Touring Upper New England

I've visited Cape Cod a few times through work for my South Harwich based company, but I always find the most ill-timed weekends to go.  The first two trips were in January, and this time I was going up to attend our Christmas party in December.  I made a weekend out of it, planning one night on the Cape, one night in Boston and then driving back to Connecticut for the next work week.

I've been to most states in the US, but upper New England has eluded me up to this point.  My parents made the trip after I was in college, so I didn't get a chance to see it with them.  I left Connecticut on Friday morning, driving up I-95.  I planned to have lunch somewhere in Rhode Island.  I actually had to turn around because I got through the state so quickly that I wouldn't have actually touched the ground in the state (and made a credit card transaction at Subway for proof).

A few hours later I checked into the Chatham Bars Inn, which was also where our Christmas party was being held.  It was a really nice, old, established hotel.  The rooms were a bit small, but modern and cozy.  The lobby has great views of the water and the service was very good.  And being in the middle of winter, it wasn't very crowded.

Not many consultants make it up to the Christmas party because we are spread out all over the country.  I got a chance to see a lot of people from our home office that I usually only know through email.  They work in billing, deployment, travel, payroll - all of the people that make my job easier.  There was dinner and drinks and a few speeches about the year, then we headed to a local bar to continue after the hotel party shut down.

On Saturday I planned to meet up with friends in Boston, although I wasn't planning to go all out like I did last time.  Until then, I had a whole day to waste.  I had a conversation the night before about a coworker's trip up the Cape to Provincetown at the very tip.  So that's what I decided to do.

Cape Cod Bay with Provincetown in the distance

The town is known for its gay friendly population, stores, bars and vacationers.  Why, I haven't quite figured it out.  It takes sooooo long to drive up the Cape.  I can only imagine the traffic nightmares in the summer.  When I got there, it was cold and windy on the water and there were very few people out.  Not to mention, most of the stores were closed with 'See you next summer' signs on the door.  I found a restaurant that was open and got a hot drink and a lobster roll - crucial for a trip here.

Lobster cage Christmas tree

I browsed around the shops that were open to look for Christmas presents, but only succeeded in finding a surf shop with a sale going on (score!).  I got a few shirts and called it a day.  There were a few monuments to the pilgrims and founders of Massachusetts, so I snapped a few pictures as I tried to stay warm.

After seeing all I could see, I wove my way back down the skinny arm of the Cape and tried to find all of the lighthouses.  I think I missed one or two but here's what I have:

I stopped in a parking lot to see a surfer getting out of the water - it looked frigid, and I've been surfing in water in the mid-50s lately.  The waves were obviously bad from the onshore wind, but he told me that there were good spots if you knew when to come out.  I probably won't get that lucky, or have the thick wetsuit needed to brave the waters.

After that I headed to Boston for dinner and a decently late night on the town.  I knew I had to get up for the long trip back in the morning, and I had this idea forming in my head.  Since New Hampshire was only about 45 minutes from Boston, and Maine was only another hour, why not just make a mad dash to go there?  Then I could cut back across New Hampshire to Vermont and head south back to Connecticut.

I mapped it out on Google and it looked like a 6 hour trip.  Not bad, and I didn't have anything to get back to in Connecticut anyway.  I left Boston at noon just for flurries to start to appear.  I stopped in upper New Hampshire for lunch and snow was sticking to the ground.  Not too long after that, I pulled off the first exit in Maine to buy a candy bar (transaction complete!) and the snow was a good inch or two thick.  This should make the ride back entertaining!

I started to creep as I got stuck behind slow moving trucks on two-lane roads.  You'll notice there are no pictures in this section - I was 100% concentrating on the road.  By the time I got to Vermont I wondered if I was going to make it back.  Traffic was inching along and the snow was really coming down.  I stopped for gas in Brattleboro, a town in the corner of the state, and then got back in the car for the last 1.5 hours (hopefully).

Massachusetts still sat between me and my destination, but luckily the further I moved south, the less it snowed.  Then it turned to mush and finally rain.  By the time I got back to my hotel in Stamford it was clear.  I finished the trip in 7 hours and made it back unscathed.  I Xed off all of my remaining states in New England, bringing my US total to 40/50.  I know it's kind of cheating to make a run like this to cross them off the list.  I'd love to ski Vermont and drive up there to see the leaves change in the fall, and I haven't ruled that out.  But for now, I've been there done that and it's off to the next place!

