From California to Minnesota...

From California to Minnesota...

Friday, March 25, 2005 : Bay Area, California to Salt Lake City, Utah

Another "oh-dark-thirty" wake up call...but wait. This was not for a bike race. No. This was the beginning of our trek out of California, East, (and North), to Minnesota.

You can't believe how crazy Thursday was. Or maybe you can. We picked up our moving truck and car trailer to tow our VW Golf with. We had to wait until 10am for Penske to open and by the time we were all rented it was about 10:30. We then headed back to Los Altos to drop off the car trailer so we could go pack up the city. Since our house was on a steep hill, we parked it by the little league fields and tried un-hooking the hitch. The hitch wouldn't come off. UGH! We'd only had the thing for 10 minutes and were already stuck. After waiting for almost two hours for the tow truck to get us un-hooked, our neighbor came by and jumped on the end of the trailer and off it came. Tired of waiting, we called and told Penske where to pick up the darn thing and off we went to pack the city...two hours behind schedule.

We decided to "ditch the hitch" and we'd both drive, so after we packed up San Francisco and finished Los Altos....followed by a teary good-bye with our friend, Alan...and our neighbor Howard, we headed to my Mom and Dad's for dinner and a bed to sleep in. But neither of us could really sleep...and so we decided to get out of dodge at about 3:30am!

We made it out of the traffic zones in the dark of morning and were headed over the Sierra's just around sun-up! It was beautiful...snow covered hills but sunny weather. Sydney was riding shot-gun with me, and we marveled at our luck weather wise. But we were tired all day. I drank too much coffee and so it was lucky that Mike's truck got bad gas mileage because he had to stop somewhat frequently, and I could go to the restroom. Our first stop in Nevada was in Winnemucca. And just after that we hit some weather...hail and rain...but not for long. Nevada is a big state....up and down. But rather beautiful in an old-West "lots of deserted nothingness" kind of way. The terrain is awesome.

What amazed us both is how different the states are. 30 miles or so into a new state, and you really can distinguish the difference. From Nevada we headed into Utah (we drove on highway 80 the whole way!). Utah is lovely. All the mountains were covered in snow and it was COLD COLD COLD...we were pretty fried. 760 miles on day one.

We stayed at a Hotel near the Salt Lake City airport. The only traveler who was fresh as a daisy today was the small hound. After eating a bread-bowl of soup, we drifted off to a much needed sleep. It's amazing how 13 hours on the road doing nothing but pressing down on the gas pedal can make your rear-end hurt....my bicycle seat is way more comfortable! Anyway it felt great to sleep and we both were out like lights in a flash!

Saturday, March 26, 2005: Salt Lake City, Utah to Kearney, Nebraska

We both woke up feeling like champs...and with the complimentary breakfast at the hotel, we loaded up with bagels and cream cheese for snacks to keep us from getting too hungry between stops during the drive. As we began the ascent out of Salt Lake (towards Park City), the views were spectacular...really. What a lovely place Utah would be to ride a bike. (I guess I always evaluate a place by the way it would be to ride around). The rock formations and brisk but clear outdoors kept us pre-occupied...even without tunes. If I had planned on driving I would have not packed all my CD's. As it stood, I had accidentally, but thankfully left my Santana CD in the walkman, and a Neil Diamond CD was in the glove box. But how many times can you listen to "Smooth" or "Forever in Blue Jeans"? Sigh.

Soon we were in Wyoming, traversing the continental divide several times. High desert! I think it is one of my favorite places. But here is where I got my first dose of WINTER. Ice on the roads. Salt (for the ice) on the roads. We had to stop and buy more wiper fluid as we couldn't see from all the dirt on the windshield. Finally, in Cheyenne I caved and bought a new CD. John Denver was all they had available. Luckily Sydney didn't mind me singing at the top of my lungs, "Rocky Mountain High" and "Take me home, Country Roads". Sigh again.

From Cheyenne it wasn't long before we were in Nebraska. Now I'd always thought that Nebraska was flat (nope...rolling), and boring (nope....lovely). Every State seems to have a redeeming quality. We made it all the way to Kearney (pronounced Carney) and that left us with only 450 miles left before we were in Marshall. We stayed at a Best Western Hotel with an onsite restaurant called...Sydney's! How about that?! Not only that, but the room was gi-normous...and the Over King sized bed was the size of a small state! It was huge. Plus it had free high speed internet. The place was booked as there was a big migration of sand hill cranes taking place.

The migrating birds were fabulous. These were HUGE prehistoric birds (with big feet) and apparently very eery sounding bird calls. The skies were covered with the dancing beasts! Thousands of em', or so it seemed. There was even a tour group from the Ukraine there just to see them...We ate at one of the best chinese places ever. Who'd a thunk in Nebraska you'd have such killer chinese food. Better than anything I've ever had in San Francisco even...and it was 11 bucks for the two of us! I was liking the mid-west already!

Sunday, March 27, 2005: Kearney, Nebraska to Marshall, Minnesota

Amazed at what great progress we were making, and feeling great, we couldn't believe we'd be to our new home today. You couldn't have asked for more perfect traveling weather...and we were hammering at around 85 mph---no problem. In Omaha, we had to get on a new road (we'd been on 80 most of the way...). Here we headed North towards Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and from there we were Minnesota bound. Finally onto highway 23 and I could have lead the way from there.

We arrived at 2pm...1963 miles from my Mom & Dad's to Mike's Mom & Dad's. Door to door! We celebrated with hugs and hello's and then Mike and I got on our bike shorts and went for a long over due bike ride in the unseasonably warm Minnesota springtime. Happy to be done driving for a while and glad to have a couple of days to chill out before un-packing all the junk we'd spent days packing up and hauling across the country.

We are here and happy to be as such! What a cool trip!