America The Beautiful

By 8.00 AM we arrive at the first stage of our trip today: Petrified Forest National Park, AZ. This park is not well-known by the average European America traveler and we only learned about this park by means of our travel guide. It is a beautiful day with sunshine and temperatures in the mid 70s, perfect weather for exploring a national park. We enter the park through the north gate and start driving along a paved trail towards the south gate. Quickly after heading out from the north entrance we reach the Painted Desert, which offers several spectacular viewpoints along the way. When a European thinks of deserts he/she usually cannot help but imagine vast wastelands that might be quite boring, sand everywhere, pretty much like the Sahara. But the scenery is everything else but monotonous: Our eyes are pampered with beautiful views over colorful rocks that come in various shapes. Inbetween the fascinating landscape one can find some desert vegetation and spot some animals (mice, rabbits, foxes, birds), and we are puzzled about how it is possible to make a living in such conditions. Signs with notes along a short hiking trail shed some light on the secrets of the desert inhabitants on adaptation to the hostile circumstances of their lives. Fortunately, the park is still quite empty at this time of day, a fact that gives us the opportunity of enjoying the majesty of nature in perfect tranquility. We could spend hours and hours admiring the scenery, but we have a lot of miles to go today and so we have to keep going. While approaching the south entrance we explore some rock paintings from native Americans that occupied this land centuries ago and discover more and more pieces of the object that the park is named after: petrified wood. This is wood that got mineralized over many, many years, embedding fossils and turning into beautifully shimmering stones. Time flies by and we soon have to leave the park to head to the next National Park on our list: The Grand Canyon.









Much in contrast to Petrified Forest National Park the Grand Canyon is one of the main destinations of European tourists that are visiting the western part of the United States. And sure enough, the number of visitors here is much higher than this morning in Petrified Forest. It is already quite late when we reach the East gate of the Grand Canyon and we have about 1 to 1.5 hours till sunset. At the first viewpoint we run into a lot of fellow tourists and notice that a good part of them is German. After stopping at several viewpoints and taking in the spectacular sights and atmosphere we find ourselves a nice spot to await the sunset. The play of light in the canyons is awesome to watch and spreads a feeling of peace and silence despite the crowd of people around us. After getting a glimpse of the beauty and impressive dimensions of this national park we hit the road again and drive for some more hours. Originally, we intended to reach Barstow, CA by night to look for a motel but sleepiness is overwhelming us as we reach Needles, CA, and we spontaneously decide to change plans and spend the night here.

Doing the Unexpected

In the morning, as we are leaving the parking lot and continue our road trip on the interstate, we realize that we have truly entered the "Land of Enchantment", as promised by the state's motto. Surrounded by New Mexico's beautiful landscape, we pass Santa Rosa and choose to leave the freeway to follow the "pre-historic" Route 66 up north, heading for Las Vegas, not to be mistaken for its infamous sister city in Nevada. (Just a little side remark, Rte 66 changed between 1928 and 1936, with the newer one cutting out about 120 miles, albeit some of the most fascinating to the modern traveler). At last, we are able to imagine the loneliness and get a glimpse of the "real" Route 66 feeling. Just before Las Vegas, the pre-historic Rte 66 leads us along the Santa Fe Trail and into the heart of New Mexico. Driving by the Pecos National Historic Park, we spontaneously decide to make use of our National Parks Pass again and to learn about the life and history of the earliest inhabitants of the high desert. In the beautiful old town of Santa Fe, we find a cosy Mexican restaurant, where we are having the best enchilada and spicy stew of our lives, finishing off with an absolutely delicious Spanish Flan. Sorry, Sanj, this one was even way better than your usual treat at Que Pasa's. ;-)
After lunch, we walk a bit through Santa Fe, where we are pleased to see that all newly erected shops and buildings have apparently been built abiding by strict regulation so that they fit right in, preserving the town's original flair. However, after strolling around for the better part of an hour also this time-out inevitably comes to an end, and we start to make our way back to the interstate, which we finally hit in Albuquerque. Unfortunately, it has already gotten late again, so we postpone our planned visit to the Petrified Forest National Park to the following day and put on some more miles on the odometer. We end up staying for the night in Holbrook, Arizona, only 20 miles west from our next attraction.

Historic Route 66 and the Wild, Wild West

We start the day with a visit to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, which is located in Oklahoma City. We expect to find quite a small museum that is mostly about the everyday life of cowboys and Indians back then and now, and we are surprised to find a nice big museum. The admission fee is quite low with $10.00 per person, and it really offers a lot for the money. You can learn about cowgirls and cowboys from the early 1900s until now, learn about their equipment, find a "Hall of Fame" of western movies and TV series, learn about native Indian culture and history, find a lot of beautiful paintings and sculptures of sceneries and people of the West, you can stroll through a replica of an old Western town at the beginning of the last century, take a break in the beautifully designed gardens, and much more, rendering our investment more than worthwhile. So, we end up staying much longer than anticipated. Finally, we leave the museum and start our search for the historical Route 66, which, according to our travel guide, at times proves to be a delicate task since one cannot find signs for miles, and sometimes one has to guess where to go. And, soon enough we discover that this was not an exaggeration and it really is not easy. Eventually, we find the Route 66 after leaving Oklahoma City and follow it for a while. This part of the "Mother Road" really looks deserted and seems to be in the middle of nowhere. At one point when we hit the big I-40 again we decide to have a quick lunch and to go on cruising along the 66. However, we quickly realize that this part of the 66 is not exactly thrilling since it winds it ways at the left and right side of the I-40 all the time, being more or less a simple service road. This fact is a bit disappointing as it does not really change after leaving Oklahoma and entering Texas, the Lone Star State. Until now, we have not really had the feeling that one always hears about when people talk about the legendary Route 66: This huge vastness of the scenery with nothing but stretched out dry country to your left and right without many signs of civilization. But, our travel guide promises that one will have lots of this on the way to California, and so we keep our hopes up and go on driving and driving, partly on I-40 and partly on Route 66, where we pass numerous run-down or deserted buildings, gas stations, and stores, the last witnesses of a once glorious past of the Mother Road. In the midddle of our Texas interlude a huge thunderstorm catches us, and it pours down like somebody was emptying a giant swimming pool over our heads. By sunset, we reach Amarillo, and Ingo is very disappointed when he realizes that the Western Store, which he was hoping to pay a visit, was already closed. A few hours later, we finally hit Tucumcari, New Mexico, and decide to rest there for the night.

