USA

Are we training for a marathon? Did we recently run a ten kilometer race? Well, we are on a kind of marathon, but no, our title is not about a race. Rather is refers to the number of miles we have put on our little Ford Escort.

Since March 1, that is, in 108 days, we have driven almost 10,000 miles. That is about double what we had estimated (a rather uninformed estimate) we would have done by now. Our first 750 miles were kind of a shake-down cruise: we accumulated these miles in and around DC and our first "major" trip to New York/New Jersey when we uprooted ourselves from Arlington, DC. After getting new tires and tie rods (as well as visiting and saying goodbye to our NY/NJ friends) we were off to Florida. 2500 miles later we'd seen and visited in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Do you give us even a little extra credit for only going 1,000 miles over the straight line route New York - South Florida?

Ten Thousand Mile route New York to Las Vegas

Now up to 3,500 miles (don't worry that our figures don't add up) we set off for Texas and Mexico. We had a good (but shallow) time discovering the west and northwest Florida, Mobile, Alabama and the area's coast, a bit of Missisippi, New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and Houston and San Antonio, Texas. We were at almost precisely 5,000 miles when we crossed over from Laredo, Texas into Mexico.

Mexico and its 1,500 miles were a preview of what we'll be doing again in a few weeks. In our first visit we convinced ourselves that having a car in Mexico wasn't too complicated or dangerous. We saw big cities like Monterrey, Saltillo, and Torreon and small places like Madera, Cuarenta Casas, and Paquime. From Nevada where we are now we'll go back to Arizona and then down the Pacific Coast of Mexico all of the way to Central America.

Its "back to Arizona" because when we left Mexico we came in at Douglas, went on to Tucson, Phoenix, and Yuma. We hadn't planned to do so much in Arizona, but while there we got the bug. So we'll go back to fill in a few gaps and again see the relatives that we briefly saw (Gerry's brother Allen, cousin Dave, and many related family members).

Jan in Buttercup sand dunes

We crossed into California and immediately stopped for a short hike in sand dunes, had a nice drive through the Anza-Borego desert and the Laguna hills and went on to spend two days with Gerry's nephew in San Diego. Our original thought when still in the east was to get an apartment in the Los Angeles area and stay a month or more. But because we extended our stay in DC by a month and took longer coming east, we didn't look for an apartment. We found a nice, central, cheap motel (when it came time to renew the  on-duty manager acted hurt that we'd been given such a favorable price) and stayed for 12 days. That allowed us to visit Gerry's Aunt Zelda (88 and going strong) several times, go to two days of activities at Gerry's 40 Caltech reunion, see several other friends, and have some great meals.

How many miles were we up to now? We'll have to check but we might have put another 500-750 miles on just going around the LA area. 120 of them were put on the next to last day delivering Gerry's broken camcorder to the Sony repair center in Irvine. (Eventually he had to do without it for three weeks; we "recovered" it while here in Las Vegas.) A rapid two day drive along the beautiful Pacific Coast took us to San Francisco. There we stayed with Gerry's cousin Bob in a Victorian house on a classic San Francisco steep hill and visited Gerry's aunt Francis (97 and nearly going strong), cousin Bob's mother.

We left San Francisco and headed north to Marin County, Muir Woods, Point Reyes National Seashore, and Petaluma. By now we were almost up to 9000 miles and at our farthest point north on the West Coast. In fact, at 38.25 degrees north, we were almost back as far north as New York's 40.75 degrees north. If you think of our journey as being equivalent to a big skateboard run, we'd rushed down on the right, been propelled to the left,and then, friction slowing us, had almost regained our original altitude.

From Petaluma we went through the hot California central valley and up into Yosemite Valley for six days of camping, hiking, eating from cans, and spectacular sights of the famous waterfalls, charged with the runoff of a major spring snow melt. We left Yosemite by crossing over the Sierras via the Tioga Pass (another 10K, this time feet of elevation) and going to Lone Pine in the Owens Valley. There we saw friends we'd met in New York and saw the Alabama Hills, site of many western movies.

We completed our stay in California with a breathtaking drive from Lone Pine to and through Death Valley. It was "through" because of the 119°F heat. We had hoped to spend at least one night just above the valley in a campground near the road to Telescope Peak that we had driven on our first joint visit in 1993 (then coming from Las Vegas rather than going toward it). Sadly, the campground was totally devoid of shade and not high enough to be really cool, so we decided to press on toward the comforts of a real bed in Las Vegas.

And then we were, at 9,700 miles, at last in Nevada. A few more hours and we were in Las Vegas. Arriving as the weekend began was not the best thing to do. Crowds flow out of Los Angeles into Las Vegas and, like a rising tide usually does, raises prices. In search of a hotel we turned to our usually reliable discount coupon book (no reservations allowed; none given) and it wasn't until the fourth try that we found a place. We were really happy that our search could be done from the side of the road using our Verizon wireless cellphone.

Jan jumping into Frontier Hotel pool

During the weekend we cased hotels, retracing most of our steps made in 1993 when we had searched for the best swimming pool in town. While Vegas had grown — probably now two or even three times as big -- there still isn't a better pool or deal than the one we found in 1993. Yes, there are bigger pools, but they are more crowded or made for looks rather than swimming. After a Monday morning bargaining session by phone we moved into and spent twelve wonderful days at the New Frontier Hotel & Casino hunkering down in our room during the 100+°F daylight hours, except for a pre-breakfast and a pre-dinner swim, and then wandering out after dark to sample the bright lights, free resort shows, and not quite free resort buffet dinners. The swimming probably saved us from getting too huge on daily buffet breakfasts (included in the room price) and dinners.