King Shighway
If you’ve been following The Hamster and the Highway since our first road trip, you might remember that the two days we spent in St. Louis on that first trip turned out to be one of the highlights of both of our lives. In the three years since, we’ve often fantasized about moving there, only to be snapped back to reality by a wife and daughter (or in Sam’s case, a mother and sister) who prefer to stay put. All I can say is that they don’t know what they’re missing.
Ever since we started planning this trip we’ve been excited to come back to St. Louis, but a little unsure of what to do when we got here. We did so many fun things last time, and we wanted to do them all again, but this time we had just one day, and as much as I loved everything we did the first time we were here, I was hoping to do some new stuff, too.
The first step was getting there. Doing so via Route 66 turned out to be more difficult than expected because there’s a fair amount of construction being done around St. Louis, especially in the downtown area, which meant road closures and confusing detours. Eventually we made it to the Chain of Rocks Bridge, a major Route 66 landmark that connects Illinois to Missouri and is one of the longest pedestrian bridges in the world (it’s about a mile long). I would have liked to walk across it (the views are reportedly very scenic), but that would have meant walking back, too. Instead we simply parked on the Missouri side and gawked.
Thanks to the All-Star Game, the Cardinals are on vacation until Friday night, so a ballgame was out of the question. Just like we did in Chicago, we figured that a stadium tour would be a good consolation prize. Unfortunately, too many other people had the same idea and all of today’s tours were sold out. Instead, we puttered around the outside of the stadium, which was great fun for both of us for a very odd reason.
Sam’s favorite hobby, by a wide margin, is silliness. This has been true since he was a toddler, and it shows no signs of letting up. He makes up silly songs, he speaks in silly accents, he makes silly faces, and, more relevant to today’s activities, he poses in front of every statue by mimicking the position of the statue. Ordinarily this is not very difficult, but today it was an unprecedented challenge. Right outside Busch Stadium there are statues of every Cardinals player whose number has been retired. The Cardinals have retired a lot of numbers. And these statues do a fantastic job of depicting each player in the act for which he was most famous. One is sliding, one is running so fast he looks like he’s about to fall over, and one is completing a throw in midair. It took Sam about half an hour to recreate each pose, most of which was spent laughing at the impossibility of the task and at his failed attempts. Here’s what we ended up with:
Dizzy Dean
Enos Slaughter
Ozzie Smith
Red Schoendinst
Stan Musial
Lou Brock
Bob Gibson
Cool Papa Bell
George Sisler
Rogers Hornsby
Speaking of silliness, I should probably explain the title of today’s post. There’s a street in St. Louis called Kingshighway. It should probably be two words, but because it’s not, Sam read it as “King Shighway” when he first saw the street sign three years ago. He started talking about a fictional King Shighway being very shy, and within a few minutes the two of us made up a silly little song about this shy king, whose shyness led him to invent sleeves. Brooklyn also has a Kings Highway (it’s two words there); I cross it every day on my way to work and often think about our song, and sleeves, and St. Louis. And at home whenever anyone mentions sleeves for any reason, Sam immediately bursts into song. Needless to say he was pretty happy to see the sign for Kingshighway today, and we spent more time than I care to admit singing the song and discussing King Shighway’s shyness and his sleeves..So you see, mocking statues is actually Sam at his most serious.
Anyway, when we finally finished with the statues we visited the Cardinals Hall of Fame and Museum, which was much more interesting than either of us expected it to be. Sam especially loved the broadcast booth, where you can record your voice calling any of several famous moments in Cardinals history. Sam, of course, made it silly, singing ridiculous commentary and then cracking up when it was played back for him with the video. In fact, he was so amused with himself that he recorded the playback, which would love to share with you but I don’t think he’ll let me, so you’ll have to settle for a still photo.
We also both enjoyed holding the actual bats of past and current Cardinals players. When we visited the Baseball Hall of Fame on our first road trip Sam earnestly asked is Ozzie Smith was a rock star; this time Pzzie’s bat was the first one Sam wanted to hold.
I held Stan Musial’s bat before hitting an imaginary home run with Lou Brock’s.
