else in St. Louis. Apparently, it's actually the tallest monument in the country.



The coolest part about the Arch is that you can actually take a little tram to the top. Check out the cool picture of the city from the top of the Arch!

The downtown area

After the Arch Gateway, I walked across town to Union Station. It used to the largest train station in the country. Alas, the Bush administration refused to fund trains, so now it's a giant mall (okay, it's probably a little more complicated than that...).

The last stop in St. Louis was the City Museum. This was definitely the coolest part of St. Louis. It was an incredible maze of old airplanes and cityscapes tied together into a giant playground... My words really don't do it justice so see for yourself.



Finally, the moment of zen for the day. What's wrong with this picture?

The first day!

The first day of travel passed relatively uneventfully. Key highlights:

I traveled a total of 686 miles in five states -- PA, WV, OH, IN, IL. About two thirds of the trip was on lovely I-70W.

Gas is apparently much cheaper in the Midwest than on the East Coast. I refilled my tank for $2.30 a gallon in Ohio. Of course, when I filled up I was somewhat worried that the gas might be diluted, tainted, or otherwise fouled. But it seems to be just as wonderful as East Coast gas -- my car is averaging about 31 MPG so far.

Speaking of energy, I passed several giant windmills on the PA Turnpike near Pittsburgh. I wonder if Nick's company built them?

If you've ever lived or traveled with me, you know that I eat waffles, well, just about everyday. So I thought it was fitting that my first dinner of the trip should be at Waffle House.

I stayed overnight with Karen Lichtman at the University of Illinois in Champaign, IL (thanks Karen!). Karen and I went to a little party some of her friends were throwing. It was very exciting. Bottom line - It's going to be fun to back in school.

Leaving tomorrow morning!

The car is finally all packed up! I just need to do a final round of laundry tomorrow morning and I'll be all set to go. Of course, I can't leave before the Casey/Santorum debate tomorrow morning on Meet the Press. Priorities. Duh.

Anyway, my current trip route will take me through:

Columbus, OH
Indianapolis, IN
St. Louis, MO
Junction City, KS
Denver, CO
Boulder, CO
Moab, UT (Arches National Park!)
Salt Lake City, UT
Reno, NV
and finallly.. Palo Alto, CA

If all goes well, I'll end up somewhere between Columbus and St. Louis tomorrow night (Sunday). Then I'll sightsee a bit in St. Louis on Monday before pushing west into Kansas. Shoot me an email if you have any good sightseeing ideas or travel tips for Missouri or Kansas.

Packing

I spent the day packing. Next comes loading up the car... oh boy!!