Road Trip 2012
02-10-2013, 07:38 AM
#11
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First you are doing a trip that I have dreamed of doing ever since I moved to CA from Chicago 12 years ago and still never found the time so kudos to you! 
I will be reading and watching this thread, great job - you are a brave man to drive your s2000 that far with so little packed. I'm surprised your passenger seat is so clean and no coil cords, radar, or anything else there!
Did you bring tools just in case? One of the reasons I would never take my NSX on any long road trip is due to flats since there is no way that thing can even fit a spare tire and few flatbeds can lift it.
Maybe you covered this but what was the purpose of this trip?
I will be reading and watching this thread, great job - you are a brave man to drive your s2000 that far with so little packed. I'm surprised your passenger seat is so clean and no coil cords, radar, or anything else there!
Did you bring tools just in case? One of the reasons I would never take my NSX on any long road trip is due to flats since there is no way that thing can even fit a spare tire and few flatbeds can lift it.
Maybe you covered this but what was the purpose of this trip?
02-10-2013, 08:31 PM
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, I'm jealous haha. Looking forward to the rest of the thread, what kind of MPG numbers were you getting?
02-10-2013, 08:39 PM
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First you are doing a trip that I have dreamed of doing ever since I moved to CA from Chicago 12 years ago and still never found the time so kudos to you!
I will be reading and watching this thread, great job - you are a brave man to drive your s2000 that far with so little packed. I'm surprised your passenger seat is so clean and no coil cords, radar, or anything else there!
Did you bring tools just in case? One of the reasons I would never take my NSX on any long road trip is due to flats since there is no way that thing can even fit a spare tire and few flatbeds can lift it.
Maybe you covered this but what was the purpose of this trip?
I will be reading and watching this thread, great job - you are a brave man to drive your s2000 that far with so little packed. I'm surprised your passenger seat is so clean and no coil cords, radar, or anything else there!
Did you bring tools just in case? One of the reasons I would never take my NSX on any long road trip is due to flats since there is no way that thing can even fit a spare tire and few flatbeds can lift it.
Maybe you covered this but what was the purpose of this trip?
I did bring some common tools and a nice Kobalt set, but nothing too major.
My trip was basically the only vacation I took in 2012 besides 3 days for a family reunion, and I took very little in 2011 as well - I was about to hit my company's PTO ceiling (150 hours) so I had to spend it or stop being able to accumulate more. I love the national parks of the American west and also wanted to visit family back in Missouri, so this seemed like the perfect way to see a ton of places in short time without spending a fortune on airfare.
I never would have attempted this had I not done so great rolling out here in my Accord with no 12V (cigarette lighter) power and no functional air conditioning. :-P
I don't know what it is that makes me good at driving long distances except a natural curiosity about every place in the world I can see and a pretty rigorous case of insomnia.
02-10-2013, 08:41 PM
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And of course, thanks to all the folks complimenting my photos - there are more - and better - to come!
Trying to post the next day of driving tomorrow or Tuesday.
Trying to post the next day of driving tomorrow or Tuesday.
02-11-2013, 06:40 PM
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Day 2 (Sept. 14): Truckee, CA to Idaho Falls, ID
I knew that no matter what, I'd have to cross the Great Basin on my second day if I wanted to go to Yellowstone and Grand Teton. There was no way in hell I would cover SF to the east side of it (Salt Lake City) on Day 1, so I decided to get as close to its west end as possible on Day 1 in preparation of a really-damn-long Day 2. A boring-ass Day 2.
I had already seen the entirety of I-80 through Nevada on the way out here, so I looked at alternatives.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8457030631/
Yep. I had never seen eastern Oregon in my life, and Boise has an Old Chicago… WORLD BEER TOUR TIME, BABY. The timing was perfect for me to have dinner in Boise, too. It was on.
Out of Truckee shortly after sunrise, I refueled in Reno where gas was almost $1/gallon cheaper.
I almost immediately paired up with a Porsche doing a good number of miles an hour. We covered miles like I-80 was about to close until I got to Winnemucca and started heading north.
As expected, running north through Nevada on US-95 was about as "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" as it gets.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8467147172/
No worries, I figured: Oregon will change that.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8466053251/
And change that it did. It went from being a boring sandy desert to being a scorched-earth-looking hell-like landscape. I guess there must have been a brush fire there recently.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8466054999/
I encountered maybe 2 other cars in about 200 miles of driving. One was some Subaru, which promptly pulled a U-turn after seeing the sign: "Next gas: 100 Miles."
I can't tell you how long those next four hours seemed. The whole time I did not see a town with a population greater than 300, and only 3 or 4 towns period. On the plus side, I did hit some of the highest speeds on the trip.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8467154230/
I had never been to Boise, but that's where my S2000 was originally delivered, so it was kind of fun to take it 'home'. It was also the first place I sighted another S on the trip - a silver AP1 near Boise State's stadium. Holla!
With dinner at Old Chicago done (oh sweet jesus it was good), I still had a pretty daunting 4 hours to go. I-84 follows the Snake River Plain making a giant smile across Idaho, but otherwise, there's not a lot to smile about. Still, given that the speed limit on US-95 was 55 and it's 75 on I-84, I was relieved. Also, Idahoans definitely have the highest habitual speed-limit-overage of any state I've been to (having been to most of them west of the Mississippi), so well before dark, I was almost to Idaho Falls.