Since we were already immersed in baseball history, I figured it would be interesting to stop by the former site of Sportsman’s Park, the Cardinal’s original stadium. It turned out to be very interesting, but not in the way i expected. It turns out that the neighborhood that used to house Sportsman’s Park is now an absolutely terrible neighborhood, with half the homes and businesses completely abandoned and not even boarded up–just hollow shells of buildings on every block and if there had been a war. It reminded me of another famous road trip through a bad neighborhood in St. Louis:
We also made a quick visit to the St. Louis Walk of Fame, which was in a better part of town but was not much to look at.
For lunch we recreated old magic by going to Kohn’s, a supermarket with a few tables at which you can eat whatever you buy from the deli counter. The food was nothing special but we were there mostly to pick up food for Shabbat. The last time we were there, we got peanut butter brownies from the bakery counter that were so delicious that we still talk about them nostalgically every time we eat brownies. They were regular brownies with a thin layer of peanut butter spread on top; then the whole thing was covered with chocolate fondant and a little decorative squirt of peanut butter was put on the top. Today when I went to the bakery counter I mentioned the brownies to the woman behind the counter and asked if she had any. Her answer was the best sentence you can ever hear in a bakery: “A fresh batch just came out.” Since that moment the Hamster and I have been salivating, eager for Friday night when we get to eat the brownies.
By this point it was after 3 pm, and we still had two things we wanted to do before leaving town, both of which were repeats from our first trip: City Museum and Ted Drewes Frozen Custard. The former is a huge warehouse full of stuff to climb on and through and play with, and the latter is both a St. Louis institution and a Route 66 icon. I described both in great detail on this blog three years ago, so instead of going into it all again I’ll just point you there. But I will say that we enjoyed both today as much as we did then, which is to say immensely. In addition to all the stuff he did last time, on this trip to City Museum the Hamster found a giant hamster wheel, which was too poetic to pass up.
I should also note that we got to Ted Drewes at a little after 6, so I made the executive decision to call it dinner. Sam did not argue.
Unfortunately, we had to leave St. Louis, as tomorrow we need to be in Oklahoma before sundown and there’s fun stuff to do on the way there. So we followed up our frozen custard dinner with a 3.5-hour drive to Springfield, MO, which was lengthened somewhat when we inadvertently veered off Route 66 for a little while at one of it’s many confusing turns. Most of the driving was done after dark, and the absence of street lights really hampers the ability to spot and visit classic Route 66 attractions. However, we were lucky enough to find this one as the sun was disappearing:
At more than 40 feet high and 20 feet wide, it’s the world’s biggest rocking chair. Why? Why not? This is America, where people make dumb stuff like this to get dumb people like me to stop by.
Meanwhile, Sam spent most of the drive watching National Lampoon’s Vacation for the first time, and when he got up to the St. Louis part he laughed and finally understood what I had been saying earlier when we were looking for Sportsman’s Park. And then we talked about how much fun the day was, and how much we love St. Louis, and how we owe King Shighway thanks for inventing sleeves.
En Route
Before I started planning this trip, most of what I knew about Route 66 I learned from the song. Lucky for me and the Hamster, my years in journalism taught me how to become an expert in almost anything very quickly. Even so, doing a few hours of research and having read The Grapes of Wrath once and watched the movie Cars on DVD with my kids a couple of times prepared me only partially for this trip. However, after spending today traveling down approximately one-eighth of Main Street, USA, my research did help me put what I saw in context and gave me a better understanding of the meaning of the Mother Road.
We started early this morning at ground zero—a street sign in downtown Chicago that marks the beginning of Route 66.
From there we did our best to follow it out of Chicago, but it was pretty uneventful for the first couple of hours. The most exciting part near the beginning was when the road passed through Normal, Illinois. Of course we made all kinds of jokes about getting to Normal, leaving Normal, not being able to find Normal, etc. And really, the whole town seemed like a bad sitcom character trying to “act casual.” Every building announced its normality: Normal Fire Department, Normal Pizza, Normal Bank, Normal Auto Care, etc. “Nothing to see here, folks. It’s just a normal fire department. Nothing unusual going on here at all. Totally normal.”
