It's a bird, it's a plane...

It's Debby and Jerry on the Heavenly Flyer. If your computer connection is up for viewing a video, you can look at a clip of the flyer at http://www.skiheavenly.com/mountain/heavenly_flyer/. It was 3,000 feet, descending 525 feet in 80 seconds of pure exhilaration!

Lake Tahoe must be in the short list of the most beautiful places on earth.

We've crossed over into Nevada and the landscape has started to be much more barren, but still beautiful in its own way. We didn't make it too far today because we got a late start because our Flyer time was noon. We visited the Nevada state capital at Carson City. The building is smaller and less grand than some we have seen, but they have done a lovely job with the grounds by adding trees representing the Nevada counties. The courthouse in Fallon is the best so far – original from 1903, on the National Historic Register, a white, wooden structure.

Daily stats:
Starting point: South Lake Tahoe, California
Ending point: Fallon, Nevada
Miles traveled: 100
Best sight: Lake Tahoe
Best food: Garlic pizza chips at Blue Dog Pizza in Lake Tahoe

I'll be back

Famous last words that we didn't hear the governator say. Why, you might ask. Because we didn't see the governator. However, we did tour the capital building in Sacramento and we did see his office. Jerry was prepared to stand outside his office for three days and wiat for him to come out, but not me. I had to pee. We also saw 5 courthouses today.

For lunch, we ate at Dave's Big Burgers. We had hamburgers stacked so high with onions, lettuce and tomato that you could barely get it in your mouth and then berry pie for dessert. The burgers got a thumbs up, but the pie was only so-so.

After lunch, we went in search of El Dorado.

"Over the mountains of the moon,

Down the valley of the shadow,

Ride boldly ride, the shade replied,

In search (sic) of El Dorado."

We were successful. We did find El Dorado.

Now -- for the jolting news of the day --

When entering the on-ramp to Route 50 in Placerville CA, we were struck in the rear by a turkey in a Toyota pickup. Didn't do much damage to the vehicles but about gave us a heart attack.

It was a beautiful drive from Placerville to South Lake Tahoe -- lots of curves, thousands of tall pines, and a small surprising waterfall.

Daily stats:

Starting point: San Francisco, California

Ending point: South Lake Tahoe, California

Miles traveled: I can't remember to look at the odometer, but about 200

Best sight of the day: Capital in Sacramento

Best food of the day: Steak in South Lake Tahoe

Don't buy a car with a manual transmission

You know how you are pressed back in your seat as the roller coaster climbs that first big hill before plunging over the crest? That's what we did all day long yesterday.

Without leaving San Francisco proper, we drove up and down these streets, looking at the architecture, the flowers and given that yesterday was the Gay Pride Parade, a wide variety of sights. The first picture is Lombard Street, the crookedest and most photographed street in the US. Those landscaped switchbacks handle a 27% grade. We moved on from Lombard Street to Cow Hollow and Pacific Heights to view the beautiful Victorian architecture. Next was the Golden Gate Bridge. Those cables are big and sturdy; too big to close your hand around them and they successfully supported our walk out to the first stanchion. We finished off the day watching the sun set into the Pacific at Golden Gate Park.

Daily stats:

Starting point: San Francisco, California

Ending point: San Francisco, California

Distance traveled: more than 50 all around the city

Best sight of the day: the Golden Gate Bridge

Best food of the day: hot fudge sundae at Ghirardelli Square (Debby), raspberries (Jerry)

"She's in The Jailhouse Now!"

The streets of San Francisco have claimed two more victims. We walked until we dropped today.

Daily stats:
Starting point: San Francisco, California
Ending point: San Francisco, California
Distance traveled: 0 miles (in the car)
Most interesting sight: Alcatraz
Best food of the day: Dungeness crab (Jerry), raspberries (Debby)

Besides being a national park, Alcatraz is a bird and plant sanctuary. It was hatching season and the baby gulls were darling. The tour was top notch. It was amazing to see the size of the cells – 9' deep by 5' wide and 7' high.

San Francisco is also know for its world famous Boudin sour dough bread, made since 1849. We spent quite some time watching the breadmaking process, from measuring the ingredients to forming the loaves, and of course a little tasting for purpose of quality control.

It was a long day, but we're here!

I (Jerry) got up at 5:20AM (Eastern time) to go to work Friday morning. I turned off the light sometime around 1:30AM (Pacific time) to go to sleep. One more hour and it would have been a 24-hour day for me. These vacations can be hard work!

Daily Stats
Starting point: Carrboro, North Carolina and Rockmart, Georgia
Ending point: San Francisco, California
Miles traveled: 2870
Most interesting sight: The lights of San Francisco as the plane landed
Best food: Crab cake at 42nd Street Oyster Bar in the RDU airport

From Debby: She went to bed and went to sleep though. I, on the other hand, slept a few minutes----jumped up with a cramp in my toes, stomped around the room for 30 minutes (during which time she did roll over & say “Got a cramp in your foot?”), got too cold, crawled back in bed and slept the rest of the night with my shoe on! Now that, was hard work!

It's packing day!

I try to pack light and when it comes to clothes, usually I manage pretty well. But when it comes to the travel paraphernalia, I am definitely a heavy traveler. Gotta' have good tunes on the road, so there's a big selection of CDs. Gotta' stay connected and get lots of pixs 'cause that adds to the fun, so there's a bunch of electronics (cameras, phones, GPS, PC) and the nest of cords that keep the juice flowing. But sometimes, nothing is better than old-fashioned printed information, so there's lots of travel books, maps, hotel directories, and all kinds of spreadsheets with route information.