Walkin' in Memphis...

This morning, we get up early again to pay our respects to the "Music City" and her probably most famous son, Elvis Aaron Presley. At the gate to Graceland, we are taken aback by the high entrance fee ($27 each, plus $8 for parking), but, what the heck, we are not going to come back anytime soon. Equipped with our individual electronic tour guides, a bus takes us to the mansion, where we start our walk through The King's private home and the early days of Rock 'n' Roll. Time flies, and after almost three hours we are back in our car and continue our exploratory cruise through Memphis, passing by the local university, run-down industrial areas and beautiful homes. Before leaving, we go out for lunch in a football bar and restaurant, where one of the biggest attractions undoubtedly is Joey Chestnut's entry in the hall of fame for having finished the 4 lbs steak in unbelievable 7 minutes and 36 seconds - apparently no challenge at all for the reigning World Champion of the Hot Dog Eating Contest.

After lunch, we finally head out of Memphis and cross the Mississippi River, and we proceed on the I-40W through Arkansas, the "Natural State". Short of time, we decide to press on, and about three hours after sun-down we reach Oklahoma City, OK.

Blue Ridge Mountains and The Country Music Capital of the World

We get up early this day - at least for our standards - to use the first rays of sunlight to start our trip since we decided to do another detour after the magnificent impressions of the day before. Today, the Blue Ridge Parkway is on our to-do list, and it is awesome again. There is the German saying "Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund", which means something like "morning hours have a mouth full of gold" (sounds funny, but the German word for hour and mouth rhyme...) and this really proves to be true again: The sunlight casts its golden shine on the leaves of the trees, which have already started to change colors. Combined with the sight of the green mountains that are covered with a bluish haze as far as eyes can see, it was a breathtaking view. We would love to go on a hike but due to our tight schedule we have to cut our stay on the Parkway short and head back to the I-81 South to approach Tennessee. From then on it is driving, driving and driving until we reach Nashville. After our arrival we cruise a bit through the streets of the city and like what we see. So, we decide to park the car and take a quick walk through downtown Nashville. At the ticket machine we get a little shock since parking is $8.00 for only one hour, which is quite a bit even for somebody who spent some time in New York City. But then, we think "Well, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance" and dutifully pay the $8.00. By the way, a young couple that arrives after us also stands in front of the ticket machine with an expression of disbelief for quite some time but pays after a little discussion - seems like we are not the only ones taken aback by the horrendous price. While recovering from the slight shock we walk down to the tourist attraction number one: A street where they sell cowboy hats, boots and play country music in every shop so that you hear a strange mixture of at least 10 songs at the same time. It is quite interesting to see but very touristic and quite a stimulus satiation, so we are not too sad when our time is up and we have to hurry back to the car to reach our final destination for that day: Memphis, TN.

Six States and Unexpected Beauty

Our trip starts in Miller Place, New York State, on Oct 2nd at 6:15 am, when we are heading out west, slightly tired from our late travel preps last night, but full of expectations of our dawning adventure. After about one and a half hours, we have crossed the George-Washington bridge, and we find ourselves in New Jersey. On the I-78, we decide to make our first stop at Dunkin' Donuts to shake off the fatigue and, more importantly, for a second breakfast, including the first (!) cup of coffee/tea of the day. Back on the interstate, we continue our drive to Pennsylvania, switch to the I-81 South, which leads us further on through Maryland toward West Virginia, where we finally feel life starting to slow down a bit. Humming to the country tune we all know so well, we decide to deviate from the main route in Virginia and put in an "extra loop" through Shenandoah National Park following the Skyline Drive, rewarding us with absolutely awesome vistas at almost every corner of the winding road. We really did not expect to see something as beautiful as this at this early stage of our trip, so we did not mind spending 25 bucks for the travel guide after all. With the last rays of sunlight, we make our way back to the interstate, and finally park our car at the Econo Lodge near Christiansburg, VA, where we spend the night, tired but happy.

Adventure Part 2: Across The United States

Dear Family & Friends,

after Imke's final bail-out from Brookhaven National Laboratory and Long Island in late September, it's time again for a well-deserved vacation in the US, and yet again time for another travel blog. At this point, we really have to apologize for not having finished the old one from last year, according to which we would still be having a good time in Yosemite. Anyway, we will try to do better this time. For those of you who we did not tell this beforehand, we are on a road trip through the United States. So, sit back and relax, and enjoy our trip resting comfortably on an office chair (or rather, as we are sure some of you will do, on a couch)!

Imke & Ingo