Eventually we found ourselves in Pontiac, IL, which is an adorable town that’s pretty obsessed with Route 66. It boasts the largest Route 66 shield, which is part of the big mural pictured at the top of this post. It’s painted on the back of the building that houses the Route 66 Hall of Fame and Museum. Oddly, there are several Route 66 Halls of Fame and/or Museums throughout the road’s eight states, and I assume they’re all pretty much like the one in Pontiac: small, cute, well-meaning, and not all that interesting. By far the best part of the museum was the VW minibus whose owner drove it across Route 66 repeatedly, and which served as the inspiration for the character Fillmore in Cars.
Fillmore!
As we followed the road out of Pontiac toward Springfield, my research, my experience, and Cars all came together and suddenly I understood the whole story of the road, but particularly the newest chapter in that story.
In the ’60s, chunks of Route 66 started getting bypassed by Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway system. In 1970 the last piece of Route 66 was bypassed by an Interstate, and the newly obsolete road was officially decommissioned. Route 66 no longer exists on highway maps—stretches of it are called Old Route 66, but most of it has been renamed entirely, names like Main Street or Frontage Road or whatever. Sometimes the road turns when it goes through a town, and it suddenly has a new name, and staying on it requires paying close attention to the little “Historic Route 66” markers that appear on the shoulder every so often.
The Interstates are bigger, straighter, and faster. But one of the reasons that they’re faster is that they go around towns instead of through them. For most of Illinois, Route 66 runs right alongside I-55. I mean they literally run parallel, maybe 20 or 30 feet away from each other with nothing but a strip of grass separating them.
This is Route 66. I-55 is on the left. Corn is on the right.
Yes, the Interstate is paved a little better and is a little wider and has a higher speed limit (70 mph vs. 55), but otherwise there’s not much separating them, both literally and figuratively. For the most part, they only veer away from each other physically at exits, which is exactly what makes them so different, and it’s exactly what they were talking about in Cars.
Well, the road didn’t cut through the land like that interstate. It moved with the land, it rose, it fell, it curved. Cars didn’t drive on it to make great time. They drove on it to have a great time.
— Sally Carrera
Route 66 goes right through every town, sometimes just a few feet away from people’s houses, and often right past the stores and restaurants and motels that sprung up to service the drivers as they passed through. You don’t even have to leave the road to patronize most of these businesses. The Interstate bypasses the towns completely, forcing you to get completely off the highway at an exit in order to stop anywhere. This cuts down on travel time considerably, because there are no stop signs, no traffic lights, and no turns. But there’s also nobody stopping at all those roadside businesses because they’re no longer roadside, and many of them have gone out of business. The ones that survive do so based on nostalgia tourism (mostly by baby boomers) and as relics from a past to which fewer and fewer Americans can connect. When the last generation to travel the road in its heyday dies out, so too, will those remaining businesses and perhaps even some of the towns.
Exhibit A in this slow death is Shea’s Gas Station in Springfield, IL, a Route 66 icon that exists now more as a kitchy curiosity than as a legitimate business. In fact, when we arrived at 2:30 pm, it was closed. I read in an online review somewhere that it opens by appointment only, though I’m not sure how accurate that information is. Either way, we stopped, snapped a couple of photos, and moved on, which is just about all happens at many Route 66 attractions nowadays.
On the bright side, the rest of Springfield was wonderful. I have long had something of an obsession with Abraham Lincoln, and there’s no better place to feed that obsession than the city that calls itself “Land of Lincoln.” Abe wasn’t born in Springfield and he didn’t die in Springfield, but he lived there for the 25 years leading up to his election, and it’s where he was laid to rest.
In fact, Lincoln’s tomb is the first thing we visited. It’s massive—a huge granite structure 117 feet tall that you can see before you even enter the cemetery.
Lincoln’s family chose the burial site and President Grant had the tomb built with money from private donations from around the country. The outside includes several statues and is ringed at the base by stone shields for each state, connected by an unbroken chain, symbolizing the undivided nation. The inside contains nine bronze statues of Lincoln at various stages of life; in the entry hall is a miniature version of the massive statue that sits in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Lincoln is buried in a vault under the tomb, and his wife and two of their three sons are entombed here as well. (The third son is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.)
