First Week

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Fri 14 Sep 2007 Chama, NM

We started Thursday Sep 6.
Mass Pike all the way, into NY, Lake Erie shore of PA,
through Ohio, Indianapolis, Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico.
Almost all the way has been beautiful top-down cruising weather.
Traffic has been generally light, except that we managed to hit
St Louis and Oklahoma City about 5 PM on consecutive days.
And Taos was like Falmouth in summer… but short.
The trip so far has been superb. Tremendous variety of
scenery, lots of interesting stops, no serious problems.

Started with the top up since it was a little cold.
About the time we hit the first Mass Pike rest area
we put the top down for a sunny trip across MA and NY.
Mass Pike was a rolling car show with hot rods, customs, and
classics going to a huge car show at Lake George.
Passed near Albany (hot rods turned north here),
then Syracuse, then down the west side of Seneca Lake
to a motel near Watkins Glen for our first night.
Watkins Glen was full of cars of interest of a different sort;
They were setting up for a Vintage Grand Prix weekend.

Fri Sep 7 we hiked through Watkins Glen Gorge.
This was truly spectacular, well worth a visit if you’re
ever in the Finger Lakes area.
The Grand prix cars parade was forming up in the state park
parking lot as we left, we almost became a part of it.
Not sure about Diane’s VW, but Rosemary’s MINI
would have fit right into that crowd.

Friday afternoon we stopped at the Glenn Curtiss museum
which held lots of fascinating stuff. Curtiss was a truly
both a remarkable engineer and a remarkable entrepreneur.
http://www.glennhcurtissmuseum.org/

Friday night, a bit late, we found Allegany State Park with some difficulty.
It’s a HUGE state park… about 5 exits off I88 are within it, but
no sign saying “take this exit for park” so we guessed wrong,
had to ask directions, the entrance gate was unmanned (shut down for the night)
so we drove in quite a ways, were about to give up and go look for a motel
when we came to the administration building. Got a campsite for the night,
and there was a restaurant in the admin building, so we were all set.

Saturday AM was threatening rain so we abandoned the hiking plan,
started early driving through the park, and the rain came !
Drove through wine country… vineyard after vineyard…
Rosemary said “Nobody could drink this much wine”
and then we passed the Welch’s Grape juice and jelly plant.

In Jamestown NY, Chautauqua region, the Lucy & Desi museum was fun.
The whole town was sort of full of Lucy stuff.

Early Sat afternoon, in nice weather again, we arrived at Lake Erie State park (NY),right on the shore of the lake. Set up camp, hiked around a bit, strolled alongthe lake shore. Went out for food and stuff and encountered a small towncommunity fair, so we strolled around there a while soaking up some Americana.
Everyone in town seemed to be there. The bandstand was set up on the back of a truck, all the shops were having sidewalk sale, a dunktank, acar show and lots of booths.
As we passed through there was a limbo contest. No, we did not join in!

Started raining about 2 AM, but Diane’s tent kept us nice and dry.
(took us the next two days to dry out the tent!)

Sunday was a high mileage, somewhat rainy day.
About 500 miles got us to Indianapolis just early enoughto take the bus tour lap around the Speedway.
The parking lot for the Museum is inside the track, soI can say I’ve driven in Indy and gone around the track.

Monday morning we went to the Indy museum.This was quite interesting. They have winning carsfrom many years, including the first, 1911. That cardid lap speeds around 70… on oil & gravel. Modernextreme-high-tech cars, on specialized asphalt, doabout 220… only three times better after almosta hundred years of evolution. The museum is aboutmore than just Indy cars; it’s really another cross sectionof American history.

Monday afternoon we drove through to Rolla, MO (360 miles).
Tuesday we piled on more miles, to Clinton, OK, (almost 500 miles)but we broke it up by traveling on parts of the original Route 66.
Clinton must be the Cricket Capital of the world, based onwhat the motel managers had to deal with. Luckily we didn’t have
any in our room but a local told that they are all over including
inside VA Hospital.

Wed AM we visited the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum.Interesting stuff about the evolution of trails and transportationwhich led to the building of Route 66 and its eventual obsolescenceand decommissioning. (There is no longer a US Route 66, but
OK 66 is largely the same road (including stretches of original
1930’s concrete pavement still in quite good shape and carrying
65 MPH traffic). The museum had an expected amount of warm-and-fuzzynostalgia-oriented displays, but the movie got a little heavy on the sadnessof the deterioration and loss of many buildings and other artifacts.
However, there is quite a bit of preservation and restoration going on,and a lot of both public and private support to keep Historic Route 66 alive.
We went through most of Texas on the old 66 (mostly original)instead of I40 which pretty much follows the same route.

So we really did “get our kicks on Route 66”.http://www.historic66.com/

Wednesday Sep 12 evening we were in Raton in northeast New Mexico.
Oklahoma and Texas are where they raise cattle and oil, and we saw
(and smelled) much evidence of both. The first stockyard we passed actually
had a real life cowboy on a horse corralling the cattle.
Broad vistas of landscape.

Thursday morning we visited Capulin Volcano. This is the bestexample of a volcanic cinder cone in the US (if not world)and is managed as a National Monument. This cone (and scatteredothers in the area) rises from a flat plateau; it’s not a range ofmountains, it’s a flat plain with occasional, isolated, volcanic peaksthrusting up. But that flat plain ? It’s at about 6500 feet…which is higher than the summit of Mt Washington.We’ve pretty much been climbing almost imperceptiblysince crossing the Mississippi. There’s a road which spirals aroundthe volcano cone to a parking lot at the crater rim (cliff/wall on uphill side,nothing but air… lots of air… on the downhill side). A trail goes around thecrater rim (1 mile circumference), another drops down into the crater.
High point on the rim is 8182 We spent half a day there, and learned a lot.

Thursday afternoon we drove west across northern Mew Mexico on US 64.
This was a stunningly beautiful drive through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
Rio Grande Gorge, west of Taos NM, the road is 650 feet above the river.
The bridge is a three span continuous truss bridge bearing a placardfrom the American Steel Construction Institute commending it as“the most beautiful steel bridge” in 1966. Not sure about the bridge,but the Rio Grande Gorge is definitely awesome.

Thursday and Friday nights, Chama NM, we are at a little mom-and-pop motel;very nice, more like a bed-and-breakfast than a motel. We would really recommend
this one!

Friday Sept 24. Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad.
*** WOW ***This is a 64-mile segment of the 3-foot gauge Denver and Rio Grande,running 1925-vintage 2-8-2 steam locomotives.
It’s America’s longest and highest narrow gauge railroad.
About five and a half operating hours through stunning mountain terrain.
Four percent grades climbing to 10,015 feet at Cumbres Pass.Return to Chama, NM from Antonito, CO was an hour-and-a-half bus ride on
CO/NM Rt 17 through the mountains. Spectacular, crossed the RR tracksseveral times, but nothing to match the RR experience.
http://www.cumbrestoltec.com/

This has been the best day yet of our trip… and they’ve all been good.
And they’ve all been different. Even the high-mileage days havetreated us to different scenery as we traveled through the 10 stateswe’ve been in so far (not counting Colorado, which the railroadmeandered in and out of).

Total car mileage from Walpole is 2680.

Still ahead of us:
Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Yellowstone, Glacier.
And, of course, Seattle.

Today a women I met said we can’t miss Vancouver Island and it’s gardens!
Of course she also recommended that we go to the Canadian Rockies too!