By: Kate Howard
Posted In: Travelogue
Photo credit: Kate Howard
The sun shone through the clouds just before sundown in Arizona.
Photo credit: Kate Howard
Entering the Gaslamp Quarter, San Diego´s downtown.
Photo credit: Kate Howard
A view of the Grand Canyon from the South Rim on a cold January afternoon.
Photo credit: Kate Howard
Where I spent my New Year´s Eve, more then halfway to my destination: San Diego.
Photo credit: Kate Howard
Downtown San Diego from Cabrillo National Monument.
Six days of winter break found me in a car, traveling happily cross-country from New Jersey to San Diego, Calif. on a trip I won’t soon forget. I learned as much as I experienced on this trip, and I’d like to share with you the ways this trip changed me and the enlightment it helped me to attain, from start to finish.
There’s much more to New Jersey than highways and smokestacks, and there’s a reason why they call it the Garden State. A city like Washington, D.C. will have traffic even on a cold Sunday afternoon. A Southern Walmart is unlike anything my eyes had previously seen. I always thought our Walmarts had everything, but in the South, they really have…well, EVERYTHING. The South is a land of birthplaces, capitals and firsts. I visited Bristol, Va, birthplace of country music. I stopped in Layne, Texas, self-proclaimed frog capital of the world. I spent my New Year’s Eve in Pecos, Texas, home of the world’s first rodeo. If I ever encountered as many towns with claims to fame in the Northeast, they must not have very big signs. Time does move slowly in the South. Nobody was in a rush, not even the food service workers. I ordered a Subway sandwich, and I was able to make a bathroom trip, shop for postcards, fill them out and mail them by the time my Subway sandwich was finished in one Alabama rest stop. The high school marching band from Houston, Texas that played during the halftime show of the EV1.net Houston Bowl was possibly more interesting than the game. In a style far more entertaining than the traditional Texas Tech band that followed, a group of high-school musicians, baton-twirlers and dancers wore their souls on their sequined sleeves. Kids of all shapes and sizes moved in perfect synchronization with the music, skipping seamlessly from Beyonce to traditional marching band songs, culminating in an impressive finish: not just the dancers but the entire band finished in a split, instruments and stuffy band outfits and all. Everything visible changed as we racked up mileage. The black and white cows I’m accustomed to became brown, rugged free-range steers scattered across otherwise empty western Texas land. Citygoing economy cars in gridiron traffic gradually disappeared, clearing the way for an occasional pickup truck driver to wave a friendly hello to the only car he’s seen for miles. The brown dirt of my childhood backyard turned to red clay in the Appalachian Mountain range, to dust in the plains of Texas and created a breathtaking landscape in the red cliffs of New Mexico. Aforementioned breathtaking landscapes got old after eight straight hours of nothing but breathtaking landscape. I’m not saying everything is bigger in Texas, but it does take a good day and a half with a 75 mile per hour speed limit to get out of there. I’ll always remember the Alamo. An unexpected charm exists in abandoned towns straddling the desert interstates, towns that looked misplaced to start with. These towns went looking for something more, and they lend themselves to black and white photos documenting what used to be. Liquor stores stand emptied with their windows broken, but not boarded. Occasional tires line the quiet road, and old spray-painted hotel signs announce new management in places no traveler has slept in for years. When you visit the Grand Canyon and tell your friends how amazingly beautiful and spiritual it was, every last one of them will talk about that episode of the Brady Bunch when they took a vacation there. After living in Newport and seeing all of the East Coast, I thought I’d seen the extent and epitome of coastal beauty, but a Pacific sunset lined with palm trees and an ocean that defines the color of aquamarine is incomparably different from what we experience daily at Salve. Not better or worse, a San Diego coastline is a feeling you have to experience to articulate. I never valued the space around my feet so much as when the car was unloaded and I remembered what it was like to wiggle my toes. After a few long days in the car, a favorite CD can morph into some kind of recurring nightmare and caffeine is like a really, really happy but high-pitched and fast-moving dream. When you’re traveling 3,779 miles in a four-walled mode of transportation and you can’t distance yourself for a while, one might fear that irritability between travelers could reach an all-time high. I was pleasantly surprised and lucky enough to experience the trip I always wanted to take, on a level of enjoyment I always hoped it might be. Whether it’s exhaustion, car clutter, too much music or no cell signal from San Antonio to Arizona, any problem can be rectified by a long conversation with a great travel partner. When you want to go somewhere, all you really need is a U.S. atlas and some patience. AAA Triptiks tell you which way to go. Highlighted lines on a map limit your freedom, and isn’t it taking a chance, leaving the beaten path and finding the unexpected that road trips are really for? View the slideshow:
