cross-country road trip version 2014

The day after graduation, we completed cleaning out my little house and fully packing the car.  Although my parents didn't believe it was possible, I packed all my things except my bike (we had shipped that a few days earlier) into the car and rooftop box, leaving not only the two fronts seats open, but a comfortable back seat as well.

i even left space to see out the rearview mirror

my fully packed car outside the little house - last look

We took off right on schedule around noon, returned my parents' rental car, and began the westward drive.  On the Saturday night before graduation, I had begun to suspect my dad's affliction was more than mere allergies - I took his temperature and found he had a fever.  He felt okay on graduation day, but still wasn't feeling well.  On the drive, he went back and forth between feeling a little bit better and a little bit worse.  We went through Alabama and Mississippi and made it to Memphis, Tennessee by dinner time.  We met up with my friend Josh for dinner - I'd met him the previous semester at Emory in Graduate Christian Fellowship, but he didn't return to Emory after Christmas break, so it was nice to have a chance to see him again.  We went to Corky's Ribs & BBQ which is well-known, especially for their ribs and Memphis pulled pork.  Apparently they ship ribs worldwide!

dinner with josh at corky's

After dinner, we continued on into Arkansas.  The rain that had started before dinner turned into a torrential downpour, and I drove through a couple hours of it passing many large semi-trucks in order to get out of the spray kicked up behind them.  Finally, we made it to Little Rock and ended up getting a hotel in North Little Rock for the night.

The next morning we headed to Sand Springs, Oklahoma to see Aunt Kathy, David, Jeff, Rocky, and Charlie.  We arrived in time for a late lunch.  As I was driving, I began to get a slight headache, so I took a nap after lunch.  Jeff and the boys arrived after school and work, and we had a good time with them, watching and joining the boys riding their bikes up and down the street.  We had a delicious ham dinner and spent a nice time catching up - although my dad and I had both seen them, my mom hadn't seen Aunt Kathy since the 80s, and Jeff since 1995.

bike races

jeff, rocky, my mother, david, me, aunt kathy, charlie, and my father

We spent the night at Aunt Kathy's, and headed off the next morning to Marilyn's.  A good friend of my mother's from college, my brother and I had always called her Aunt Marilyn.  We had a very nice brunch there, although my dad was still under the weather, and I not only had a headache but had started to get a cough and congestion.

in front of aunt marilyn's house

We spent the rest of that day driving, arriving in Amarillo well before sunset.  We used my phone to find an AAA office, which was closed.  There were still a couple of employees there, despite being half an hour past closing, so one of them opened the door for us and was kind enough to give us a couple of maps and a guidebook.  Using the guidebook, I found us a hotel on the west edge of Amarillo.  By this time, we were all sick.  We walked next door to the hotel to "Famous Dave's Bar-B-Que" where the three of us again shared ribs, this time with "Burnt Ends" - little bits of beef.  It was our fourth barbecue meal and third time eating ribs in the space of a week!  The next morning, our first brief stop was Cadillac Ranch, just a few minutes down the road from the hotel, so my parents could see the oddity.

my parents at cadillac ranch

We continued on to Los Lunas, New Mexico to visit another one of my mom's college friends, Debbie, and her husband Michel.  We had lunch there, and although we had originally planned to spend a night there, a phone conversation the night before revised the visit to include lunch and a brief afternoon visit.  We drove till we reached Gallup, New Mexico where I felt sick and tired enough to make the executive decision to stop there for the night.  We all felt ill enough to order chicken noodle soup at Denny's for dinner.

michel, my father, debbie, my mother, paco (the dog), and me

The next morning we made our first stop in Flagstaff, Arizona where we found a drugstore and refilled our over-the-counter cold and fever remedies - between the three of us we had exhausted the supply I had in Atlanta!  We crossed the rest of the state of Arizona and into California, initially aiming for perhaps Bakersfield as our last overnight stop.  Sometime before crossing the border into California, I noted that if we continued with the same types of stops we had done so far, we could make it home before midnight.  My thinking was that it might be helpful to have my father (and the other two of us for that matter) sleep in our own beds instead of more nights on the road.  Thanks to fairly dense cloud cover, even driving directly into the sunset wasn't a problem, so we pushed on and arrived at my parents' place before midnight.  I had driven all 2600+ miles myself!

southeastern california landscape

random stop along a highway to get photos with a joshua tree

wind farms visible from the freeway

sunset in the central valley

Unfortunately, arriving in Cupertino did not result in a miracle cure for any of us.  We spent another week and a half before even beginning to feel better, including doctor's visits, prescription medications, and lots of rest.  I gave up on my plans of seeing local friends, taking a trip to Tahoe to drop off a carload of stuff at my house, and taking a day trip to San Francisco to visit with a friend from Atlanta who happened to be there visiting with his family.  Eventually, my only goal was to be well enough to fly to England on May 27 to visit family.  Monday, May 26 I felt nearly well enough to travel, and fortunately I was even a bit better on Tuesday, so I'm currently in England!  More on that trip to come...