Just got back from driving from lower Alabama to a little place an hour north of Seattle, WA. Five day drive. Had my reasons and it was one of the best things I've ever done. Will hold on to it forever. I've traveled a lot. Been to LA, San Diego, SF, Salt Lake, Phoenix, Boise, NYC, DC, Boston, Philly, Portland ME, Atlanta, Richmond, Detroit, New Orleans, Dallas, Houston, El Paso, Charlotte, Denver, Vegas and tons of other towns. Almost always flew. Driving it was entirely different. It's a completely different experience to see the land and the people between Mobile and Denver than it is to fly over them. Maybe our politicians should try it. Might learn something if they did.
Here are some observations:
1> I had no idea there was so much nothing in this country. Hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of miles of absolutely nothing but barren grassland as far as you could see in any direction. From about the time you pass Jackson Mississippi...across Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado...until you start to see the Rockies there is a giant wall of nothing. Occasionally you'd see a house or three surrounding some giant church and then you'd revert back to the random herd of cows amongst the sprawling nothingness. Don't let DR Horton find out or there will be expensive but shoddily built cookie cutter houses filling it all up tomorrow.
2> The massive sprawl of nothing was interrupted from time to time by giant spinning fans of wind farms. What absolute fucking horseshit. Oh the Obamaphiles and Bidenbros will tout their effectiveness but it's all a fucking green wet dream. First, they're horrifically ugly and violate the scenery/landscape in ways almost unimaginable. Yes, an oil refinery is ugly too, but it's a single entity. It doesn't sprawl across thousands of acres. These idiotic things have far more negative visual impact and require excessive amounts of land. Each of these ridiculous monstrosities costs multiple millions to build. The green assholes proudly proclaim that one could power up to 600 homes for a year. Well whoop-de-fuckin-do. That means the little neighborhood behind me would need at least two. There would have to be 20-30 of the gargantuan fucking failures within a 10-mile radius of me just to provide the bare minimum for housing. And that doesn't even consider businesses, highway lighting, or any of the other applications. It's a boondoggle and it disgusted me to see those tax-dollar-sucking pipe dreams spinning away, fucking up the scenery across the heartland. It was sad to see them ruining the view.
3> Utah is probably the best looking state. It's got everything. Snow-capped mountains, deserts, plains, water.. You could literally go from water skiing to snow skiing with about a two-hour trip. Wyoming was disappointing. My kid said it was "obviously the Mississippi of the west" in terms of the type of people we encountered there.
4>Best looking women were in Utah and Colorado. Easily. Not even close.
5> Billy Sims makes pretty good BBQ. It's easy to forget just how good a running back he was back in the day. Saddled (like Barry Sanders) with playing on shitty Detroit teams, he still thrived. Career cut too short. Left the NFL with a few million. Lost it all. Was broke when a Sooners fan approached him about partnering up -- Billy's name, this guy's BBQ. 50-something joints later, Billy's wood-fired legacy lives on.
6>Oregon has completely fucked up with the legalized drugs deal. We saw the occasional homeless person along the way and saw several homeless camps in Seattle. But we stayed overnight in Oregon and there were meth-heads everywhere. Get gas and the sidewalk is piled with them. Everything was dirty, everything felt dangerous. I hated Oregon.
7> Evel Knievel was a long time ago. Along the way we tried to do some random scenic/historical stops to break up the drive. When we saw a sign for Shoshone Falls in Idaho, which billed itself as the Niagra of the west, was only 10 miles off the track, why not go see it? The falls were nice, but when I realized they were part of the Snake River, I remembered Evel's ill-fated canyon jump and asked the lady at the souvenir stand what part of the river he'd tried to cross. Amazingly it was only a mile or so away and she gave us directions. It was exactly where she said. But it was at the end of a road that wandered inside a gated "NO Trespassing" community. You couldn't see it from the gate and the signs at the fence strictly forbid entry except to residents with resident stickers. Well....fuck that. Went in anyway. Gate was open, so that's their fault. Got all the way down to the jump site, now nothing more than a dirt mound. Disappointing. You'd think they'd celebrate him. Maybe a statue or something. Nope, just a dirt ramp in a closed-off community.
8> Who the fuck is buying houses? Everywhere there was a town, houses were being furiously built. New construction was everywhere. Seriously. Who the hell is moving by the hundreds to Twin Falls Idaho? Ontario Oregon? Or any of the numerous other shit-holes we passed where buildings were going up left and right?
9> Gas prices are ridiculous. There were places we paid in excess of $6 a gallon. We were warned. Everything was foretold. And here we are.
10> The five-day drive and everything it entailed was less tiring than fucking around with rude ass dipshits in the airports on the way back. (The Way Back is another story entirely for a different day. It involves homelessness, Samoan greetings, and wind sprints) As an example... I booked through Alaska Air out of Seattle, transferring to their partner American Air in Dallas. When I got off the plane in Texas, my connection was not on the board. When I finally got a gate agent to check my boarding pass he goes 'that flight don't exist, bro guess you need to call Alaska Air,' and walked away. I called Alaska. My call was very important to them. The expected wait time to speak to an agent was 6-8 hours.....I could have driven more than half way back in the time it took to get it sorted out.
The final observation? I'm not happy to be home. I saw too many other places and too many other things to be content to be settled here. I'm questioning everything. All of it. What's the point? Right after I got home I saw the Kay Ivey political ad where she pulls a gun out of her purse and gimps about a Smiff and Weston... I'm not sure I can live in a state where THAT'S a viable candidate for governor.
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