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Epic Road Trips

Ron Texas

Ron Texas

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Mrs. T and I are on a road trip in my Wrangler. We started out in Houston did an overnight in Lubbock then proceeded to Santa Fe NM where we spend 6 nights. There was 200 mile loop through Taos NM. The latest leg was from Santa Fe to Breckenridge Colorado.

Lubbock and the other cities in West Texas are not worth visiting other than to break up driving across the vastness of the area. There are lots of wind turbines and not much else. We stayed in a Marriot Courtyard using points. It was clean but boring and right alongside 3 other equally boring hotels. Nearby there were several chain restaurants. I had a totally forgettable undercooked burger at the Outback. That place is an insult to Australia. The drive from Lubbock starts out in the flatness of West Texas but gets more interesting once in New Mexico. Rather than being just arid now it is high desert with the beginnings of mountains. Lubbock has an elevation of 3200'. Santa Fe is at 7200'.

There will be more later, and some photos. If you are planning, completing or home from a summer road trip please chime in. We are about to head out and do some Colorado sightseeing.
 
Beautiful area. Did it springtime when I was 21 on a Suzuki GS550. Camping wherever I found myself. Woke up by coyotes once, cowboys once and shaking with frozen drinking water several times. (The high desert gets cold at night.)
Fond memories. Enjoy!
 
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Wow the elevation is very high. 7200 feet elevation is where is becomes more difficult to breath when exerting oneself. I had no idea it is so high there. I'm in the middle of the prairie and I'm @ ~2200 feet elevation. Looking forward to some pics. I've never been to south, central USA or to the East so it always welcome seeing images.
 
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@Doodski at 8,000' altitude sickness begins. That's why most commercial airliners are pressurized to that level.

Highlights of the 6 days in Santa Fe included a 200 mile loop crossing the Colorado River Gorge and returning through Taos. My cousin has a 300 acre ranch up there. There is a lot of traffic around Taos. Things are sparse in northern NM often going 60 miles to find a gas station. Just outside of Santa Fe there is a Ski area. The parking lot is at 10,000' or so. While Santa Fe has cool evenings it's very hot from 11 AM until around 6PM. The sun at high altitude is strong. Highs were around 90F. We made 2 trips to the ski area to escape the heat, hike and catch a few views. On the way back to town on the 2nd trip I took a Forest Service road. My Wrangler handled it with panache. The typical unit body SUV would have taken twice as long and probably would have been damaged.

Our hotel was just off the square in the historic district. All the buildings are Adobe. In the bar I tried a jalapeno infused margarita for the first time. It's a great way to wake up your taste buds. The food in Santa Fe is their own variation of Mexican. It is covered in either a red sauce I have never seen anywhere else or a green chili sauce one restaurant in Houston makes. Every morning at breakfast they had (among other things) scrambled eggs and the red and green sauces. There are some interesting stores with native American jewelry and many art galleries.

We Are Open by Ron Scubadiver, on Flickr
 
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1. Cowgirl Restaurant.
2. Santa Fe rail yard.
3. Colorado River Gorge.
 
I'm on my way home, camped in a Marriot in Amarillo. I will have more on Saturday. Today's drive took me over Independence pass, 12,095' above sea level. Divide for 3.3 for meters. It's close from October to May. It's a spectacular drive. When I woke up in Aspen this morning the temperature was in the 40's F. On arrival in Amarillo, 100F. Amarillo is famous for being the home of Pantex. It's a mysterious company which is tasked with manufacturing, maintaining and dismantling the US nuclear arsenal. I will not be sending them my CV.
 
1972, Mom and Dad and my brother in Dad's new Mustang towing a tent trailer. Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Redwood Forest, San Francisco, LA (Disneyland!!!!), Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Salt Lake City, Yellowstone, Mt Rushmore, Sault Ste Marie, Montreal. 6 weeks. I remember it like it was yesterday.
 
I did this drive about 15 years ago:

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We stretched it out to a 4 week trip. Here are some pics from the journey:

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90 miles of utter desolation with no towns in sight on a long straight road in the middle of nowhere. I decided to test my car's top speed. I got up to 220km/h (135mph) before I chickened out. Little waves on the road would make the steering load up and go light in a disconcerting way. At 180km/h (110mph) the car felt surefooted and planted. I went back to the national limit of 110km/h (68mph) for the rest of the way. No speeding tickets.

