The Saga of the Itinerant Cuzin’ Isaac

Not one to pass up the chance to take a long trip, last February 16th, 2005, Isaac had an opportunity to make a cross country journey.

It so happened that a friend of his landlord was planning to move back East from his home in Wrightwood, California and needed someone to drive his household furnishings back to his new home in Alstead. Andrew volunteered to drive and when Isaac found out about it he joined Andrew as his road
companion.

Flying into Phoenix, AZ, they rented a Penske Rent-all and started for Wrightwood.. The trip was uneventful except for the trip into the Sierra Madre mountains. Spectacular views and lots of snow.

While others were packing, Isaac was squired around the Mojave Desert  and got a pretty good picture of that portion of California.

Here’s a few pictures of the flooding which occurs in these parts almost every year after the dry season. Many roads were closed and detours were everywhere. It was quite inconvenient for a lot of folks who had to travel great distances to get to work.

 

Along the way, I saw one way the residents here claim water which is a bit scarce in these parts in the drought season. They built aqueducts to carry the water out of the mountains and down into the cities.

Leaving Wrightwood at about 5:30 PM on Friday, they headed for Arizona. The weather was extraordinarily favorable for the entire trip except for a bad snow storm on Tuesday the following week. Traveling approximately 700 miles each day, the twosome (bit weary) arrived in Alstead Wednesday AM having traveled about 3413 miles in 5 nights and 5 days. It was the first time Isaac had ever been farther west than Ohio when he journeyed to Nashville in 1953 to the Grand Ole Opry. To say the least, it was a most enjoyable trip, one he would gladly repeat if given the opportunity again.

Following is a brief run-down of the trip with a few pictures.
Here’s a shot of the house in Wrightwood, with the snow; temperature about 28 degrees. As we headed toward San Bernardino, the temperature rose and it was 73 degrees when we reached the desert.

 

Heading out of Barstow, CA on the newly designed and improved famous Old Route 66, now renamed Interstate 40, we arrived in Kingman, AZ in time for a very late supper and overnight in Motel 6.

 
Before we stopped for the night we passed several hundred windmills used to generate electricity for the surrounding area.

 

It was a LONG way from Flagstaff to Gallup, New Mexico and FLAT, FLAT terribly uneventful landscape. There was nary a house or barn or even a human being. The land didn’t seem to be tilled or farmed at all.


Just sage brush and scrub trees. I expected to see settlements along the way, but ‘way off in the distance we could see what looked like some dwellings of sorts. I wondered what the folks here do for a living. They must travel great distances to work if they do. An interesting thing about this road (I-40) was the tremendous number of trucks we were traveling with or passing; for every car we met there must have been 40 or 50 trucks. This IS obviously the old 66 that we read about years ago in our books or heard tell about in the songs we heard. It was truly an interesting adventure to travel that same road although it was not anything like it used to be. There were sections of the “old” road we could see along the way; that were roadworthy and if one wanted to drive off the Interstate and drive on this old road, if was possible for a short distance.
Because the landscape is so flat it was interesting to see an occasional rock formation like this one. Not too many but every once in a while there it was.

Again the trip from Gallup to Albuquerque was not terribly exciting so there are no pictures.

Overnight in Santa Rosa, NM was nice as a small desert town with good food, and then we were off to Amarillo, TX.
Here again the road just went on and on and on endlessly as were crossed the state line into Okalahoma.

This was ONLY section of poor road we encountered in the entire trip. It was rough and bumpy and in very poor condition. It worsened as we approached Oklahoma City and couldn’t figure out why, but nevertheless it was there.

I didn’t take very many pictures in Oklahoma or Arkansas, although we drove thru Fort Smith and Little Rock.
As we came across the line into Tennessee, I had wished we had time to stop in Memphis, but we were on a very tight schedule and had to be back home by mid-week.

Again the only thing I can say about the trip across New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee was interesting if nothing else, but since we had such a tight schedule, sightseeing was out of the question, so I didn’t get many pictures, but it was delightful to be able to say I was there.

Nashville was interesting, just to see but we didn’t stay long as we headed toward Knoxville and then Kingsport, thru Bristol, VA into Roanoke VA. We were going to stay overnight in Roanoke, but decided to push on to Staunton, VA. Overnight here again was fun as we were able to find eating Establishments that had the finest food one could imagine. We certainly didn’t go hungry on this trip.

Some of Virginia was familiar and we crossed into a bit of West Virginia, and then on into Pennsylvania.

It was near Scranton, PA on Tuesday that we hit that bad snow storm and had to hole up just outside of Scranton.

Newburg, New York the next morning looked good and as we rolled into Connecticut, we were nearly home. Route I-84 and I-91 were a delight on that sunny Wednesday and we were Greeted with open arms as the truck swung into the driveway. I didn’t get a shot of the truck, but we were hauling a small Toyota on a trailer-dolly behind the truck the entire distance, so we had to be careful as we drove with that much responsibility for equipment.

It’s just about a year since I took that trip and I’ll be ready for another should the opportunity arise again. Try it sometime, only take it slower and enjoy the scenery.

CUZIN’ ISAAC