The Dessert!

It's getting pretty dessert-y out here! Miles and miles of Hostess Cakes. 
Also, we're in the desert! It's hot and brown. There are cactuses and corpses.

Not kidding.


Travel Itinerary
Austin, Texas to Fort Stockton via 10W
Fort Stockton, Texas to Carlsbad, New Mexico via 285N
Carlsbad, New Mexico to Roswell, New Mexico via 285 N
9.5 Hours, 554 Miles


Food 
Breakfast from back of the van
        Peanut butter sandwiches (I don't know, practically free)
Lunch
         Gatorade. It's too hot for food. ($2)
Dinnunch
         Baked beans and bananas ($1)
Late Dinner
           Coffee ($1)


Adventures!
Tornados! Well not really. They look like tornados.  I guess they're called 'dust devils'. They look pretty cool and I think you should Google them because it's too hard to get a picture of one.  Went to Carlsbad, it's kind of like a town. They had an antique store. 


Sleeping Arrangements
Staying in Roswell tonight. I'm pretty confident we're going to see aliens.  Let me tell you, if you needed a place to hide the evidence from a large government conspiracy regarding contact with extra-terrestrial life, New Mexico is the place to do it.  There are so many corpses here, no one is going to look twice if they trip over an alien body. I'm pretty sure that happens all the time.


Marissa

Austin's Full of Hipsters and I Like It

Austin is great! We spent the whole day exploring. Apparently food out of a trailer is not an exciting thing in Austin.  These food trailers/buses/trucks are everywhere.  I tried to get some good pictures, but it rained most of the day, and I'm one of those people that tries to take pictures with big fancy cameras but doesn't know how, and doesn't try to learn.  Here's the one good one. 

Don't worry I can take artsy rain-on-the-windshield pictures!

Congress was probably my favorite part of Austin. It has everything: antiques, thrift stores, food trailers, bike shops.  Oh yeah, it's exactly what you think, completely overrun with hipsters.  Oh well, I like those things... and I liked them first! 


Food
Breakfast at Mr. Natural
         Blueberry muffin and ginger molasses cookie. ($2/person)
Lunch from H-E-B
         Avocado burrito in tomato and jalapeno tortilla and a plum. ($3/person)
Dinner from H-E-B
          Peanut butter banana sandwiches on cinnamon raison bread with mandarin oranges on the side ($2/person)


Music
Comedy radio, all the time. When funny things happen it almost makes up for all of the time we wasted listening to people with less comedic talent than a damp sock.


Travel Itinerary
Hang out in Austin! Drive tomorrow.


Sleeping Arrangements
Slept in a northern suburb


Marissa

The Land of Swamps and Dead Armadillos

Maybe there's still hope. Maybe somewhere along the miles and miles of roads littered with dead armadillos we will be lucky enough to see one still living. I'm not holding my breath.  They're like the squirrels of the south, except every last one is dead and they keep coming back as zombies just to get hit again by one of the trucks EVERYONE here drives.  It's a blood bath out there.


Adventures!
On the way to Austin we stopped in a small town called Port Arthur, Texas.  We would never have stopped in this town if didn't have the Sabine Lake.  I've been meaning to send a package to Adam's niece, Sabine, for a while now and this seemed the perfect place to send it from.  Other than the abandoned Hotel Sabine, which is pretty awesome, there's not much to see. 

The mosquitoes were awful, six bites in six minutes...

We skipped right over Houston, because nothing about it is attractive to either of us, and headed straight to Austin.  The East Side Drive-In has already left a positive impression...

Food
Breakfast out of the back of the van
Pineapple and granola bars ($1.50/person)


Lunch from the local trucker stop
Red bean and rice chili with a side of peaches ($2.50/person)


Dinner at The Vegan Yacht
Adam had the 'freeto burrito' (It actually has fritos in it!) and I had a tempeh, lettuce, and tomato sandwich ($7.50/person)


Travel Itinerary
Lake Charles, Louisiana to Port Arthur, Texas via 10W
Port Arthur, Texas to Houston, Texas via 10W
Houston, Texas to Austin, Texas via 290W
304 Miles, 5.5 Hours


Sleeping Arrangements
Stayed in a northern Austin suburb. 


Marissa

New Orleans

Spent the day exploring New Orleans. 


Adventures!

New Orleans is awesome! It's unlike any other urban area I've seen.  The French Quarter is historic and beautiful. The streets are full of music, art, and adorable little stores. The garden district has parks and beautiful homes, plus an awesome rope swing! 

We got to visit the awesome above ground cemeteries.  Creepy, but cool.  

We even saw Nicolas Cage's future tomb! It's widely out of place...

Food
Breakfast at the local grocery.
          Pineapples and pears. ($1/person)
Lunch at Carmo, a vegan friendly creole joint. 
          Vegan Chicken Casamanca, mango juice, and iced tea. ($12.50/ person)
Dinner at local grocery store.
          Creole spiced black been dip with tortilla chips and peaches on the side. ($1.75/person)


Music
Local radio here is awesome.
Pretenders
The Police
Lucinda Williams into Lake Charles, of course!