Having grown up near the start of the Oregon Trail, and having more or less followed it/the California Trail out here, I tend to stop at trail-related points of interest. I came upon one at a rest stop off I-15 north of Pocatello.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8466060525/http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8467157064/
Then, something horrible happened.
I-15 hugs the Snake River pretty closely for a while near Blackfoot. This seems like a pretty trivial fact until you realize that MAYFLIES HATCH LIKE THE FUGGIN BOOK OF REVELATIONS in September. The things are huge, annoying, and there are a billion of them flying over the interstate as you rocket toward them at 80mph.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8466062753/http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8467159516/
It sounds like rain as they hit your windshield and you cannot see a damn thing. I was lucky no one else was around for that 10-mile stretch because I would not have been able to tell if they were 8 feet away or 80.
Then, something else great happened: construction. Specifically, the kind where one lane is completely removed from the interstate and turned into dirt, all of the exits are closed, and there's no shoulder. The speed limit for that bit was 45. I wasn't going to be making it to Idaho Falls on time.
But, what can you do? I pressed on, even though the time zone change was working pretty hard against me.
Once construction ended and the road opened up, I was treated to one of the best moments of the trip: sparse, clear mountain air meant I could see the stars coming out even before the sun had fully set. With the mayflies gone, it was time to get the top back down and cruise into Idaho Falls by starlight.
Oddly enough, Idaho Falls was pretty hoppin' on a Friday night. But with about 750 miles behind me that day alone, it was time to get rested up for a highlight of the trip: Day 3, Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.
I knew that no matter what, I'd have to cross the Great Basin on my second day if I wanted to go to Yellowstone and Grand Teton. There was no way in hell I would cover SF to the east side of it (Salt Lake City) on Day 1, so I decided to get as close to its west end as possible on Day 1 in preparation of a really-damn-long Day 2. A boring-ass Day 2.
I had already seen the entirety of I-80 through Nevada on the way out here, so I looked at alternatives.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8457030631/
Yep. I had never seen eastern Oregon in my life, and Boise has an Old Chicago… WORLD BEER TOUR TIME, BABY. The timing was perfect for me to have dinner in Boise, too. It was on.
Out of Truckee shortly after sunrise, I refueled in Reno where gas was almost $1/gallon cheaper.
I almost immediately paired up with a Porsche doing a good number of miles an hour. We covered miles like I-80 was about to close until I got to Winnemucca and started heading north.
As expected, running north through Nevada on US-95 was about as "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" as it gets.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8467147172/
No worries, I figured: Oregon will change that.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8466053251/
And change that it did. It went from being a boring sandy desert to being a scorched-earth-looking hell-like landscape. I guess there must have been a brush fire there recently.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8466054999/
I encountered maybe 2 other cars in about 200 miles of driving. One was some Subaru, which promptly pulled a U-turn after seeing the sign: "Next gas: 100 Miles."
I can't tell you how long those next four hours seemed. The whole time I did not see a town with a population greater than 300, and only 3 or 4 towns period. On the plus side, I did hit some of the highest speeds on the trip.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8467154230/
I had never been to Boise, but that's where my S2000 was originally delivered, so it was kind of fun to take it 'home'. It was also the first place I sighted another S on the trip - a silver AP1 near Boise State's stadium. Holla!
With dinner at Old Chicago done (oh sweet jesus it was good), I still had a pretty daunting 4 hours to go. I-84 follows the Snake River Plain making a giant smile across Idaho, but otherwise, there's not a lot to smile about. Still, given that the speed limit on US-95 was 55 and it's 75 on I-84, I was relieved. Also, Idahoans definitely have the highest habitual speed-limit-overage of any state I've been to (having been to most of them west of the Mississippi), so well before dark, I was almost to Idaho Falls.
Having grown up near the start of the Oregon Trail, and having more or less followed it/the California Trail out here, I tend to stop at trail-related points of interest. I came upon one at a rest stop off I-15 north of Pocatello.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8466060525/http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8467157064/
Then, something horrible happened.
I-15 hugs the Snake River pretty closely for a while near Blackfoot. This seems like a pretty trivial fact until you realize that MAYFLIES HATCH LIKE THE FUGGIN BOOK OF REVELATIONS in September. The things are huge, annoying, and there are a billion of them flying over the interstate as you rocket toward them at 80mph.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8466062753/http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiel/8467159516/
It sounds like rain as they hit your windshield and you cannot see a damn thing. I was lucky no one else was around for that 10-mile stretch because I would not have been able to tell if they were 8 feet away or 80.
Then, something else great happened: construction. Specifically, the kind where one lane is completely removed from the interstate and turned into dirt, all of the exits are closed, and there's no shoulder. The speed limit for that bit was 45. I wasn't going to be making it to Idaho Falls on time.
But, what can you do? I pressed on, even though the time zone change was working pretty hard against me.
Once construction ended and the road opened up, I was treated to one of the best moments of the trip: sparse, clear mountain air meant I could see the stars coming out even before the sun had fully set. With the mayflies gone, it was time to get the top back down and cruise into Idaho Falls by starlight.
Oddly enough, Idaho Falls was pretty hoppin' on a Friday night. But with about 750 miles behind me that day alone, it was time to get rested up for a highlight of the trip: Day 3, Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.