Next on my list was the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, but Sam nixed it, understandably. So instead we headed to the State Capitol, which, like Lincoln’s tomb, is both enormous and stunning. There’s a cool statue of Lincoln in front, of course, which hides an impressive statue of Stephen Douglas, an appropriate placement if there ever was one.
Lincoln’s first law office is not far from the Capitol, but Sam wanted to skip it in favor of Lincoln’s house, which is a National Historic Site and thus has a robust visitors center staffed by National Parks Service rangers. We got to the house in time for the 4:00 tour, but the free guided tours sell out for the day early each morning, and cannot be reserved online or more than a few hours in advance, so we had no chance. Unfortunately that meant that we couldn’t go inside the house, but we could still walk right up to it and admire the outside.
In fact, the National Parks Service has preserved a mini neighborhood–a few blocks in each direction, with Lincoln’s house in the center. So we were able to walk around and even to go inside some of Lincoln’s neighbors’ homes.
We also got to sit in on a talk given in character by an actor dressed as Lincoln. “Abe” had just been elected President and discussed his experiences in Springfield and his thoughts about leaving. I thought it was going to be cheesy but it was actually very well done and provided an interesting view of Lincoln as a man, a husband, a father, and a neighbor rather than as a politician.
At that point we left the Land of Lincoln for the land of nostalgia. Taking Route 66 toward St. Louis, we made our final stop of the day at a Route 66 attraction that is everything that roadside attractions aim to be: quirky, unique, sweet, and fun.
Henry’s Rabbit Ranch hasn’t been around quite as long as some of the attractions from the ’50s, but it’s got more heart than most of them. Despite the name it’s not a rabbit ranch, exactly, but it is home to more than a dozen or so rabbits, all of which are rescue rabbits. It is also home to at least a dozen Volkswagen Rabbits, some of which are half-buried in the front yard in a row. The ranch closes at 4 but Henry himself was still there and happily let us in to pet the bunnies and look around. Having recently become bunny owners ourselves, Sam and I had a great time meeting all the rabbits and chatting with Henry about all their back stories. And of course we couldn’t miss climbing on the 8-foot-tall rabbit and soaking up all the other Route 66 kitch scattered around the ranch.
The rabbit statue is holding a route beer. Get it? “Route” beer!
Henry was even nice enough to point us to a pretty nice highway rest stop that wasn’t too far away, where we had our first roadside cookout of the trip: burgers and broccoli.
After dinner we continued toward St. Louis but decided to stop short of the Missouri border and we pulled up for the night at a surprisingly nice Super 8 in Troy, IL. It’s not actually nice, mind you, but it’s much nicer than anyone has a right to expect from a Super 8: a pool, an elevator, decent-size rooms, and a very friendly front desk staff, all for just $65. In fact, we were settled for the night so early in comparison to the past couple of days that we jumped into the pool for about half an hour before I dragged Sam out of the water and off to bed.
As he got into bed, he talked about how great the day was, how soft the bunnies were, and how cool it was that, after two days on the road, we had finally gotten some actual kicks on Route 66.
Chicago, Take Two
On our first road trip the Hamster and I spent an oppressively hot day seeing the major tourist sites of Chicago: Willis Tower, Navy Pier, Millennium Park, the famous Buckingham Fountain, and of course a Cubs game. Visiting Chicago again presented both a challenge and an opportunity to find other interesting things to do, which in a great city like this isn’t very difficult.
Making things harder, though, was the fact that today was a Jewish fast day that commemorates five tragic events in Jewish history but most notably the Romans’ breach of the walls of Jerusalem in 69 B.C.E. It’s not easy to balance the sad, somber nature of a fast day with the fun of vacation. And fasting, especially in the summer, creates an exhaustion and listlessness that physically limits what we can take on during the day.
Our first thought was where to break the fast, which ended at dark, which in Chicago today was at 9:15. The answer was easy: a second trip to Milt’s!
[Side Note: In the past 28 hours we have discovered that the great thing about going to the same restaurant two days in a row is that it eliminates indecision: if you’re debating between two options, you get one the first night and the other the second.]
For the rest of the day, though, we needed to be a little creative. Seeing a ballgame is our go-to activity, but tonight was the MLB All-Star Game so there’s nothing doing at Wrigley Field or at whatever corporate name the White Sox want me to call their stadium. The most popular sites we didn’t hit the first time are all museums (the Art Institute of Chicago, the Field Museum, etc.) but Sam doesn’t like museums.
