All posts tagged: Gypsy Trip

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.

Sheila giveth and Sheila taketh away

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Note from Cassie: I’m posting this a few days late. The last couple days of the trip we had sketchy internet connections and I was tired of fighting my Blackberry to get things posted. Sorry for the delay!  Old Faithful I’m not sure if we should bless or curse the name of Sheila though. I think she’s pretty half and half right now between getting us lost and getting us where we need to go. We mapped our route in the cabin Sunday night to get to Yellowstone using Google Maps on our phones. We expected a two hour drive to get to Yellowstone but when we keyed our desination in Sheila, she told us it was going to take three hours to get there. Lewis Lake I was cursing the name of Sheila. We ended up on several state roads, one of which we were stuck in a 25-mile-per-hour construction zone behind a huge truck. But soon enough we realized that she was taking us through the Tetons and I was blessing the name …

Just one more thing before I turn in

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Fortunately, we get to sleep until 7 tomorrow morning, so I’m trying to catch up on some news and get an idea of what’s been going on in the world. I don’t know if anyone else is like this, but when I’m on vacation, I lose all track of time. I have to keep checking my phone to find out what day it is and I have absolutely no concept of time, except for how long it will take us to get to the next destination. I mentioned a few days ago (before I fell off the grid) that the second of the three convicts who escaped from the Arizona penitentiary had been captured, but the third and his fiance/cousin/accessory to escaping were still roaming the country and were believed to be in Montana. I’m reading now that they are believed to be in Arkansas. Over the last few days coverage seems to have faded out, but new twists continue to evolve. The New York Times is reporting that the incestuous escape accomplice was actually …

Fifteen hours is too long

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I’ve already mentioned that we had to make a big push today to get back on track so I can get home and get back to work on time. Well, that big push just about killed us all, I think. It wasn’t enough that we were stuck in the car for 15 hours today, but we were stuck in the car for 14 of the most boring hours of the trip. I honetly can’t even tell you exactly where we were, only that we took I-80 for a while and ended up in Idaho. We just keyed the address for the campground into Sheila and took off at seven this morning. We got to see some more mountains on our way out of California, but once we hit Nevada there wasn’t much else to see. And to make matters worse, Nevada has the noisest highways I’ve ever been on. Someone needs to show them how to cut grooves in the concrete so the tires don’t whine so much when you’re it. I think the prettiest …

Detours and dead ends

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After the massive amount of blogging I had to do the last couple of days to get caught up from when my wireless network abandoned me and my Blackberry decided to revolt, I took about 24 hours off. I’m terribly sorry, because everything we saw yesterday in Yosemite and San Franciso should have been immediately shared. Bridalveil Falls, Yosemite National Park I’ve wanted to visit Yosemite National Park since I discovered Ansel Adams’s photograhy when I was a teenager. I had his photos as my desktop backgrounds for years. I finally got to visit and I was not disappointed. Of course, we had limited time and didn’t get to explore the park as much as we all wanted to, but we did get to see some breathtaking rock formations and Bridalveil Falls. San Francisco actually turned out to be the best part of my day. Not that I was expecting to dislike the city; I knew I would enjoy it. I’m just usually more of a park kind of girl and less of a city …

Diversion Averted

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If you had asked me 24 hours ago where I was headed today I would have told you Seattle. After we got to Russ and Charisse’s Friday night we started talking about all the other places in the area we could see. We talked about Yosemite, Redwoods, San Francisco, the Pacific coast, the Northwest. Aunt Charisse is a California girl through and through. As she spoke about different areas in California and beyond, you could see how much she loves traveling the west coast. We originally planned for this trip to go through Washington and Oregon, but nixed it because we felt like it was too far. Imagine our excitement to realize we weren’t as far as we thought, and then our disappointment when we reality struck and we recognized that, like all good things, this trip had to come to an end. We started mapping our route during dinner at Mel’s Diner in San Francisco last night. At first count, it was something like 13 and a half hours to reach Seattle from our …

We must have lost our minds

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I’m pretty sure that sight of the Pacific Ocean has made us completely lose our minds. After we got to Sacramento today, Aunt Charisse started talking about all the different things we could have done, but didn’t, and all the things we could still do. And it got us thinking. You see, waaay back when we began planning this trip, we were originally going to start out going through South Dakota, the Pacific Northwest, down through California then through the Southwest before coming home. In an attempt to keep from overdoing it on our trip, we ended up cutting out the Pacific Northwest part and gave up on it entirely. Well, we brought it back. With just a few extra hours of driving a day, we’ll be able to see the Redwoods, the coast up to Seattle and Seattle itself, while still being able to see Yosemite, San Francisco and Yellowstone. I’m throwing out the red binder and all my plans for the trip. And I’ve never felt better. 🙂

Road Bathrooms

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This is kind of a crude subject, but restrooms are a vital part of life. Don’t worry, I’m not getting into anything too gross here, but we’ve all been there. You’re in the middle of a long drive in the middle of nowhere and ya gotta go. You drank one bottle of water too many and things are starting to get dire. I never thought I’d be blogging about bathroom experiences, but these are some worth sharing. Here are my top six bathroom stories of the trip — and we’re only halfway through. Fannie Anne’s Saloon This has to be the coolest bar/restaurant I’ve ever seen. Located in Old Sacramento, Aunt Charisse said its been around forever and you can tell. The inside of the place is covered wall to wall in antique license plates, tin signs, bottle caps — really anything you can imagine. We had just finished dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack on the river, and Amanda stopped there to use the restroom. I was delayed because I couldn’t find my ID in …