So after consulting all the lists I've been making for the last 2 weeks, I think I've gotten it all together. The last important thing I have to do tonight is call and remind Debby not to put her hairspray in her suitcase. Those aerosols don't do too well at 35,000 feet. Last year when we got to New Orleans, all of her clothes had that nice hairspray aroma!

Here are my two little orange furry companions, who will be waiting for me to come back home.

Working for the man (or in my case, the woman)!

Okay! This is it---my last Saturday to work for a whole month. I hope this place doesn't go to pot without me. (haha) I think some of them go to pot frequently anyway.

I've finally got last year's pictures off my camera and am ready to fill it up again. I've got our morning devotionals picked out. I'm still working on a few more geocaching sites. We will do as few or as many as strike our fancy and as time allows. Just gotta pack & I'll be ready to head for the airport. Packing is no big deal. We travel light except for of course, our electronics. Every night at the hotel we're searching for enough outlets to plug all our "stuff" in to recharge.

Well, gotta get to work and earn my pay!

A boo boo

I just noticed that a couple of comments were lost from the previous post (that Beef and I had posted). So while this software is free to use, it is clearly not bug free. So a small bump in the blogging road, but hopefully good pavement going forward.

It's a week...and counting...

The itinerary is set...or as set as it gets.

I still have locations to load on my GPS.

We have our tour tickets for Alcatraz, the first thing we plan to do in San Francisco next Saturday morning.

We don't have a hotel for San Francisco booked yet. Guess I better get that done.

I need a new laptop case and some postcard stamps. I'll be doing a little shopping this Saturday. I'm always ready to do my part to support shoring up this economy. :-)

Those are just samples from my "trip to do" list.

It's 7 days til we go!

A lonely backbone ?

US Route 50 has two nicknames -- (1) the loneliest road and (2) the backbone of America.

The former gained momentum when Life magazine did one of their picture pieces about the stretch of US 50 that traverses Nevada and the long stretches of nothingness.

The latter is supported by US 50's location through the center of the US and that it runs through 4 state capitals, plus the US capital.

We like to have a "picture theme" as we travel and take photos that we eventually turn into part of our trip's photo collection and memories. Route 66 was city and town signs (along the idea of famous Route 66 cities); the Great River Road was bridges (duh!).

Given the nicknames, we pondered a while how you might take a picture of "lonely." All the shots we could imagine were too depressing. So we moved on to the "backbone." We've settled on courthouses. To that end, I've put together a list of all the county seats in the 7 states we'll be traveling through. Whenever we go through a town that is a county seat, we'll be looking for the courthouse.

We hope we are only looking for the courthouse in order to take a photo, rather than a required appearance before the magistrate!

Where did we sleep last night?

As you can probably tell from our schedule, after a few days---and nights, it's hard to remember where you are when you wake up in the morning. Usually, we just lay there in bed until one of us can remember where we slept last night!!

It's Friday, this must be Pueblo, Colorado

The schedule is shaping up. Debby has taken all the town-to-town mileage figures and put together our daily plan. The problem with a plan that is too tight is that you don't have time to do fun stuff you just happen to discover along the way. The problem with a plan that is too loose is that you don't make it to the end and your airplane flies home without you. Luckily, Debby is a master daily planner and we usually have a schedule that works.

Besides getting to our starting point and returning from our ending point, we have 15 travel days. Our daily plan currently accounts for 13 of those days, so we have 2 fulls days to expand where needed when we find fun stuff that we just must do. Roughly speaking...

• Days 1&2 - San Francisco, CA
• Day 3 - Oakland to South Lake Tahoe, CA
• Day 4 - Stateline to Austin, NV
• Day 5 - Eureka, NV to Delta, UT
• Day 6 - Scipio to Crescent Junction, UT
• Day 7 - Thompson Springs, UT to Cimaron, CO
• Day 8 - Gunnison to Flower, CO
• Day 9 - Manzanola, CO to Spearville, KS
• Day 10 - Offerle to Ottawa, KS
• Day 11 - Wellsville to Mt. Sterling, MO
• Day 12
• Day 13
• Day 14 - Drake, MO to Olney, IL
• Day 15 - Visiting in West Liberty

By the time we do this, the unaccounted for time for days 12 & 13 will have been absorbed into days 1 through 11. That means, of course, that adjustments will happen to the daily starting and ending points. Going with the flow is a crucial element of our planning process!

Ready to go?

Jerry just gave me the invitation to add to our blog. What can I say? I am sooooo ready to go!

What's the route ?

US Route 50 originally went cross country from Ocean City, Maryland to San Francisco, California. It officially ends in Sacramento, California now. There are other places that combine with interstate routes.

We plan to travel from San Francisco to Olney, Illinois from June 26 to July 12. That route will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 2500 miles, not including side trips, U-turns and getting lost.

Last night, I checked the weather (normal daily highs and lows) at several towns along our intended route. The daily highs varied between 68 and 93 degrees (F) and the daily lows ranged between 39 and 72 degrees (F). Uh, I guess we might need warmer clothes than shorts and t-shirts.

Debby doesn't know about the blog yet. I guess I better talk to her this weekend to make sure she's up for chronicling our adventure.

We are diligently working on our itinerary -- distances to go per day, places we want to make sure and see, things to do, and possible side trips. I've laid out the list of towns. Debby's figuring out how far to travel each day.

I'm also starting to load my GPS with lots of relevant waypoints and points of interest.