So we decided that this would be a take-it-easy day. We slept a little later than usual, puttered around for a while, and then headed to Wrigley for a stadium tour. Sam has been with me on stadium tours in Boston, Cleveland, Denver, Cincinnati, and Madrid (yes, Madrid) and I’ve done a couple without him. This one was different from the others in that it focused much more on the history of the team and the building and much less on visiting parts of the actual building. This was the first tour I’ve been on that did not include a visit to the luxury suites, and the first that included a stop in the home team’s clubhouse.
I loved the baseball history lesson, and Sam loved the press box, the clubhouse, the dugout, and the field. But I think he was most amused when he realized that two other guys on the tour were wearing the exact same sneakers as me, and that we were all walking behind each other. You have to look closely but here’s some photographic evidence:
All the other kids with the pumped-up kicks
From Wrigley we went to an unlikely place: the National Veterans Art Museum. I’m not a big art museum person and Sam is much less of one, but a while ago I saw a photo of a permanent exhibit at this museum that was so moving I didn’t want to miss a chance to see it in person. It’s a 10-ft-by-40-ft rectangle made by dog tags hanging from the ceiling. The dog tags are replicas of those worn by every American serviceman killed or declared MIA in Vietnam. Sam wasn’t too excited about this stop, but I did manage to get him curious about the dog tags, and I figured a war memorial was a good choice on a Jewish day of mourning.
We were a little surprised when we arrived at the museum and almost missed it, as it’s on a decrepit-looking block populated mostly by empty storefronts.
Museum? What museum?
The museum itself was much more of a disappointment than the block; it turned out to be just a couple of rooms of very strange-looking art, some made by veterans and some made in honor of them. Worst of all, the dog tag exhibit wasn’t there–it’s in storage while it’s being prepped for its new space, and it won’t be reinstalled until roughly October.
Our next stop was the Cook County Criminal Court Building, which is not so exciting except that it’s the courthouse where the Black Sox were tried for throwing the 1919 World Series.
Having seen it, we were done with our to-do list for the day but we still had six hours to kill before the fast ended and we could go get dinner. Originally I had made plans to meet up with an old friend who lives here, but her young son got the cast taken off his broken leg today so the timing didn’t work out. Plan B was water sports on Lake Michigan, but today’s weather was cold and kept vacillating between bright sunshine and ominously dark storm clouds, so we nixed the water. Sam wanted us to drive up into Wisconsin, not to do anything but just so he could say he’s been to Wisconsin. I checked the GPS, which said it was about an hour drive each way. Under other circumstances I might have been more willing, but after 14 hours behind the wheel yesterday there was no way I was going to drive an extraneous two hours just to cross a border.
We drove aimlessly around downtown Chicago for a little while, which was fun just because the architecture here is so cool and every building is completely different from the next. But we needed something to do. Suggestions from friends ranged from playing in parks to blues clubs to a podiatry museum, but Sam was unimpressed. Finally I hit on a solution: the Shedd Aquarium, one of the most well known and highly regarded aquariums in the country. Our general policy on these road trips is to avoid zoos and aquariums and science museums and amusement parks because we can do those things at home, and the ones at home are fantastic. But the New York Aquarium still has not really recovered from Hurricane Sandy, and I was running out of ideas, and Sam loves animals, so Shedd was a good call.
It took a while to fight the traffic, and by the time we got there and parked it was a little after 5 pm. The aquarium closed at 6, which didn’t give us a lot of time but I figured we’d just get as far as we could before we got kicked out. First Sam needed to pee, and instead of waiting to do so inside the aquarium he insisted on stopping at a cafe next door to the aquarium to pee there. I’m not sure exactly how long it took, but I do know that we walked up to the ticket counter in the aquarium at 5:19, only to be told that the last entry was at 5:15. We were pretty frustrated and the situation instantly reminded me of the day on last year’s road trip when Sam’s dilly-dallying made us just a couple of minutes too late to go to the top of Pilgrim’s Tower in Provincetown. But this time we recovered quickly and took some time to enjoy the great views of the lake and the skyline. We also found some interesting statues nearby–especially this one of a giant piece of mac-and-cheese:
If that’s not amusing enough, take a closer look at the text on the bottom right of the base of the “statue”:
Big Noodle is what they used to call me in high school.