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That's the Great Australian Bight. It was a spectacularly clear day when we visited. The coastline stretches as far as the eye can see.

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Frenchman's Peak in Esperance, Western Australia. "Esperance" means "hope" in French, which is somewhat ironic given that it is the suicide capital of Australia.


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Esperance sure is beautiful though. The water is an impossibly clear metallic blue (all the better to see the sharks trying to sneak up on you). Even though was a punishingly hot Australian summer day, the water is cold because it comes up from the Antarctic. The sand is as white as snow, and it is so clean that it squeaks when you walk on it.

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This is the start of the longest beach-side 4WD track in Australia (and maybe the world). The photo is misleading, this is only 10 meters from the car park. The sand was compressed enough from all the traffic that it was safe to risk driving my road car on it for a short distance.

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That is the border between Western Australia and South Australia. The sense of emptiness and loneliness is hard to capture in a photograph.
 
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I've done extensive road trips for my other habit, mountain biking. My favorite was a big loop of BC and Alberta but that was almost 20 years ago now! My various trips in the western US haven't been so bad either. I retired in a beautiful part of Oregon (minus last few years of fires perhaps) and haven't had the bug much lately altho am itching for some desert action (Utah and Arizona mostly)....maybe this fall or next spring....not good summer destinations.
 
Chrispy said:
Anything interesting from the transit thru Yellowstone?
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We drove up through Idaho and the Gallatin River Valley:

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On the way back to Jackson today we did go through the park. But it was midday, so not ideal for wildlife. That said, it is never time wasted.

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One wonders how long that rock promontory can hold out against the flow of water.
 
Fortunately, other members are adding their travels here. It's Sunday morning. We returned home Friday night after driving over 3,000 miles through Texas, New Mexico and Colorado. The trip north from Santa Fe to Breckenridge goes across the emptiness of Northern New Mexico. There isn't so much as a gas pump for 60 miles or more. It's just open space until crossing into Colorado where gasoline suddenly costs $4 instead of $3.29 per gallon. That was at the start of the trip. By the end of the trip prices had gone up 20 to 30 cents per gallon.

In Colorado the terrain changes gradually going from desert to alpine. The approach to Buena Vista is through foothills but turns to mountains. From there it's on to Fair Play, Hoosier Pass at 11,700' altitude and down to Breckenridge. I can remember skiing in Breckenridge, or Breck as it is called, in the 1970's. It's unrecognizable today. Of the better known Colorado ski resorts room rates here are about the lowest. Food is relatively inexpensive but not all that good. It got a lot worse than last summer. Four out of five hamburgers I ordered were dried out. The Kenosha which used to be the best place to eat isn't so good anymore. Service was outright rude at Ollie's, a restaurant built into an old mining dredge. The tacos were good at the Breckenridge Tap House and I like the bartenders Murph and Dani there.

The town and trails get crowded on weekends because it is only slightly more than an hour from Denver on I-70 and on weekend evenings the restaurants get jammed with locals.
 
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Buena Vista by Ron Scubadiver, on Flickr

Blue Lakes Pano by Ron Scubadiver, on Flickr

This location is about 10 miles South of Breckenridge. I took this from just below the dam. The parking lot is at the far end of the scene. The walk up to this spot involves about a 270' elevation gain to 11,400'. It left me breathless. The Sheriff gives out $100 parking tickets to anyone parked on the shoulder of the road. There aren't no parking signs in the area. Parking is prohibited on all county roads and their shoulders in Summit County unless specifically allowed by sign. It's the opposite of how it's done everywhere else and a lot of tourists get stung.

Rock Perch by Ron Scubadiver, on Flickr

This is lake Dillon from Swan Lake Road.
 
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Interesting that this topic just came up. My wife and I are looking at vacay options and are considering a raid trip next year. Something like straight down from Calgary to somewhere around New Mexico, east to around Charleston and up the Eastern Seaboard, then west through Wisconsin and checking out Rushmore on the way home. Hell of a drive, planning on about 4-6 weeks or so. We have done similar trips like this in Europe and wondered why not do the same in North America? Am I crazy to consider this?
 