Road Trip Across the US

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Once the decision was made to move all of my belongings in storage and in my parents' basement, I had to figure out how to get it all out to California. I looked at a few moving companies, but those ran anywhere from $1,600 to $4,000. I decided to rent a U-Haul for around $900 and did my best to recruit people to go with me. After a few days of trying it was pretty clear that I was going to be on my own. I almost got Lindsay to meet me near the halfway point in Oklahoma City (since she gets free flights from her mom, a Delta employee) but no one was able (or willing) to take the time off for the grueling trek.

I did the trip once before, driving from Bowling Green, KY, to Los Angeles with a former girlfriend. On that trip in early 2005, we got on I-40 in Nashville and didn't make an exit until that highway merged with another in California. We stopped in Shamrock, TX, on the first night and Las Vegas on the second night before rolling into LA after another half day of driving.

This would be a challenge because instead of a Honda Civic I was driving a 14 foot van. When I went to pick it up the night before I left I got another nice surprise - no CD player or tape deck. Listening to my own music (or books on tape as I had planned) was out of the question (the next morning I found that the cigarette lighter didn't work, so I couldn't even use my phone without draining the battery in a few hours). I packed up everything with a little room to spare and headed out around 7 am. My goal was to try to make it to each of the stopping points from my first trip since I would again hit I-40 and take it all of the way across.

Day 1

Fairly quickly into the trip I realized the challenge I was up against. After only a few hundred miles of driving I had to fill up the 30 gallon tank. That means I was getting 6-7 miles per gallon... with gas prices in the $3.40 range that means I was going to drop around $100 per fill up for the 2,100 mile trip, totaling around $1,000 extra. Yikes.

After a full 13 hour day of boring and uneventful AL, tip of TN, AK and OK, I made it to Oklahoma City and called it a night. I was a few hours behind my original timetable, but I also started further to the east. The van only made it up to 75 miles per hour, so I didn't have much of a choice unless I logged more hours. I still made time to do my Insanity workout that night to stretch my legs and get some restlessness out of my body.

Day 2

I got up the next morning and went through some significant changes in scenery over the next day. The plains of OK and TX quickly changed to the arid landscape of NM, with its red dirt, tumbleweeds and rock formations jutting out of the ground. Throughout the day I could see the remnants of Route 66 - it was sometimes used as an access road to the highway or local road as an alternate, but other times it was overgrown with lone standing old telephone poles. About halfway through the day I hit a brutal headwind of 30 mph with gusts even higher. I initially thought that the van was losing engine power since I dropped from 75 to 65 average mph, but the wind blew my door shut when I got out for gas.

I randomly stopped at one of the exact gas stations from my first trip. The only reason I remember is because a really large and tacky/creepy gift shop and Dairy Queen were attached. I got Lindsay a purple raccoon tail key chain to mark the occasion. After a round of snow flurries as I crossed into AZ, I kept climbing, climbing, finally calling it a night after 14 hours in Flagstaff at 7,000 elevation. There was about 6 inches of snow on the ground and the temperature had dropped to around freezing. I definitely wasn't dressed for that weather, so I went into the hotel, hit the Insanity DVDs again and went to bed.

Day 3

I got up early one last time, ready to knock out the last 8 hours of the drive. I hoped to get out of the snow and put my toes in the sand ASAP. It was mostly downhill after Flagstaff and without the detour into Las Vegas I had in the last trip, I powered into California. The temperature quickly rose as I entered the Inland Empire and after a SHORT 7 hour drive I made it "home."

My roommates helped me unpack and find room for most of my furniture. My roommate's girlfriend needed a table and chairs along with a coffee table, so I'm temporarily storing things there. Lindsay took my sofa and chair (I tried to sell them in Atlanta but had no luck). I'm slowly selling a few things off here and there (my road bike, for one) and finding room for the rest. It feels good to be living mono-coastal for the first time in a year, but I'm about to start traveling for work again. Le sigh.