It might be the most unintentionally comical safety warning of all time. Also, for a couple of years now, Sam and I have been playing a game where we follow up any odd phrase by saying, “[Odd phrase] is what they used to call me in high school!” Sam hasn’t been to high school yet, so his version is that [odd phrase] is what they called him in kindergarten. Needless to say, we both raced to be the one to declare that “Big Noodle” is what they called us in whatever school applied.
Anyway, we still had a few hours before dinner, and we were pretty exhausted from not having eaten all day, so we headed back to our motel and watched the first few innings of the All-Star Game, which is exactly what we did the very first night of our first road trip.
Eventually we ate, and we watched the rest of the game, and we agreed that the third base umpire totally blew the call on that double, which totally should’ve been called foul.
Ultimately, the day, and the trip overall, was one dichotomy after another. We haven’t had great weather but it’s been a whole lot better than the epic two-day rainstorm we’d be “enjoying” if we were still in New York. We spent one day in the car and another fasting, yet we have eaten very well. Neither day was a great day, but we enjoyed them both (today more than yesterday) despite some serious obstacles.
We’re both looking forward to tomorrow, when we get to eat for real, drive a completely manageable amount, and visit our hero, Abe Lincoln!
Road Kill
Chicago: a mere 853.8 miles from home!
If you want to drive the length of Route 66, it’s important to understand that you first need to get to Route 66. If you live in Chicago this is rather easy. However, if you live in New York, as I do, it’s a little more complicated.
The Hamster and I already drove from New York to Chicago on our first road trip. It took us 9 days and we stopped off at all sorts of places along the way. To avoid repeating ourselves, my original plan for this trip was to take a more northern route, getting to Chicago via Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, and Detroit. But the original plan is always much more ambitious than reality permits, and once we start comparing the rough itinerary to an actual calendar, the trip always gets pared back significantly. (If you think we’ve done and seen a lot on our trips, you should see all the stuff that ended up on the cutting room floor!)
Anyway, we ultimately decided to ax Canada and jump straight into Route 66 by driving straight to Chicago on Day 1. It’s a roughly 13-hour drive, which is a gargantuan amount of driving to do in one day. But once, 12 years ago, I drove straight home from Chicago with two other guys, and it wasn’t bad. Of course, both those other guys shared the driving with me, which is a factor I must have forgotten when planning today.
For some reason my biggest concern was not driving 840 miles in one day but having enough to talk about in the car.
The Hamster and I left home at around 7:30 Monday morning. We fought traffic and rain for an hour to get to New Jersey, and then we got onto I-80 West, where literally stayed for the rest of the day. You never realize just how wide Pennsylvania is until you drive straight through it from one end to the other. Our reward for finally finishing off Pennsylvania hours and hours later was the privilege of then driving across Ohio, and then Indiana.
We stopped three times to fill up the tank. We stopped seven times to empty the tank.
Actually, Ohio really was a reward in two important ways: 70-mph speed limits, and the first sunshine we’d seen all day. We even put the top down for an hour or so in between rest areas. But the real reward was waiting for us when we finally arrived in Chicago (more than 14 hours after we left home): dinner at Milt’s, a BBQ place that my wife has been raving about nonstop for the past year or so. Milt’s did not disappoint. When we got there were were sore just about everywhere and completely spent. We didn’t even have the energy to talk to each other anymore. But we still mustered up the strength to devour half the menu. We especially enjoyed the fried okra, but really, there was nothing we didn’t like.