Travel Itinerary
New Orleans, Louisiana to Baton Rouge, Louisiana via 10W
Stop in Baton Rouge for YMCA cards... yes a shower!!
Baton Rouge, Louisiana to Lake Charles, Louisiana via 10W
206 Miles, 3.5 Hours


Sleeping Arrangements
Spending the night in Lake Charles, a town I am entirely attracted to because of Lucinda Williams. 


Marissa

Memphis

Woke up after an undisturbed night ready to spend a few hours in Memphis then head south to New Orleans.

Food

Breakfast

            Oranges, bananas, granola bars (I don't know, damn cheap)

Lunch at Wal-mart, bleck.

            Burritos with black beans, avocado, tomato, onion and peaches on the side ($5.00/person)

Dinner at Walmart again, dammit.

            Baby spinach salad with chickpeas, tomatoes, snap peas, and green peppers and pears on the side. ($3.00/person)

Music

Jayhawks

Creole radio

NPR special on Irish folk music

Adventures!

            Memphis is small, but had a few interesting areas.  Graceland cost $36 to get into and you can’t see it from the road…. but we were there! You can see the Heartbreak Hotel from the road, but can’t get anywhere near it… but we got some distant pictures! Not all is lost, the souvenir shops are open all the time for free!! I got my Elvis fill.

Travel Itinerary Day # 2

Memphis, Tennessee to New Orleans, Louisiana via 55S

372 Miles, 6 Hours

Sleeping Arrangements

            Staying in Mandeville just north of Lake Ponchartrain, spending tomorrow exploring New Orleans.


Marissa

Get the Hell Out of Ohio

Special Note: Those first three posts are from Adam's forum on the Honda Odyssey Club page. If you want to follow his thread, go to odyclub.com, click forums, and find him in the road trip section. His is called 'Job Market Be Damned: Quitting Our Jobs and Hitting the Road!' It's largely about our van, but also about the trip.

Goal #1: Get the Hell Out of Ohio

Ohio is not that bad, really.  We’re just excited to see some different things, and guess what?! We did! Even on our very first day!

Travel Itinerary Day #1

Bowling Green Ohio to Frankfort, Kentucky via 75 S

Frankfort, Kentucky to Nashville, Tennessee via 71S & 65S

Nashville, Tennessee to Memphis via 40W

664 Miles, 12 Hours

Food

Breakfast with the Metcalfs

            Cornflakes and Cheerios fo free!

Lunch from you friendly neighborhood Meijer

            Chickpea, tomato, avocado salad with Italian dressing and an apple ($4.25/person)

Dinner at some random small town grocery store

            Tacos with Spanish rice, a banana, and an orange ($3.00/person)

Music

Sea Wolf

Thao Nguyen & The Get Down Stay Down

Pernice Brothers

R.E.M.

Waters

Adventures!

A wolf! No joke! I thought it was a poor, lost dog walking down 65 southbound, but my outdoorsy, woodsy, wildlife expert boyfriend had his doubts so we consulted our best friend the IPhone.  Lo and behold it’s a wolf. Fairly new to the Kentucky area people often mistake them for large black coyotes. * The More You Know *

Sleeping Arrangements

1^st night a success! We googled “nice neighborhoods in Memphis” and ended up in Mid-town, which features an historic district, a park, and ample free parking!

Marissa

The Route

Before I get into the bed-building, van cleaning, repair-detailing, equipment lists and general outfitting, I figured I would post in a little more depth of our route.

I have attached below an illustration of the path we will approximately travel to hit many of our chosen destinations. This map is somewhat incomplete, but should provide a jist of our plans.

And as a special President’s Day Gift, I’ve drawn up an even more approximate graphical representation of our tour, state by state – full of sweeping generalizations and just awful over-simplification. 

Happy Early Birthday, George Washington! Good going with the whole Revolution thing.
And Happy Belated, Abe! (And maybe next time, don’t wear such a tall hat to the theatre; you can easily irritate those people sitting behind you.)

Soon, very soon I promise, I will provide photos of the bed install. If there’s enough interest, I can provide a walkthrough and plans.

Adam

The Van

It took some time and considerable discussion to finally decide upon a vehicle for the trip. First let me preface by saying that we have no intention to be hotel-dependent. That is, we will require not only an affordable means of getting around but also one of accommodations.

Brilliant Plan #1: At first we considered taking my Civic Sedan. On the highway I can get about 40 mpg with a passenger and our gear. The car is safe, reliable, economical, and convenient in the sense that I already own it, it’s already insured, and I know what to expect out of its performance. 
The hitch would be sleeping in those seats (difficult, I imagine, for anyone, let alone someone over 6’-0”). Even one night would at best yield minor discomfort and poor sleep-quality, and at worst, physical and psychological torture so obscene as to trigger the only rational response: a spiteful, murderous rampage.

