The Gypsy Trip is a mammoth – yet whirlwind – cross country road trip undertaking in 2010. We took 12 days to get from Northern Kentucky to California and back again. Even though we never had enough time to spend in one place, we still covered 7,000 miles in our tiny rental car and made enough memories to last a lifetime.
We made this video last night during the storm, but it took literally all night to finish uploading. I would like to point out before you watch this that we did not practice, rehearse or do anything on purpose. This is a direct consequence of spending toooo much time in a car. And yes, we did make it up at 4:30. Its 4:43 Mountain Time right now. 🙂 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUXqnnL3mhU
Despite how it ended, today was absolutely amazing! I’m having trouble with deciding if I should start at the beginning of the day or the end. Hmmmm. Well, I guess I could start by saying that I’m currently sitting in a cabin — excuse me, kabin — at a KOA near Colorado Springs. And while I’m disappointed that we pansied out and are sleeping inside four walls, I’m over it already. We spent most of the evening outrunning a storm and it finally caught up to us. After we left Rocky Mountain National Park (more on that later), we skipped out on stopping in Denver to try to get to Pike’s Peak before it closed. Fail. We arrived at the gates about 15 minutes before they were locked up for the night. So we doubled back to go to Garden of the Gods. Semi-fail. The clouds of the impending storm were already rolling in, so the park was rather dusky and we couldn’t really get any good pictures. We plan to go back in the …
Where do I even begin? Last night we camped at Bonny Lake State Park, barely over the state line in Colorado. It was about 9:30 p.m. before we arrived, and we were tired. We hadn’t eaten since lunch, but no one realized that until this morning. We pulled into the park in the pitch-black darkness with one heckofa thunderstorm visible in the distance behind us. We had been watching the lightning on the highway for several miles already. The dark county road we followed to get to the entrance of the park was a little creepy and covered in frogs. We couldn’t see anything beyond the beams of our headlights and bugs were hitting our windshield at such a high frequency it sounded like it was raining. At one point, we saw some kind of animal sitting in the road, then it spread its huge grey wings and flew away. It was an owl — the first one I’ve seen outside the zoo. I have video, but of course I can’t post it until I …
Without even realizing it, we re-routed our entire route through Kansas to go along the Oregon Trail. Originally we were going to head down to Kansas City and take I-70 across Kansas, stopping in Goodland to camp tonight. It turned out there was a couple of sights we wanted to see that were along I-36 instead. And so we began our quest to see the world’s biggest ball of twine, a more than 17,000 pound ball of string in what looks like a ghost town, and to see the geographic center of the continental United States, or universe as I prefer to mistakenly call it. Pictures of the ball of twine will follow, (I forgot to snap a few with my Blackberry) but I did attach a picture of the chapel at the geographic center and of the monument erected there. The third picture you see is the roads we took to get to the monument. Sheila (the GPS) can’t find anything unless we have a specific street address. (If you want to get down …
After a few hours of sleep, I’m ready to talk some more about the first day of our trip. Between the musty smell of the room and lack of sleep, I left out a few tales from the road when I posted last night. Tale number uno: No room at the Days Inn. We got to the hotel around midnight, only to find that there were no rooms available. Fortunately we didn’t have to make our beds in a barn, an Econolodge a few miles away still had eight rooms available. Who knew Hannibal, Mo. Was such a hoppin’ place? The moral of this story is not to accept from online reservations that there are still rooms available, and make your reservations in advance. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have ended up in a musty room with only one working light. But to give the Econolodge credit, the room looked pretty clean, the staff was friendly and the hot breakfast wasn’t bad at all. And as soon as I post this, I’m contacting our campgrounds for the …
We finally made it to Hannibal, Mo. for our first stop of the trip. We actually made it on the road by 2 p.m. as planned but traffic at some inopportune moments kept holding us back. Everything was going well until we were about 30 minutes from Cohokia Mounds State Historic Site — about 30 minutes from sunset when the park closed. Traffic came to a dead stop and Cory realized we must have hit traffic from an accident he heard some locals talking about at a gas station. In a desperate attempt to avoid the traffic and make it to the Mounds before dark, we exited off the Interstate and followed a line of cars doing the same thing. Of course, that was when Sheila, the GPS, decided to become useless. Apparently a U-turn was the only solution she could think of. So while Shelia kept yelling at us to turn around, Amanda and I figured out what road we ended up on, used the sun to determine what direction we were headed on …
I am so over rental car companies. We’re down to about 42 hours until our scheduled departure time, and I’ve been trying to confirm reservations and make sure all the loose ends are tied up so we don’t have any major surprises on the trip. So everything is going well until I call the rental car company. First, the fees they tack on for additional drivers and age restrictions is simply ludicrous, to borrow my Aunt Amy’s phrase. As I should have expected, the price that was quoted to me when I made the reservation was missing some rather substantial fees. Think charges to the tune of $40-$60 a day for 12 days. You do the math. I’m a journalism major. All I know is that is NOT in the budget. And to further complicate matters, there can only be one driver under 25 per rental. And my travel partners are both 21. It came down to us losing one of our drivers, but all the fees for additional drivers and under 25 drivers are …
Oh, where to begin. If you’re following Amanda’s blog, you already know that I was able to squeeze one more day off (actually, just half a day, but I’ll take it!) from work and we’re now leaving Friday instead of Saturday. (Four more days!!) This is giving us the chance to stop and see Cahokia Mounds in Illinois and pause to honor Mark Twain in Hannibal, Mo. You will also know that my baby brother, Cory, is also joining us on the trip. And by “baby” I mean “21 year old who has been able to kick my butt for the last 10 years.” Good thing for me he doesn’t hit girls! While adding a boy does take some of the crazy out of the trip — its no longer two twenty-something women tackling the open road — I’m genuinely excited that Cory is coming along. I’m not so excited about the three-and-a-half foot machete, with a dual knife and saw-blade, he has decided to bring with us. At least it will come in handy …
I’m sure you’ve seen, or at least heard of, “National Lampoon’s Vacation.” You know, the movie where Chevy Chase loads up the family in their station wagon and shenanigans ensue while they’re on a great American adventure. Well, that just happens to be one of my dad’s favorite movies. When I was growing up I was lucky enough to take many family roadtrips, three or four of them out west. When I say “lucky” I’m not being sarcastic. Sure, when I was a teenager I wasn’t thrilled about being cooped up in a vehicle for a 12-hour drive, but at least I had the entire third-row seat of an SUV to myself. Looking back, the times when I was most miserable were some of the best memories I have. Like the year we started out with the intent of staying in Colorado Springs for a week, but instead decided to drive north through Wyoming, checking out Mt. Rushmore and Wall, South Dakota on the way home. Or the time we visited Tombstone, Arizona and got …
In keeping with the spirit of roadtrips I wanted to share with you some of the websites I’ve come across in my online meanderings while preparing for this trip. I haven’t found anyone else who has camped their way across the country though. Pansies. 🙂 We aren’t looking for love, but this reporter sure was. This husband and wife pair converted their minivan into a camper. Creative, but Amanda and I aren’t that comfortable with each other. These two have a map and everything on their website. Read these observations of an 11-day roadtrip across the country. (I think the trip made him slightly bitter.) Pay special attention to the last paragraph of this film scout’s blog post. He has us re-mapping our entire trip! Smithsonian Magazine posted a (rather long) nice story about the “Great American Roadtrip.”
breathlessadventurer.com 