All this doing and redoing of vacation brochure, fall color and beautiful light has had me thinking about all of the great drives I have taken.
My dad used to like to take us on a Sunday drive up to Julian at least once a month. Julian is a quaint historic town about 21/2 hours due east of San Diego, elevation 6,000 feet. It snows more up there than it does in Baltimore. The road to Julian is full of switchbacks and steep ravines plunging hundreds of feet unsullied by any guardrails. After lunch in the town that fluorescent light forgot you can drive to the other side of the mountain and see the land that rain forgot – Anza Borrego Desert. My Dad tells me that road from Julian to the desert was built by prisoners during the 1940s. The work had to suck in the summer but it’s a wonderful place in the winter. The coolest thing about the desert is the silence. You really haven’t heard silence unless you’ve listened to it in the desert. I loved those drives when I was a kid and I would do anything to get out of them as an adolescent.
Later some friends who moved to SD from New York and I decided it would be fun to drive Highway 1 up the coast of California. They were new drivers. You have not really experienced all the terror, drama or feeling of impending disaster life has to offer until you have taught a high strung New Yorker how to drive in Southern California. Needless to say I drove. We took 3 days and it was the best. I’m guessing but it had to be 1985 or 1985 when we went. The road hugs the coast all the way up and it is all of those spectacular, majestic, awesome, breathtaking words. There was remarkably little development on long stretches of coast at that time. We regretted deeply we were out of time and had to take I5 back.
After moving here I decided to go to jewelry camp in North Carolina. We drove through the Shenandoah Valley which was pleasant but nothing prepared me for the ride through the NE corner of Tennessee. I think it was 19E anyway it was an elevated highway through Hobbit Land. There is some serous government money going on in Tennessee as road changed from a pleasant 2 lane asphalt highway to a 4 lane cement freeway in Tennessee and then to a really crappy rutted 2 lane road in NC. I cranked up Sebelius’ 5th and we just felt like we were gliding through soft mountain peaks past mysterious mists. I expected a troll or a fairy to greet me at anytime. This is a mountain road that can be safely traveled at 80MPH and let me tell you it’s cool to be able to do that.
A couple of years ago my friend Dave, Pat and I went to Western New Mexico on an Agate Hunt. New Mexico is a geologic convention center. It’s where the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains and the Western Plate converge. There’s a lot of government money going on here too. In fact you can’t even drive through the center of the state because it’s a big missile range. So the paved road is kind of like a beltway around this big missile range. When we rented our car in Albuquerque we asked about taking it on dirt roads. The car rental dude just looked at us like we had 3 heads each. When we got to where we were going, Reserve NM, we realized that there are no paved roads in the “neighborhoods” and to get anywhere you need to drive on an unpaved road. So we spent a few days in the pleasant highlands of New Mexico, found lots of agate off many unpaved roads and on the way back to the airport we went by way of White Sands. It’s about a 5 hour drive from Reserve. The road is flawless and festooned with every imaginable array of reflectors. Invest in the New Mexico reflector industry, you cannot go wrong. The reflectors are needed because there are no street lights. We made it to White Sands it time for a sunset walk and drove another 4 hours in the reflected gloom to Albuquerque – it was a great trip.
Well I found out while on vacation that we are all being let go. This goes all the way up to my boss’s boss so it’s not like I can be mad at my boss or anything. She’s in the same boat. So this ends my “work pays for school grant” which was my financial plan for UB. Crap. I’m really upset about letting school go – so I guess this means I should find a way to stay – any ideas??? I’m looking for freelance. I have until June (so they say) at my job, so there is some time to get myself together. I’ll know more Monday - which is going to be a really emotional day. They let a lot of people, good people, go with no notice. Poot them.