Okay, so we thought to pack camping gear and each night find a place to set up camp and enjoy comparatively plush air mattresses, room enough overhead to sit and change clothing, and enough breathing room to feel comfortable. One problem with this approach, although it sounds lovely and relatively economical as I already have the gear we would require, campsites (legal ones, anyway) are not quite abundantly available in more densely populated areas and are certainly not truly cheap. Additionally, and what I would consider the most important factor, our patience with the routine of setting up and taking down camp each morning and night may grow so desperately thin, that we would convince each other that hotels were necessary.

Brilliant Plan #2: Use the still-economical civic to tow a trailer in which we could sleep each night. We researched this one pretty heavily. We fell on a couple conclusions that ultimately buried the idea. In order to preserve the major advantage of taking a small car, the fuel economy, the trailer would have to be designed for just such an application – not only aerodynamically efficient, but also very light weight. This left us with pretty much one option: a teardrop. 

Teardrop trailers are awesome. And after doing the math on the materials, if we were to build one, we would probably be able to sell the trailer when we were finished and make quite a bit of money from the whole deal. But that ended up being the demise; we’ve simply no time to construct such a trailer. Further, there’s still the chance that after having invested money and time that could be spent traveling, the trailer could wreck the Civic’s mileage so unacceptably that the advantage would disappear.

Brilliant Plan #3: A minivan; a machine that can be customized to accommodate two sleeping adults but still achieve at least decent fuel economy at 60 mph. Having had whimsical conversations with my oldest brother about the 1^st Gen Odysseys, outfitted to haul around a few 29er Mountain Bikes and a ****load of gear on top, plus three full-size adults in comfort, the choice seemed obvious. And as a matter of fact, after Marissa’s and my whole escapade is over, that is likely just what duty the van will see. 

So began our search for an affordable, acceptable-condition 1^st Gen Honda Odyssey. We searched for only a few weeks, and found an LX in Black Currant. A purple minivan… awesome. And we’ll still be taking the camping gear for National Parks and the like.

Some new tires, replacing the exhaust manifold, and giving it a fresh oil change is all it'll need and we'll be ready. Driving it back from to Toledo from Chicago on the Turnpike at around 15 degrees, I recorded 28.5 mpg. So great.


Next posting, I will be tackling coverage of removing the back seat, the bed install, some cleanup and work to be done to the van, and a bit of gear we'll need for the trip.

Adam 

Job Market Be Damned: Quitting Our Jobs and Hitting the Road!

The first time that the dream of going on a long trip transformed into a realistic opportunity is difficult to pin down...

I (my name is Adam) moved to the Chicago area while my partner (name Marissa) was still earning her Undergraduate degree in Ohio. Shortly after graduating, she joined me where we currently live in Berwyn. I work as an Engineer in the far-west suburbs and she as a Preschool teacher on the near-west side – it’s regrettable how well our chosen professions tuck into our gender-roles so perfectly. 

We love the city. The museums, the food, and the public transportation that we wish we could use more often, the music, the bustling people, the anonymity of sinking into a large crowd, and the urban landscape. I’ve had a keen interest in Chicago since High School and having lived here, the city has lived up to my expectations. I hope to revisit the city again, maybe years from now – but who knows? There are an endless number of great places to live and visit all over. I feel like it’s impossible to have a favorite when you’ve experienced so few.

But just as she followed me here, I will follow her to the next city. Marissa plans on getting her Master’s and class begins in a few short months. Our lease expires mid-March and what better an excuse than to take a few months to ourselves, quit our comfortable jobs, travel and learn, and to experience all or many of those “must-see/do-before-you-die” phenomena of the Western United States? Call us naïve, but every single person with whom we share our plan expresses more genuine enthusiasm than disheartening trepidations. We’ve made ourselves so anxious, that at this point the trip is an inevitability - we will go or die trying (or slightly less probable, both).

We’ve designed a route spanning only small stretches of Interstate Highways and hitting every destination that we’ve chosen over the last year. Roughly, we’ll be departing from Chicago after St. Pat's Day Parade and heading south to the Gulf. From there, it’s up through the High Plains to Colorado, over the Divide, through to the West Coast and up to Seattle. The return trip will take us through Yellowstone and miles of nothing back down along the coast of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan and terminate back in the City with Big Shoulders.

In all, the route will encompass over 8000 miles, more than 21 states, and countless destinations. All of which demonstrating what are arguably the most iconic and beautiful landscapes that our country has to offer. Stay tuned for logistical planning, vehicle preparations, nonsensical babble, and various rants. Trip updates may include, but are not limited to; gear reviews, restaurant reviews, potential expletive-laden repairs, plenty of pictures, and hopefully a few mildly-entertaining anecdotes.

Adam