I started this latest (Summer, 2022) trip west by crossing from Iowa to Nebraska on US Highway 30. At that point it is also the Lincoln Highway route. I followed US-30 / Lincoln Highway to west of Laramie, Wyoming where I turned south to visit some of the National Parks in the Great Circle. When I rejoined the Lincoln Highway in Utah, it follows US-50 to Sacramento and on to San Francisco.
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No, not that one.
This Stonehenge is atop a bluff on the Washington side of the Columbia River near Maryville. It was built between 1918 and 1929 by pacifist-entrepreneur Sam Hill as the first monument to World War I soldiers. Mr. Hill mistakenly believed that the original Stonehenge was the site of human sacrifice, and the monument was intended to remind viewers that people are still sacrificed to the god of war.
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My dad was a multipotentialite. Don’t know what that is? Neither did I. But when I recently learned about multipotentiality I knew I found a term that described him. Multipotentiality has only become a thing in the past ten years. It describes people whose interests cannot be confined to a single activity and it accurately describes my dad.
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There are only two significant attacks by enemies on American soil — Pearl Harbor and 9/11. All of us are aware of the efforts to “get bin Laden” and its ultimate success, but not many know about the retribution for Pearl Harbor.
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2022-05-31
In 1903, ten years before the idea of the Lincoln Highway came to be, and travel was dominated by horse and buggy, George Adams Wyman accepted a challenge to ride a motorized bicycle across the continent in 40 days, the first attempt by a motorized vehicle. The California Motor Bicycle Company provided the bike and expense money if he documented the trip in Motorcycle Magazine articles. (Marketing!) He was to receive a bonus if he completed the trip in 40 days. It took 50 days so he did not receive the bonus. But then, he did it by himself, without any support crew. You can only imagine the fragility of a 1902 bicycle with wooden rims and unreliability of a gasoline engine of the day. (His crankshaft broke, and he had to push the bike to Chicago.) Half of his 3500 mile journey was on the Union Pacific railroad tracks.
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In the summer of 1970 I took my first vacation. Ever. I had a new yellow Fiat 124 Spider convertible that I packed with a tent, a duffel of gear and a cooler, and headed west from Detroit. It was maybe the second or third day out; cold, constant rain and dark. I saw the sign that said Mount Rushmore and decided to pass on setting up camp in the rain. I pulled the car up an incline on the verge of a side road to make reclining easier and quickly fell asleep.
Continue reading2022-06-11
After wandering through the National Park Canyons, I again picked up the Lincoln Highway in the guise of US highway 50 in Ely Nevada and followed it through Nevada on the “loneliest road in America.” Some news organization gave it that moniker quite a few years ago, and I did not find it accurate. There was plenty of traffic, places to stop, pipelines, powerlines, farms and ranches that made it not at all lonely. In my experience a much lonelier road is highway 21 from Milford Utah to Garrison Utah. During that 80 mile drive I saw a dozen cars, two ranch houses, some kind of mine, and not a few lost cattle – nothing else. Occasionally there would be a dirt road with a sign that said, “Sometown 30 miles.”
Continue reading2022-06-11
After wandering through the National Park Canyons, I again picked up the Lincoln Highway in the guise of US highway 50 in Ely Nevada and followed it through Nevada on the “loneliest road in America.” Some news organization gave it that moniker quite a few years ago, and I did not find it to be true. There was plenty of traffic, places to stop, pipelines, powerlines, farms and ranches that made it not at all lonely. In my experience a much lonelier road is highway 21 from Milford Utah to Garrison Utah. During that 80 mile drive I saw a dozen cars (some parked), two ranch houses, a mine of some kind, and a few lost cattle – nothing else. Occasionally there would be a dirt road with a sign that said, “Sometown Nevada 30 miles.”
I was generally disappointed with my Lincoln Highway drive. For some reason I expected it to be like Route 66, but it was not. Route 66 is alive. Towns along the way like Seligman, Winslow and Tucumcari make a big deal about it. There are many 66-focused restaurants, shops, museums and the like, and people you meet want to be a part of the history of the Mother Road. On the Lincoln Highway it was difficult to find even a highway marker. The first place I found a shop where I could get a Lincoln Highway sticker for my trailer door was the Medicine Bow Museum. It seems to me that the Lincoln Highway is a historical fetish of the Lincoln Highway Association, but they have failed to capture the interest of the people who live along it.
I rejoined US-50 north of Garrison and followed it through Ely Nevada and the “not so lonely road” to Fernley Nevada for the night. At Sparks I left highway 50 and turned northwest toward California.
The most fun I have on these wanderings is when I come across a place that is truly spectacular and I had no idea it was there. Such a place is the Crooked River Gorge.
Because of a scheduling problem, I had an eight hour driving day; pretty long for me, and stopped at a rest area north of Redmond Oregon to sleep for a while. Signs in the parking lot said “dangerous cliffs” and “leave your pets in the car. Many dogs have died here!” That was ominous. A short walk brought me to the Crooked River Gorge.
Continue readingSpring, 2023 Update
Since I wrote this in June, 2022, the western United States has seen a lot of precipitation. The “atmospheric river” dumped weeks of rain on the northwest. (I was hunkered down on the Oregon coast during most of it.) Snowpack in the California mountains is more than double normal levels. Wyoming has near-record amounts of snow in the higher elevations, with some concern that rapid melt and rain could cause a repeat of last June’s Yellowstone flooding. the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is predicting that levels of Wyoming’s two major lakes, Bighorn and Boysen will exceed 30-year averages, and Lake Powell levels could increase by 100 feet or more.
While one winter of heavy precipitation will not solve the problems of low pool in Powell and Mead, it will certainly help. We shall see what the summer holds.
Another night on the Colorado. (Technically it is Lake Powell until it flows through the Glen Canyon Dam and then it becomes the Colorado again.) Then it goes on its way through the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Davis Dam and Parker Dam before disappearing somewhere in the Arizona sand.
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