The Innocents Abroad Revisited, or…

(Part Two—the Ride West)

Around The World in 80 Days 1980

If you read last week’s inaugural post of this multi-part series, you know my dream to circle the world, nurtured since youth, had finally landed in my lap thanks to my having discovered and been accepted into the Semester as Sea program.

Like tens of thousands of other college students across the years, I was about to see the world—or at least a sizeable chunk of it—by living aboard a pared-down luxury liner that had been converted into the Worldwide Campus Afloat: the SS Universe.

But first, I had to get from my small Pennsyltucky town to where the ship would set sail: Los Angeles, and late in January 1980 I set out to do exactly that—by car, a little yellow Plymouth Arrow hatchback owned by my sister, Seven-of-Nine.

I think I can, I think I can…

Seven had to leave it behind when she enlisted in the Air Force, but had since risen from basic training to become a Russian linguist student at the Language Institute in Monterey and was allowed a car. The plan? I would drive it across America and deliver it to her, then she would drive me to my ship—all in the middle of Winter.

Many of the details would be lost to time had I not in my collegiate days been an avid journal keeper, and had I not—through the many years and moves since then—held onto the three notebooks that describe my adventures circumnavigating the globe.

Till now, though, I had never re-read them.

Their pages reveal a young woman filled with the joy and excitement of living, open to discovery and often thrilled with the smallest of pleasures.

College Daze: Dreams of Becoming an Actor

The opening pages of Journal No. 1 are dated January 23^rd and detail the busy day I had as I ran about saying my goodbyes to family and friends before heading out the Pennsylvania Turnpike. There was a stop by my oldest sister’s place of business in Lancaster (a law firm), a swing by another sister’s home (Lititz) to borrow her 35mm camera, and a pre-voyage visit with my lifelong bestie, Dani.

Trick Photography fun 70’s style with Dani

The words on those opening pages were recorded that first evening from yet another sister’s dorm room—in Greensburg, PA.

You see, Fame-in-the-Offing, one year my senior, was my designated escort. Fame would be taking a week off her final year at Seton Hill College to see that I found my way to California unscathed.

But as it turned out, just getting to my grand adventure turned out to be a bit of an adventure in itself. What kind of adventure? Perhaps the first two things that happened lend a clue: the campus police ticketed me that first night, and in the morning, the car wouldn’t start.

Luckily, the campus maintenance crew was amenable to jump starting dead batteries, even in snow storms, because—yes—five inches of snow had fallen overnight and was falling still.

But apparently there’d been fun to be had, as well, because I talk in my journal of practicing my guitar and visiting classmates while Fame was at an evening class. See, Seton Hill was my school too.

Probably the only known picture of me in my college dorm room

I wrote of being happy to see so many friends—a good portion of whom I’m still in contact with to this day, thanks to the invention of the internet.

College friends in Theatre class

A few hadn’t realized why I hadn’t re-enrolled for that Spring semester, but all were surprised and pleased to see me on campus.

The names dotting those pages bring back so many warm memories: Cindy Blaha, Mary Hanlon, Joanne Fanello, Julie Ham, Jean Prevenslik, Paige Schenone, Melissa Orange, Linda Karis, Meg Donavan, Diane Malone, Natalie Robertshaw, Phil Bacon, Dave Schaefer, Barb Meisel, Paul Wray…

Classmates Barb Meisel & Linda Gilroy clown around in a rehearsal

Yes, late that first night on my way west was apparently quite a hoot, one filled with cheer and celebration fueled by Amaretto & Pink Catawba despite most of us being underage (as well as students at a Catholic college with a resident nun on every floor).

Apparently my final salute to Seton Hill was joining some friends launching toilet paper streamers off of our dorm roof (though it might have been them joining me).

Three years later at graduation with Michelle Deramo & Jeannie Devine

GETTING UNDERWAY IN ERNEST

After our jump-start and belated departure on the 24^th, things did not improve much. For one thing, we hadn’t even gotten out of Greensburg before nearly getting creamed by an on-coming car. I recall cursing vociferously as it careened toward me—until Fame pointed out I was the one driving the wrong way up a one-way street.

Then we apparently spent hours of slow progress in bad weather on hazardous roads, topping all of fifteen miles an hour all the way from Pittsburgh to Columbus, and all the while continually missing various entry point onto Route 70, which we had initially planned to get on and stay on all the way to Denver.

The low point of that first real day of travel came when we pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot in Wheeling, only to have a van (it’s driver never having bothered to clear the rear window of snow) back from a space without a second’s hesitation and slam into our driver’s side door.

Wheeling, WV., minus the snow

What would Seven say? Our folks? I’d convinced everyone I could be responsible at twenty and deliver her car across country, and here I’d barely gotten out of state before her baby was in serious need of body work.

Exhausted, we stopped somewhere on 40 West at a dive called the Twin Pines Motel: “Color TV, Pool, No Pets, Vacancy.” Sold!