This was far from the most exciting day we’ve spent together (my Foursquare check-ins for the day are exclusively rest areas), but it turned out pretty enjoyable. I brought along The Book of Questions, and we went through the first 30, agreeing on our answers to almost every one. We sang along to my iPod playlist. We spied license plates from 33 states. We talked about the parts of the trip we’re most looking forward to. (Mine: the Four Corners, the national parks, and the live cattle auction we’re planning to see in Oklahoma City. Sam’s: the Four Corners, Los Angeles, and the alpaca farm we’re planning to see in Arizona.) We had deep conversations about anti-Semitism, about girls, about our relationship. And we had not-so deep conversations about houses in the middle of nowhere, farm sprinkler systems, and Sam’s new-found belief that “if life gives you lemons, it needs to also give you water and sugar, or else your lemonade will suck.” We realized that we forgot to pack a laundry bag and Sam’s National Parks Passport, and we solved both of those problems by buying a new laundry bag at one of our bathroom stops and by having Sarah mail the passport to the hotel we’ll be staying in this coming Friday night. And there was this:
Lord of the Onion Rings
Hey, you try spending 14 hours in a car and see if you don’t come out with crunchy snacks attached to your fingers.
This day was logistically prudent but exhausting. But you know what they say: when life gives you lemons, and water, and sugar …
Go West, Young Man!
The Road More Traveled
Three years ago I got the crazy idea to take my then 10-year-old son on a weeks-long cross-country road trip. We had no idea what to expect or whether it would end in joy or disaster. In the end we both had so much fun that we decided to do it again. And again. And again.
That first summer we spent five weeks exploring the northern half of the country. The next year we didn’t have as much time so we limited ourselves to three weeks driving through the southeastern United States. The third summer we spent two and a half weeks finding adventure throughout New England. That left one area of the country we hadn’t visited: the southwest. The problem, of course, is that getting to the southwest from our home in New York meant driving through large swaths of America we’ve already seen. We considered flying into, say, Oklahoma, and renting a car, but a multiweek car rental and plane tickets would add significantly to the expense of the trip. After exploring multiple other options I remembered a piece of advice that was given to me by Nat King Cole (and Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones and Depeche Mode and the Replacements and dozens of others):
If you ever plan to motor west,
Travel my way:
Take the highway
That’s the best.
Get your kicks on Route 66.
Of course, there were a few problems with this idea. For starters, driving through the southwest on Route 66 didn’t go very well for the Joad family. But that was almost 100 years ago, and also the Joads are not real. Problem solved. Another challenge was that Route 66 is a ridiculously long road–as the song says, “it winds from Chicago to L.A.” We could just drive part of it, as millions of travelers before us had. But I don’t like to do things halfway, so we decided that if we were doing it at all we were doing it completely. And finally, how on earth do we get back from Los Angeles? It would be boring to go back the way we came, but we’ve seen so much of the country that other routes would be equally boring. I looked into taking one of those auto trains where you drive your car onto a train, ride the train, and then drive off when you reach the destination. But it turns out there’s only one such train in existence currently, and it goes from Virginia to Florida, which is entirely unhelpful. Another option was flying back from California and having our car shipped back, but that’s pretty expensive, and, well, then we don’t get to do and see more stuff on the way home. Ultimately I solved the problem by plotting a more southern route home that is not quite as direct but brings us mostly through places we haven’t seen.
So it was settled: this year’s trip would be not merely The Hamster and the Highway, but The Hamster and America’s Highway. We may be the gazillionth people to drive what Steinbeck called the Mother Road, but it will be an intensely personal experience just the same. All told, the plan is to hit 17 states in 31 days, including some national parks, some major cities, some tiny towns, some deserts, some really odd roadside statues, and of course some ballgames.
And thus was born Road Trip IV: The Road Trip to End All Road Trips. This is not just a cute nickname for the trip–our fourth father-son cross-country road trip will likely be our last, because once we’re done we’ll have very little of the country left to explore, plus the Hamster will be almost 14 next summer and will be more likely to spend the summer in camp somewhere, either as a camper or a CIT. Sam has suggested that we drive through Europe next summer, but the logistics would be monstrously difficult to work out, we don’t speak the languages, and we would never get the giant Costco barrel of pretzels through Customs. I hope we’ll never stop looking for adventure or having fun together or exploring the world, but as far as major road trips go this is likely our last hurrah.
Tomorrow morning we’ll jump into our fully packed Toyota Solara convertible and head out on a crazy road adventure for (probably) the last time. In 24 hours we’ll be several states and a time zone from home. More important, we’ll be at the beginning of Route 66, ready to follow Nat’s advice and get our kicks.
