On the Road

Map of the route for the National Park-to-Park Highway
Dedication Tour (1924)

When I started this enterprise, I thought my careful planning had taken every contingency into account and/or were things that could be conquered on the road. So much for best laid plans....

My house sitters, Russ and Jeanmarie are happily in residence, enjoying the opportunity to live near New York City for a month (they live in North Carolina). I had packed clothes and shoes for all types of weather and terrain, since the trip would include the highest mountains of the Northwest to the hottest desert in the Southwest. I bought a new Jetta diesel 6 months ago, which handles like a dream and gets around 43 mpg. I had checked that my car registration and insurance were up-to-date, and that there was money in the bank. I had joined AAA and several main highway-type motel chains. I had even included a portable file with hanging folders, where I could organize my background materials en route. And I had included three cameras – two point-and-shoot and one DSLR – three 16 Gig SD cards, and a new ruby-red Iomega portable hard drive to back up my photos. I was set.

The plan was to drive during the day and write thoughtful comments in this blog every evening. Partly so that my family and friends not worry if they knew where I was on a daily basis, and partly because I thought it best to capture one's impressions along the way immediately.

But I wasn't prepared for two really big factors: 1) driving is exhausting; and 2) your favorite techie gizmos don't always work.

The first couple of days I reveled in the liberation of the road. I was proud of myself, being able to find suitable accommodations each night – some rather interesting, like my room overlooking the Mississippi River in Le Claire, Iowa; others not so much, like the hotel near I-80 in the middle of unrelentingly flat Nebraska.

Then, as I crossed time zones, my body clock seemed to get totally out of whack. I would check in to the hotel I had booked the previous evening at around 5 p.m. (500 miles/day was my limit), and all I could think of was getting something reasonably healthy for dinner and going to sleep. I was in bed by 7 p.m. some nights. Of course that meant that I awoke at 5 a.m. and was on the road again by 7 a.m., without having had the energy to write anything down at all. I was on a fairly tight schedule, since I was to meet my son Dan and his wife Betsy in San Francisco in 2 weeks, by then having already visited the five northern parks (Yellowstone, Glacier, Mt. Rainier, Crater, and Lassen Volcanic) – a fairly tall order.

However, I had devised a way to take copious notes of what I saw along the way, to help me remember when it came to writing about it: I have two cameras at the ready in the front seat. My small, shockproof, waterproof, everything-proof point-&-shoot camera was good for taking the unstudied, drive-by notes from the car. The Canon DSLR was reserved for the “important photos,” where you actually stop the car to take something incredibly interesting. It takes a lot to get me out of the car when the drive-by notes are so easy, but the scenery in the West, in particular, is breathtaking. I have pulled to the side of the road so many times to capture a vast valley, an interesting feature, or massive mountain range I can't possibly count them. I would bracket each set of photos with a shot of their location on the road map. And, at night, I could, I thought, organize the photos so that I could go back and retrieve just the ones I needed.

A technical glitch threw this plan off track. I forgot my favorite card reader and, for some reason, the USB cable was not transferring the photos to my computer. I was desperate – how would I back up my photos? What if something went wrong with the cameras, or they were stolen? How could I see the photos or edit them? How could I show friends how beautiful this area was?

In Cheyenne, Wyoming, I bought a new card reader at some big-box store, but that didn't work either. The inability to transfer my photos to my computer or do anything with them was not just a frustration. For this visual person, it was a total disconnect from the travels of the day. The exhaustion of driving combined with the technical problems with my imaging were the first major challenges of this journey.

Now I realize, especially when I read about the life-threatening hardships endured by the early explorers of the western territories, that my problems were miniscule in comparison. But they were my challenges to overcome, nonetheless. Gradually, as my body adjusted to the time changes and the rhythm of the road, I became less tired. In the parks, I took my time in the early morning – the best light of the day for photos and fewer people. By noon, I was out of the park, either to wait for more exploration of the park the following morning or to take time resting or walking around an interesting place outside the park.

As for the technological problems, my filmmaker/camera-expert son Casey came to the rescue, helping me understand what was preventing the file transfer. A new card reader solved the problem and, magically, I was in business again!

Today is July 4^th – the nation celebrates. For my holiday, I will start my journey to Mt. Rainier. I hope to be more attentive to this series in future days, although I feel that living the experience is much more important than writing about it en route. I am sure to catch up, though, after I have had the time to digest my thoughts, my research, and my images. Our national parks are, indeed, some of the most spectacular places in our country.

Logo for the Tour (1920)

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