PCH from LA to San Francisco

One of the best drives in the land

After my solo two week odyssey through Panama, I still had two weeks of (forced) vacation from work. I spent an entire week chilling out in Atlanta with some friends and Zabba, then made my way back to Newport. My girl Daya just so happened to be going to a wedding reception in San Francisco that weekend and invited me along. I had been looking for an excuse to drive up the California coast on the scenic PCH (Pacific Coast Highway), California State Route 1.  It's on every website's top 10 drives in America, so you should, too.

My first time in SF was a whirlwind visit two years ago after a wedding. This time I was hoping to catch a few of the things I missed the last time around, plus soak up the view on the drive north.  I packed a bag for the weekend and took off early on Friday morning to face the LA traffic.

The PCH actually goes right into Newport Beach just a few blocks from my house.  It cuts through all of the beach cities - Huntington, Seal, Hermosa, Redondo, Manhattan... it would've taken me 3 or 4 hours to get through all of the surface street traffic (plus it's not scenic). I skipped it and hopped on the 405 and cut over to the coast on the 101 until it met up with the PCH in San Luis Obispo - a cool little town where I just had enough time to grab lunch. If you're in a hurry you can take the 5 all of the way up to San Francisco in 6 hours but you sacrifice the view.

Up close and personal with a mangy squirrel

From the beginning of the scenic section as I hit the coast, I was quickly reminded of my drive with Nat along the Great Ocean Road on the coast of Victoria, Australia.  No wild koalas or helicopter rides this time though. :(  I stopped pretty frequently along the way to take pictures of the windy route and mostly empty beaches.  I saw a few good surf spots but I had a long way to go and a short time to get there (thanks Jerry Reed).  I wasn't listening to that though... XM was having a Death Cab for Cutie weekend, playing all of the songs off of their upcoming album called Codes and Keys.

I was making pretty good time despite my stops when I started seeing signs for Hearst Castle. I vaguely remembered that William Randolph Hearst was a newspaper tycoon from the early 1900s. When I got home I researched him a bit and found out that he was the inspiration for the lead character in Citizen Kane. Also, his legacy company now owns Cosmopolitan Magazine, Esquire part of ESPN, a dozen or so newspapers and a really cool building in New York City (a modern skyscraper built on top of the original stone structure).  But I digress... the mansion was now a state park and they gave tours so I went to check it out.

Water colors reminded me of Whitsunday Beach

There were packs of old people and Asian tourists everywhere as I pulled up to the visitor's center.  I spotted an employee that told me tickets were $25-35 depending on which part of the house you visited.  The shortest took 2.5 hours.  I didn't have that kind of time so I took a few uninspiring pictures of the mansion from a distance, looked at a few pictures, read some factoids and I was on my way.  Before I left I got a good tip - there had been a landslide a few weeks ago that totally blocked the PCH.  I would actually need to backtrack a few miles and take some switchbacks to get around it.

 I stopped at a gas station to make sure my directions were correct because there were hardly any road signs and my GPS was trying to take me back to the PCH. I had the right route and drove through a military base called Fort Hunter-Liggett. Their training ground had littered shells of tanks and old cars. It looked like I was driving through a firing range... gulp.

The winding road narrowed down to through the foothills of the Sierras to almost one lane at some points. I passed the infrequent cars going surely taking the PCH south and then accelerated like a rally car around the next corner.  The road actually gave some hilltop views that wouldn't have been seen down on the PCH so it wasn't so bad of a detour.  It did take a 2.5 hour chunk from my timeline because I was going 25 mph or less for a lot of it.

Bixby Bridge, built in 1932

With the detour over I got back on the PCH and was going the speed limit (plus) again, but every now and then I would hit construction.  I recommend checking the highway warnings before starting this drive so you know of any road closures.  It looked like there had been more landslides over the past few years that required them to totally rebuild some barriers and sections of road.

One of the coolest parts of the drive had to be the Bixby Bridge near Big Sur that has become a regional landmark. It's supposedly been featured on car commercials and is coincidentally in the name of a song by Death Cab.  The arch spans the steep valley and displays a great blend of nature and engineering.