Thank You, Cabot!
In what often seems like an unending sea of mediocrity and incompetence, it’s a special pleasure to deal with someone–anyone–who is good as his or her job. In fact, today alone I fruitlessly called Verizon for the umpteenth time trying unsuccessfully to get reimbursed for the TV they broke three years ago when they first hooked up my service, I got a disappointing response from an online clothing company that sent me the wrong items, and I printed up an Amazon.com return label for a griddle made to fit my grill that doesn’t actually fit my grill.
So just finding someone who doesn’t screw things up is kind of nice. And if you somehow manage to come across someone who is not only good at her job but exceeds job responsibilities to please you without even being asked, well, that’s like finding gold.
Today gold arrived on my doorstep.
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned here that Sam had seen an inflatable cow with the Cabot logo on it at a Pawtucket Red Sox game and got a little obsessed with getting one. He even put it at the top of his birthday wish list. We ended up at a Cabot store in Waterbury, Vermont but the closest they had was a squeezy stress cow.
Within hours of posting about our stop at the Cabot store, I heard from someone at Cabot named Wendy. I don’t know how she found the blog but she sent me a friendly little e-mail with a YouTube link to the video they show on the Cabot Creamery tour, and she asked for my mailing address. I was impressed. I had a feeling I knew what she was going to send me but I didn’t want to get too excited in case I was wrong, and I didn’t even tell Sam about Wendy’s e-mail. I figured that whatever came would be a nice surprise.
Tuesday was Sam’s birthday. Today a big box arrived from Cabot. As it turns out, my hopes had not been nearly high enough. Inside the box were several things. On top, a bunch of Cabot literature and a cute reusable shopping bag in Cabot plaid.
Underneath, a nice little box filled with an assortment of Cabot cheeses and a cheese slicer.
I was pretty excited, but not as excited as I was to see the final item in the box. I hollered for Sam, told him that Cabot heard about his birthday desires and wished him a happy birthday, and tossed him the final item. A couple minutes of exhaling later, and he was an extremely happy boy:
Thank you, Wendy, and thank you, Cabot. I hope you read this and get to see what a smile you put on the face of a very appreciative Hamster and his very appreciative dad. I liked Cabot before, but now you’ve got a couple of fans for life.
The Numbers
6: states visited on this trip, not including our home state of New York
5: state capitols
45: states I’ve been to so far (I’m missing LA, OK, NB, ND, and NM)
42: states the Hamster has been to so far (he’s missing the same 5 plus MI, WI, and AZ)
7: whales on our whale watching cruise
5: beaches
4: lighthouses
4: baseball games (if you include the 2 innings of the Cape Cod Baseball League game)
3: factory tours
3: mountaintop views we missed out on thanks to bad weather
2: covered bridges
2: reunions with old friends
2: jars of peanut butter finished
0: moose sightings
$5: limit for cost of any given souvenir for the Hamster
$2: fine for not walking your horses on the Cornish-Windsor Covered Bridge
19: postcards sent to my daughter from places we visited
44: state license plates spied, plus 8 Canadian provinces
$3.89: highest price per gallon of gas, excluding Canada (at home right before leaving)
$3.59: lowest price per gallon of gas (Downeast Maine)
26.2: average miles per gallon
36.8: average speed in miles per hour
73:03: total time spent in the car
2956.3: total miles driven
2: silly little boys who had the summer of their lives for the third time
The Hamster Writes
Instead of interviewing that guy, I figured it was about time for Sam to join this blog for real. The following words are all his, uncensored and unedited.
It’s me, the Hamster.
I think that my 5 favorite things that we did were…
1. Going indoor skydiving in New Hampshire. 2. Going to see the Hopewell Rocks in New Brunswick. 3. Going to the Ben & Jerry’s factory. 4. Dancing to Stronger. 5. The Boston Red Sox game.
Next year I think we should go see the South West US and take route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles for a few reasons… A. Because its the only region in the US that we haven’t been to, B. We would be able to see my Uncle Steve (who lives in L.A.), and C. So that we could go see the Grand Canyon (which I really want to see).
I really hope that we can do roadtrips like this every year because I want to keep having fun with Dad every year.
Welcome
The Hamster and the Highway 