A BETTER DAY—BUT NOT FOR LONG

The 25^th was a day of more significant progress at 700 miles, despite a few tense tries at turning over a reluctant starter. But the Arrow cooperated and Fame took over some of the driving, as well; I recorded, “Bright sunshiny 53 degrees in Cincinnati.”

That night from a Townhouse Inn in Belleville, Illinois, I wrote of an earthquake in California, the Cold War, and an Army Second Lieutenant named John we met at a Nickerson Farms restaurant when we stopped to eat. Kentucky, I added, was beautiful, the brief, low-key entry in my journal a testimony to how tired I was.

The entry on the 26^th begins with a single word: depressed.

Being cooped up with a sibling in a small car for long hours had tensions running high. From a Best Western in Junction City, Kansas, I report seven hours of travel after a poor night’s sleep the previous night due to a severe cold I’d been nursing along. I complain of being bored and overeating, and how my spilling something called “Vaporizor in a Bottle” all over the inside of the car nearly asphyxiated us.

I almost immediately my tone changes as I happily recount our two-hour stopover in Saint Louis to see and go up in the Arch, how The Museum of Westward Expansion captured my interest and my imagination.

Photo curtesy stormhway.com

I finish by lamenting that I nearly poisoned myself by realizing too late that the “Vaporizor in a Bottle” had also spilled on my toothbrush.

A WARM FIRE & A NIGHT WITH FAMILY

The 27^th brought us to Denver and the home of relatives: our brother, Bitterwaters, and his then-wife, the Sensible Senorita. Sensible taught Spanish and regularly took students to Spain; Bitter, fourteen years my senior, always struck me as someone who thought life owed him something it had persistently refused to deliver. They had a lovely house.

After calling home to reassure the parents we were alive and well in the world, I wrote in my journal of a warm fire, intelligent conversation, shared wine, and a meal set for royalty. In speaking of that day’s 10-hour drive to get there, I wrote, “Good music on the radio. Bad news in the world.”

Then, in keeping with our good-day/bad-day pattern, another snowstorm hit overnight, and once again the Arrow refused to start.

The Mile High City with our destination in the distance

On the 28^th I wrote it was 2 degrees and we were awaiting a tow truck. I assume we tried to jump start the car to no avail; it was blocking Bitter in and he had to get to school up in Boulder (I’m not sure which of his degrees he was after at that particular time). In my journal I wax on about how nicely decorated their home is and how impressed I am with the remodeling Bitter’s undertaken that included adding a second story, built-in bookshelves, and a planned loft.

We stayed a second night.

A CHANGE IN PLANS

Traveling in Winter generally suggests needing to be flexible, and the forecast suggested we had better flex from our intended westerly direction to a southern one in hope of circling the storm.

My morning entry on the 29^th , a Tuesday, mentions we’d be getting the car back at three (all the garage had done was charge the battery—don’t ask me why they didn’t replace it) and shoot for Albuquerque since twelve more inches of snow were due overnight in the Rockies where we’d been headed. Twenty had already fallen in Cheyenne.

“Besides,” I added, “It’s 9 degrees here and 58 in New Mexico!”

At nearly one in the morning on the 30^th I finished the day’s entry from the Lamplighter Best Western in Sante Fe, writing of beautiful blue skies opening up over Colorado Springs, a little snow in Pueblo, and Fame losing our map in Walsenburg.

I loved the trip from there on to Trinidad, saying it was the nicest part of the drive thus far.

“A warm wind was blowing and it … was so open and clear. When we came down to Trinidad, it was like a thousand jewels spilled out of the mountains. So very unbelievably beautiful! The trouble began when we came to the Raton Pass—”

Raton Pass, Colorado

FOG AT 6000 FEET

This is one of those parts of the tale I’ve always remembered even without a journal entry to remind me. The Raton Pass. At Raton we stopped at a Pizza Hut for supper and tried to call home but the phone was dead.

The way onward was clear as we got back on the road and headed up the mountain, but as we crossed over into New Mexico a dense wall of fog rose before us, then engulfed us.

We could barely see a thing, and it was scary. We were 6,000 feet up with a big descent in front of us and that otherworldly feeling one gets when finding themselves suddenly surrounded by thick fog—a feeling of being suspended between worlds, of blindly being carried along while sensing somehow that you’re actually standing still.

I wrote of a thirty mile drive in fog, snow, and rain, never reaching 25mph. I summed it up in my journal, saying:

“We had the best & worst, fastest & slowest, and pleasantest and most nerve-wracking driving of the trip all in one day’s driving.”

It didn’t help our dispositions that our dad had urged us to start the car every few hours overnight to ensure it wouldn’t leave us sitting a third time with a drained battery. As I recall, we took turns, but it made for broken sleep.

OF GORGEOUS DESERTS AND GIANT DITCHES

Jan. 30^th is proclaimed “easily our best day yet,” when I wrote about in on the morning of the 31^st from a Williams, AZ motel room. From Sante Fe we drove on to Albuquerque, about which I declared, “the sights of the Southwest have stunned and hypnotized me.”