A long way down

By that time it was starting to get late so my roadside stops became more infrequent. The projected 9 hour drive ended up taking closer to 12 with my stops and the detour.  Yes, I-5 will get you there in under 6 hours, but who wants to drive inland?  I had brought my new camera tripod along but never got it out.  And yes, it would've been nice to have a passenger for conversation, but I had gotten used to the solitude over the past few weeks of traveling.  I also knew that it would be short lived once I got to San Francisco.

I soaked it all in because this would be my last vacation of the year.  By the time I got near Monterey I was starting to get impatient.  I could've taken the PCH all of the way into San Francisco but I decided to hop on the 101 for the rest of the route.  It probably saved me another hour.  This is definitely one of the best road trips and scenic drives I have ever seen.  It's something you must do and will definitely make my Best of California list.

I finally pulled into downtown San Francisco to be greeted by Daya - a fun weekend was in store.  Stay tuned for the rest of the trip!

Driving Up the Coast

I had planned for weeks to rent a car to drive up the eastern coast. It cost about $300 for a rental car, so I thought it would be a good idea to find people to ride with us. I created a little flier and posted it in a few of the popular hostels. It said "Need a ride to Byron Bay/Surfer's Paradise/Brisbane?" along with my contact info and a few other details on the dates.  By the next day I already received 10 calls or texts, all from females. Why there were no males interested, I have no idea. If you ever get lonely in Sydney, just rent a car for the weekend and start posting fliers in hostels – you’ll make friends really quickly.

The first people to call me were Germans Melanie and Britta, who needed to get to Brisbane on the same day that we were flying to Hamilton Island. Brian and I went to meet them for a quick drink to make sure we got along (and they wanted to be sure we weren't weirdos). They agreed to pay $75 each which covered about half of the cost of the car excluding gas.  It was a deal for them since bus trips up the coast are really expensive.

We left Sydney early on Monday morning and headed north. We passed through Port Macquarie for lunch and made it to our goal of Byron Bay after about 12 hours. Byron is less than 500 miles from Sydney but there are not true interstates in between. We went through a lot of towns and two lane highways along the way. It was kind of nice because we got to see more scenery which included a random water tank with ‘Kentucky’ painted on the side and some wild kangaroos.

Coincidentally, Krista had already planned a trip up that way with her brother and flew into Gold Coast a few days ahead of us. She drove down to spend the next few days surfing with us instead of playing golf with her brother. We stayed at a popular hostel in Byron Bay called Aquarius. It was only $38 per night and was within walking distance to the bars. I read a lot of reviews that spoke poorly of it, saying there were bed bugs (sometimes a huge problem with backpacker hostels), but we had no issues.

The waves at Byron Bay

Byron Bay is famous around the world for its world class waves. It’s a cool, relaxed beach town that is centered on one thing – surfing. When we rented our boards from a corner shop, the cashier told us that Jack Johnson had stopped in a few weeks before (he owns a house in Byron). On a side note, I learned that Johnson almost became a pro surfer before he was injured while surfing Hawaii’s famous Pipeline wave. He lost a few teeth and had to get stitches, then switched to music.

The nightlife in Byron Bay reminded me or Cairns. The city was laid out in a less touristy way (if that even makes sense), with all of the bars and restaurants concentrated in a 3 or 4 block area. We didn’t stay out too late because we wanted to be fresh and ready to surf in the morning.

We took some steps down a hill to the beach to find it fairly empty compared to Sydney. The entire beach stretched for about 2 miles with the best surf on the south end at ‘The Pass’. We hopped on our boards and were immediately slammed with the strongest rip current I have ever experienced. Within 5 minutes I was about 50 meters out in the water behind the break, which is great. But the current also pulled me 200 meters down the beach where no good waves were breaking. I lost sight of Krista, but she was after bigger waves anyway. I tried to paddle against the rip and even hopped off my board, letting it drag behind me as I swam – no luck. I finally gave up and paddled back to shore. From that point on I stayed in the relatively shallow water and only caught the small waves. Even then, the current was so strong that you could barely walk against it.

After we were exhausted from fighting the waves, we drove up to a lighthouse and lookout nearby that claimed to be the easterly most point in the country. Next we packed up the car and drove to Surfer’s Paradise.