Day 1 - Santa Barbara to Las Vegas (Henderson)

[Karen] A loooong day - I still had a lot to do, pick up, clean out the refrig, etc. Tony said 'yes' to some things from the refrig - frying bacon wafted over to us from the apt as we did last minute stuff. We had attended Dunn Middle School graduation Friday morning and Lucas gave such a magnificent account of his growth at Dunn. I wanted to stand up and make a spectacle of myself cheering but for his sake held onto my emotions. Congratulations Lucas and enjoy Midland - we know you will be well loved there as well as at Dunn.

We hugged Tony who will be watching out for the house along with Jack who we left doing bird management duty on the patio and gave a hug to Eleanor as well who will be using the room downstairs for her art studio.

We bid farewell to the Pacific as we turned inland on 126 toward Magic Mtn stopping for lunch in Valencia. On to Palmdale and the Pay-ah Blossom Highway as Sirie terms it - undoubtedly trying to prepare us for Va-ginyah later on. A long, long way to Barstow (sorry the Beast of Barstow evidently was ground up for highway), Baker and finally Lost Vegas and a final 15 to Henderson where we are ensconsed as Kalon was concerned about leaving his bicycle in the Prius overnite in some motel garage. So we see the lights of Vegas in from out motel room. We noticed a Whole Paycheck (Foods, for the uninitiated) on our way to our motel so backtracked 5 miles to pick up lunch makings for the future as well as yummy food and wine for dinner. We had lovely music thanks to Bob Gross and Emma - our favorite 'Lead Me Lord' altho anything Emma sings and Bob writes is food for the soul. Well, 'nite, y'all...Love and Dieu te garde et tu benisse as JRT used to say to us as we headed off to school.

Map of First Part of Trip - Santa Barbara to Prince Edward Island

Route from Santa Barbara to Falmouth, MA

 

 

 

Route from Falmouth, MA to Prince Edward Island, Canada

 

Prologue

[Kalon]  This fairly ambitious trip will be our first real road trip.  We have traveled across the country a couple of times by car (years ago), but it was always just to get from one coast to the other.  This trip is intended to be more leisurely and more focused on enjoying the trip (the people and places that we'll visit) rather than simply completing the journey.  This seemed like a good time to schedule this as we have been able to step back from some Santa Barbara responsibilities, and we still (seemingly)have the capacity to enjoy traveling.

As the maps above suggest, the trip from SB east generally follows the southern route to the east coast and then travels north to Canada.  This part of the trip is pretty well defined: we have reservations at motels/hotels across the country and will be using our Prius (pretty crowded as we are carrying my bike inside the car).   We have not - as of this date - defined our return trip in much detail.

This will also be our first attempt at documenting our travel with a blog.  Our intention is not to blog every day, but instead when we get to places where we are spending some time.  But when we do blog we'll give you a hint as to what is coming up.  We leave on Saturday, May 30th and in two days travel to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon for our first adventure.  We have to stop in Barstow, apparently, as Karen is rather fond of the "Beast of Barstow" and wants to rekindle a long-ago relationship.  (If this is too intense our trip may be over before it's started!)

[Karen]  Evidently, Kalon did not have as many interesting trips thru the desert as I had. I always looked forward to seeing the great big green cement dinosaur located somewhere west of the town of Barstow ... the sign with it named the creature 'The Beast of Barstow'. I do remember a trip with Kalon where we talked my father into traveling with us in an old Greenbrier Chevy van to see the Grand Canyon - I think Chris and Lonnie (his nickname then) were along as Grandpa T and I spent most of the day picking up the then toddlers out of the ash filled camp fire pit as we waited for Kalon to reappear from down in the canyon - he was 'only going to hike partway down' but true to form was part of the way down in only 10 minutes so decided to keep going all the way to the Colorado River. To mollify his wife he picked up some cots for us to sleep on when he staggered back to camp. On the way back home the Chevy van broke down and some kindly people drove my father and I and the kids into Barstow where we got a motel room to await the arrival of Kalon in a rescue van he borrowed from my brother-in-law Bill Brown.

Ruth remembers Barstow as the place where they had a sign that declaimed 'If you lived here, you would be home by now!'  'As if that would be a positive!' she said.