Sunday, July 30, 2017

Great American Road Trip Part 3: Gateway to the East

Last week we made our way from Oklahoma City to St Louis, working our way backwards through the Route 66 song. While we didn't stay in Joplin, MO, we did stop and eat at a Braum's there on Rangeline Rd. My Grandma informed me that my Great-great grandparents had a farm on Rangeline Rd. in Joplin, MO way back when and that she used to go visit them when she lived in neighboring Kansas. There were no traces of any farms on Rangeline Rd. when we drove through - it has been well incorporated into the town. So we stopped and had our last Braum's ice cream of the trip to commemorate the ancestral link.

We did stay in Broken Arrow, OK and Springfield, MO on the way up to St Louis. Broken Arrow, which is a suburb of Tulsa, might sound like an odd choice, but it marked the point where our cross-country trip intersected my cousin Eli's cross-country Drum Corps International (DCI) tour. We had never been to a DCI event and we were blown away. This is as close as it gets to professional marching band. Seven teams each took the field for 10-15 minutes each to do their routine - each with an overwhelming amount of intricacy in music and movement. Imagine if Cirque du Soleil did a marching band performance - that's what DCI is. At one point, one of the band member was spun around in a wheel around the field, trumpets blared as they rotated back and forth on the wheels and Eli's team's performance incorporated a lot of  cool snake imagery, the theme to mark the band's 50th anniversary.



It was Mae's first experience with a marching band and she seemed into it. She was not a dan of the ear muffs though.




We were amazed by the turnout - there must have been 5000 people there. Eli's band, the Santa Clara Vanguard, will be competing for the grand championship in early August in front of an expected 30,000 people. Bryn was excited to have discovered another sub-culture.

Our next atop after Broken Arrow was Springfield, MO. I was working during the trip so we stayed put in the mornings and then drove in the evenings.this scheduled left little time for exploring our surroundings. But in Springfield, I got to relive my days of traveling with Grandma & Grandpa by staying in a Best Western. This wasn't just any BW, though - Elvis had stayed there in 1956. His room had been decked out in chrome Cadillac fenders and went for a significant per night premium, so we opted for a normal room, but Mae and I posed for a picture outside.



She seemed to be pretty into the cultural history significance of the moment.

This hotel was also cool because 1) they offered s'mores, which we indulged, and 2) the owner of the hotel had kept all of the old signs. The first was the original sign back from the Elvis days. In the tradition of route 66 marketing gimmicks, the hotel's name comes from the split rail fence around it - not it's proximity to any rail station. I wonder how many disappointed travelers the name attracted over the years.




At some point in the 70s, it became part of the Best Western chain. As a kid, I remember associating motels that advertised this sign outside as being older, less nice and, most importantly, pool-less.




But if it sported this new, rebranded sign outside, you knew you were in for a much more exclusive hospitality experience.



And Best Western has been keeping up with the times, as you can see with this newest branding. I appreciate this new logo's use of the classy "BW" initials. Just a reminder of yet another point that the hotel chain shares in common with me: initials. The marquis board is very effective at advertising the hotel's Elvis heritage.




Finally, Thursday evening, we made it to St Louis, gateway to the east from our perspective. Similar to Phoenix, our visit to St Louis coincided with a record heat wave. It made doing anything outside kind of miserable, but the neighborhood my aunt and uncle live in has nice trees that provide lots of shade. This was a weekend for hanging out with family, anyways. It was good to have a little reunion in St Louis during our trip.

Mae meeting Uncle Phillip



We still managed some sight-seeing though: this is the old downtown courthouse where the Dred Scott case was heard.






And of course, we made it to the arch






And up into the top of the arch. For those who haven't been to the St Louis arch, it's a fun ride up in a little 1960s era, Jetsons style pod train. It wasn't very windy the day we went up, but apparently the arch can start swaying a few inches when the wind picks up. My Uncle Phillip encouraged us to rally all of the other tourists to run back and forth in unison across the viewing platform in an effort to rock the arch like a boat. We didn't do that, though.





Mae's first trip across the Mississippi river was in St Louis!






And, Mae's first independent swing ride was also in St Louis. It was a weekend of many firsts.




WHEEEE!!!


Saturday, July 15, 2017

Great American Road Trip Part 2: The Possibilities!

This whole business of driving cross-country got my brain thinking about the ultimate cross-country road trip. Of course, there are many ways to define that. One approach might be to visit every national park in the contiguous United States. Apparently, you can do all 47 over 15,000 miles.

http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/us-national-parks-optimal-road-trip.png
But just looking at that map, you can see that only hitting the jewels of America's most beautiful spots leaves out a lot in the center of the country. If you want to take a more democratic approach to touring the country (this is America, after all), you could hit all 48 contiguous states plus DC. Of course someone has already mapped that out for us.

http://twentytwowords.com/how-to-drive-through-all-48-of-the-continental-united-states-in-113-hours/
That trip is more manageable, too, at less than half the mileage of the national parks circuit: 6,872 miles. Of course, adding on Alaska and Hawaii would increase that number dramatically. I guess that's why they're worth their own, separate trips.

But looking at the route above, I noticed a few things that irked me. First, It's not coast-to-coast. The trip starts in Maine and ends in Montana, never giving a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. I know the oceans aren't states, but they are pretty momentous features defining the United States. If I were to drive nearly 7000 miles to see every state, I'd feel like something were missing if I never saw the Pacific in the process.

Second, upon close inspection, the route in this map doesn't even actually hit all the 48 contiguous states: Pennsylvania got cut out. Now, you can probably SEE Pennsylvania on this route; IH-68 comes awfully close, but actually stays in Maryland. This omission disqualifies the route entirely. I'll give you the Pacific Ocean since it technically isn't a state, but Pennsylvania definitely is a state. You can't leave that one out.

Finally, the map above involves several points of back-tracking. Most notably, there's a little spur going east from Chicago to hit Indiana and Michigan. I don't like backtracking. I took a lot of advice from my Grandpa when it comes to living life with honor and integrity and one of those pieces of advice was to not go home the same way you left. There's just too much of the world out there to take the same route twice. The spur to Michigan in the map above may be the most efficient way to see all of the lower 48, but it's not one that I could follow in good conscience.

Having noticed these flaws, some of which were fatal, I determined to make my own route that would allow me see all 48 contiguous states without 1) omitting a major ocean; 2) omitting Pennsylvania (or any other state) and; 3) backtracking.

Ben's Version

I know, this route looks pretty similar. It's about 400 miles longer than the first map but much more complete in my mind. For a step by step guide, here are the route specifics. Another fun fact: if you're looking to drive coast-to-coast and pass through the least states possible, then California to North Carolina via Arkansas and Tennessee is your best bet. The more you know!

Anyways, these are just fantasy for now. We aren't doing any of these trip this time around. We have prioritized visiting family and friends over states this time around and the past three weeks have been spent seeing my and Bryn's family. We had a week in Austin, a week at a lake house and then the past week has been in Oklahoma City. It seems like a week is just about how long it takes for Mae to get adjusted to a place, so we're keeping up a pace that ensures she's never quite settled in. Poor girl. She's being a trooper though. Even when we dunked her in Barton Springs for her "baptism". 


She seemed completely comfortable kicking around in the water. She wasn't so happy about the dunking, but it didn't ruin her day either, so we're considering it a win. 

We continued the water theme in Oklahoma City at a great splash pad that rained, sprayed, waterfalled and misted all the kids running around. Mae enjoyed it too, seeing as how she could keep her feet more on solid ground. 


We're doing our best to get her used to the water.