Why the Trip Was Worth It

This beautiful face:
Who wouldn't willingly and eagerly travel about 2,600 miles to see this smile?

I-40 Philosophy

I'm sure most of you are acquainted with how the road is a metaphor for life -- as in: We travel the road with other passengers, viewing the scenery, taking the occasional detour, etc.

OK, I won't bore you with that tired old saw, but I will relate this experience from the road, which happened more than once: We would be going down the road, moving up a rise in the road, and we'd get to the top and suddenly see the most beautiful landscape. It was so moving that all we could say was, "Wow. Oh my gosh, look at that ... Wow!" And we talked about how awesome God is to create such things.

At one point, I said, "I can't wait to see what's over the next hill." I also said -- actually out loud -- that it was boring to have miles and miles straight ahead where I could see the road and know what was coming and that I would rather be surprised with hills and curves in the road.

Now, the remarkable thing is that I usually -- in my everyday life, I mean -- want to know exactly what's coming. I've even complained that I'm always asking God for the road map so I know what to expect. So to say that I preferred essentially the opposite was quite telling.

And it gives me something interesting to ponder about my basic approach to life.

Bonus

Here's what we got at the end of 2,597 miles:


Alexis is asking me what took so long:

Images of the Trip

This is what we saw just outside Albuquerque. It looked like we were going to run right into the mountain. No worries: the road turned just before we did.

This is what most of New Mexico and Arizona looked like. We don't have mountains like this back East.
Here we are at the continental divide in New Mexico, elevation 7,245 feet. Rainfall runs to the Atlantic on the right side and to the Pacific on the left side. Beyond this point, we are officially in the West.

We took this shot at the continental divide. Here's Connie's car on historic Route 66. They make quite the to-do about this highway, let me tell you. Every few miles there was an exit to get on to Historic Route 66. We decided to do a vacation traveling this route. Not anytime soon, though. Later, after we've recovered from this trip.

This was the view for most of the way -- behind a truck with a mountain looming in the distance.

This is just beyond the Arizona/California border -- just before we reached Needles, CA. The temperature reached 115.

The Same, Only Different

Well, now that we're at the left coast (photo to come as soon as we actually get to the ocean), I have to say that most of the trip was the same. The highway looks pretty much the same all along the route, with a few exceptions (mountains versus flatlands, for instance), but when I uploaded the photos from Tony's camera -- mine is still in a coma -- it's difficult to tell exactly where we were in a given photo. It's all the same.

But different too. There were times when we'd be heading up a rise in the road, get to the top and just gasp at how beautiful the landscape was spread out before us. The scenery got more interesting after Albuquerque -- no offense, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina; it's just that we'd already seen what those states had to offer. The mountains in the west are different from anything we'd ever seen. (At least in person.) Absolutely gorgeous.

And then we just kept seeing them. Again and again, for miles and miles. We stopped taking photos because we were on overload with rust-colored plateau-shaped mountains.

Then we hit the desert, another thing we'd never seen before. And let me tell you: it's hot. When we got to California, the gauge in the car that tells the external temperature was reading 115. No kidding. And virtually no humidity. When we stopped to get gas, it was extremely hot when we got out of the car, but we didn't sweat. That's just weird.

As for traffic and delays, we had none except a minor slowdown outside of Little Rock and a traffic accident that slowed us down at Flagstaff. The only time we hit aggravating traffic was just outside San Diego. It rained on us only a few times, and then only for 10 minutes at a time. We were very fortunate. The great traveling weather is probably how we could get here in 3 days.

Photos with captions in the next post.

We're Here!

Finally made it to San Diego by 7:30 their time, 10:30 my time. I'm still messed up with that time change thing.

I'm going to have to backtrack on the posting and let you know how the trip went. For now, I'm busy holding Alexis.

More later, including photos...

On the Road Again...

My watch says it's 7:00 a.m. but it's really 5:00 a.m. here (see? this is just confusing ... should I be groggy or not?), and we're getting on the road in a few minutes.

Did I mention how technologically prepared we are? We have our cell phones, my travel laptop, cameras with USB cables to upload photos and a DVD player with an assortment of DVDs. (Don't worry, the driver just listens to the movie.) I'm glad this isn't a camping trip because I have no idea how to rough it.