We took the time to visit Old Town Albuquerque, where I was charmed by a little church, San Felipe de Neri, built in 1706, and discovered Yucca Perfume, which apparently delighted me so much I declared I wanted it to “be my trademark.”

Old Town Albuquerque, NM (photo curtesy expedia.com)

I also wrote of taking lots of black & white photos for “our New Era article,” a thing referenced briefly before and which leaves me stymied a bit. The New Era was a Lancaster newspaper of the day and one Fame worked for at one time, but it would seem we were planning to write some sort of travelogue article after our trip. I probably have little recollection of the plan since the article never materialized.

We drove through Grants and Gallup, and on into Arizona where our first stop was the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert. Apparently it was there I made the ever-to-be-unmet decision to move to the Southwest and make my life there, having loved it so much.

In Flagstaff it was supper at a Pancake House and a call home to worried folks who’d been wondering—along with Seven and Sensible—where we’d gotten to (the days before cellphones were certainly more conducive to living a life of mystery); it seems the Raton Pass had been closed right after we’d gone through.

I closed by observing how every time I returned from being away my dad was noticeably grayer.

Our Pop, in ‘86 or ‘87, on our front porch in Lititz, PA

Thursday the 31^st brought brilliant blue skies and 80 degree weather. We continued out 40 West but detoured onto 66 West to visit the Grand Canyon Caverns only to discover they were closed on Thursday and Fridays. I don’t write anything more of the Grand Canyon yet distinctly remember looking down into it with Fame—and somewhere I even have a photo to prove it.

Fame overlooks the Grand Canyon

We stopped in Kingman for lunch at a Pizza Hut (apparently a perennial favorite) before a sixty mile desert drive to Needles I described with prosaic enthusiasm.

Next came a visit to Calico City, a ghost town, which also thoroughly charmed me. At Dagget, several miles from Barstow, we turned off the main route to check it out. Built in 1881 and abandoned in 1896, Calico City was a boom town in an era of many such towns, a site of silver mines and broken dreams. We toured it by foot and train, the vistas from the mountainside town “astonishing” according to my journal.

Calico Ghost Town, California

After stopping in Barstow at five to call home, we headed for a Bakersfield Pancake House supper three-and-a-half hours away. There I report Fame and I punch-drunk silly and having lots of fun from over-weariness, yet two hours later we drove on, aiming for San Luis Obispo.

I have no idea why we didn’t stop for the night in Bakersfield, but we should have.

THE HAUNTED DESERT

We were already tired and anxious to bed down when we took 58 West and began our moonlit trek across the Mohave Desert. Perhaps we didn’t realize how far we still had to go. There was mention of a lost map a few paragraphs back—eh?—and do remember, children, there was no GPS back then!

But like the Raton Pass, I remember the Mojave first-hand, and it was eerie, a place I journaled as “the booniest boondocks yet.”

Thankfully a full moon cast light on the crazy curving (guard-rail-less!) mountain roads my weary eyes had to navigate past thousand-foot drop-offs threatening at every turn to wreck our adventure, wreck what remained intact of Seven’s Car, and wreck our very lives.

At times we thought that call home from Barstow was the last time we were ever going to hear our parents’ voices.

A desertscape straight out of Washington Irving’s imagination

The moonlit terrain was like something out of Washington Irving’s imagination, and we were sure some headless horseman was going to round every corner as we approached it. Had the Arrow decided it needed another jump in that desert, let me tell you, no  one was coming to supply it. It was like we had fallen onto a moonscape and all the rest of the humanity had vanished.

Maybe—maybe we had entered a place more sensible people never go after dark. What did we know? Only that we longed to find once again the land of the living.

That night (1:30 AM) I wrote, “It began to seem like I was born and had spent all my life driving through that moonlit wasteland. Winding-winding-winding. On and on. Up one mountain. Down another. We snaked on, enchanted and mesmerized, as the terrain slowly dressed itself in ocean wear. Brush thickened and richness overtook the sparse desert prairies. The hills gentled and the trees appeared and densened. The Pacific at last.”

We’d made it across the country, and our sense of achievement exhilarated us.

“Sleep?” I jotted in my journal, “Who needs it? I’ll sleep in another lifetime. The air is fresh and Fame is happy, expectant, excited. The trip reveals her treasures and spills them out before us. Every day has gotten better and best since we left Pennsylvania. And this is only the beginning. Look out World—here I come!”

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Thank you for joining me on the Ride West. Tune in next week for California Miscalculations where more misadventures plague my every effort to step off American soil.

In the meantime, I hope you’ll check out the latest offerings from Wild Ink Publishing, including my debut children’s novel, Shay the Brave, that came out in January. Get your copy wherever books are sold online and in some savvy brick-and-mortar book stores like Aaron’s Books in Lititz, PA (some signed copied available there).

I spy with my little eye…a familiar book at Aaron’s Books in Lititz, PA. Can you?

Finally, don’t forget the two great giveaways I’m running now! Win a copy of Shay the Brave for every kid in your favorite classroom! See detail s in this previous substack post.