BigFKahuna said:
Interesting that this topic just came up. My wife and I are looking at vacay options and are considering a raid trip next year. Something like straight down from Calgary to somewhere around New Mexico, east to around Charleston and up the Eastern Seaboard, then west through Wisconsin and checking out Rushmore on the way home. Hell of a drive, planning on about 4-6 weeks or so. We have done similar trips like this in Europe and wondered why not do the same in North America? Am I crazy to consider this?
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Not crazy, but there are some nice places close to you in beautiful Alberta. I would love to go back to Banff, but it sells out a year in advance and I don't plan that far ahead. The area from Banff to Jasper is a classic road trip. I guess your point of view is different living so far North with long cold winters. That might make warming up in the USA attractive. Since returning to Texas the afternoon high temperature is around 40C and you can add another 5C for the heat factor because it's humid here. It doesn't cool off at night. Maybe you should halt the southward push in Colorado before turning East. The Rockies are geologically younger, taller and wilder than in Canada. Charleston is beautiful, but hot and humid in the summer. Nearby Myrtle beach is also nice. Maybe try the US part of the Pacific Northwest. It has mild temperatures. I have all sorts of pictures on my Flickr site to tempt you.
 
Ron Texas said:
Not crazy, but there are some nice places close to you in beautiful Alberta. I would love to go back to Banff, but it sells out a year in advance and I don't plan that far ahead. The area from Banff to Jasper is a classic road trip. I guess your point of view is different living so far North with long cold winters. That might make warming up in the USA attractive. Since returning to Texas the afternoon high temperature is around 40C and you can add another 5C for the heat factor because it's humid here. It doesn't cool off at night. Maybe you should halt the southward push in Colorado before turning East. The Rockies are geologically younger, taller and wilder than in Canada. Charleston is beautiful, but hot and humid in the summer. Nearby Myrtle beach is also nice. Maybe try the US part of the Pacific Northwest. It has mild temperatures. I have all sorts of pictures on my Flickr site to tempt you.
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We live close to Banff, been there many times and as well have done the Banff-Jasper route numerous times, truly beautiful! You can get rooms in Banff easily mid-week winter or summer, in our younger days skiing and tenting were big but now we are more in to sightseeing, a little hiking and nice places to eat. Banff has a good selection of that. Our plan was to leave some time in April so we would hopefully miss the heat and high tourist season, but at that time we would encounter both snow and warm roads so one of my issues is trying to decide on winter vs summer tires. Interestingly here in Calgary every year we have at lest one day in January that is warmer than Florida. Not climate change, but rather a factor of warm chinook winds that come through, bringing the temps to well above freezing. I'll see if I can find you on Flickr!
 
@BigFKahuna just click on any of the photo links above and you will be automagically transported to Flickr which is more fun than Amazon or Ebay.
 
Ron Texas said:
Not crazy, but there are some nice places close to you in beautiful Alberta. I would love to go back to Banff, but it sells out a year in advance and I don't plan that far ahead. The area from Banff to Jasper is a classic road trip. I guess your point of view is different living so far North with long cold winters. That might make warming up in the USA attractive. Since returning to Texas the afternoon high temperature is around 40C and you can add another 5C for the heat factor because it's humid here. It doesn't cool off at night. Maybe you should halt the southward push in Colorado before turning East. The Rockies are geologically younger, taller and wilder than in Canada. Charleston is beautiful, but hot and humid in the summer. Nearby Myrtle beach is also nice. Maybe try the US part of the Pacific Northwest. It has mild temperatures. I have all sorts of pictures on my Flickr site to tempt you.
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I've done the West Coast from Canada to South California and then heading north into the central states back into the prairies of Canada. Oregon's Redwood Forest was glorious and awesome. The Coast of California was gorgeous and in December it was a nice 65F average to low 70's F. Driving north in South Dakota and North Dakota from the deserts of Nevada was not pleasant. It was late December and the weather was dangerous and 2 vehicular accidents along the way ended in death. Very nasty -35C (-41F) weather. Christmas enthusiasts in 2 different places very nicely insisted that we stay with them for dinner and avoid the winter storm. In retrospect I should have stayed with them for dinner and stayed off the roads. I suggest the West Coast in winter but not the interior of The USA in the winter. I have not travelled the east and south of The USA but I would love to visit and try my fishing skills there.
 
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