WHAT'S THE STORY

Beforehand

I picked up a intermediate (or MID as others have joked) SUV for the trip. I packed all my stuff in these fairly large cardboard boxes and realized that a big size makes them both hard to pick up and more susceptible to damage if you fill them full of heavy stuff. I was a little worried whether the SUV would be big enough for everything, but it ended up being the perfect size.

They let me choose between a bunch of SUVs at the rental car lot and I had decision paralysis for a bit. I ended up going with a Equinox??? I still have no idea if this is a decent car, but i'm pretty happy with the sound system and all the sensors and alerts it has. Anyone that knows me knows I am really not the best driver so any technological aid that can help is appreciated!

First Day

I started off the trip pretty poorly. I didn't sleep well the night before (a rare occurrence), was feeling both a high level emotional rawness at moving and a low level emotional rawness at whether or not driving across the country was a big mistake and whether I would be miserable the whole time. Regardless, I resolved to try and have an excited mindset about it but the first leg of the trip didn't really help.

Southern California sucks to drive through. It was hot enough outside that the AC wasn't really keeping up and so the temperature was just slightly hot enough that I was on edge the whole time. The views are pretty uncompelling - it's just flat farmland as far as the eye can see. The flatness is really so absolute that you don't really often get views of fields stretching out into the distance - it's just the first row of trees or crops from various farms for hours. There's also a crazy number of Trump signs which I should have expected but didn't which imbued a vague sense of unease.

At some point i felt tired enough that I was worried about starting to nod off, but when I pulled off into a rest stop, there were no shaded parking spaces where I could just sit and take a nap. I tried anyways and gave up after 15 minutes. I was at a pretty low point here so I tried to swing by a gas station. I couldn't figure out quite how to get in and had to do a couple loops and then gas was surprisingly expensive (more than $5/gallon in the middle of nowhere???) At this point, all the bad stuff started feeling comedic, which legitimately helped my mood. I picked up all my most indulgent gas station purchases and set off again.

After that, around Bakersfield it started picking up. I was starting to get out of the boring flat grassland-y area and starting to get into more rolling hills/dessert, right as sunset was hitting. The sky was a constantly shifting gradient that hit every tone in the rainbow at various points. I was also lucky enough to be in some beautiful valley, where there were rolling dunes near me, bigger hills a little further from me, and these incredible mountain views off in the distance, which made for an incredibly layered perspective. These views were really incredible and I was extremely thankful to get them when I did. The 2 hours between 5-7pm went by super fast - the fastest 2 hours of driving on this trip so far.

It also helped that traffic started thinning out around this time. Instead of being tightly packed between a bunch of cars going at roughly the same speed, the cars started spacing themselves out a lot more. Trucks here were super accommodating of other cars wanting to get past them. Sometimes, it would seem like they would get out of the way even though I was still thousands of feet away. A few of them would do a cute little "light blinking" after moving lanes for me. To me, it felt like a little way of saying, "I got you." The car I rented has some "auto brights" feature that I'm not familiar with so I didn't know how to blink my lights to respond. I've figured it out now but I feel a little bad that I didn't reply.

The rest of the drive for the day was pretty uneventful. I discovered that a lot of songs give a cinematic quality to careening down an empty highway. I might try and put together a playlist of music that would be good for this (I'd love recommendations as well) The goal for the first day was Flagstaff by the first night, which is the single longest planned drive for any day this trip (expected 10 hrs and 55 min!), which I did in pretty good time. I'm hoping that doing so much the first day gives me a little more breathing room to have fun in future parts of the trip.

Second Day Morning

I actually ended up sleeping pretty alright! I woke up in the morning at like 8am and went to Wal-mart to pee and buy a blanket (it was alittle cold). They had a ?Flagstaff Monopoly? game which got a chuckle out of me. I was also delighted to find that Flagstaff is in a beautifully hill-y area, which I could not see in the darkness of last night. In general, my feelings this morning are much more positive than yesterday. I feel really good about how much progress I have made and am not dreading the rest of the drive as much.

Afterwards, I looked for little cafe to do some work at and write this blog post and ended up heading town to Macy's, which is a cute little place. They call themselves European style, which I can't validate as someone who's never been to Europe. Got a large mocha which was delightfully both not to sweet and had a nice lightly caramelized flavor, as well as biscuits and gravy, which was huge, despite me getting a half order!

I reviewed the iternerary for today and it's so much easier than yesterday. I was originally planning on going to Amarillo, Texas, but I might just power through to Oklahoma city? I've also been delightfully productive this morning. I'm knocking out things for work left and right and I managed to get this blog thing up for weird web october. I had a quick chat with some people nearby who also are on a road trip! They are here from Tucson for a wedding. The ladies working at the cafe are gossiping about their relationship prospects and there's a thrift shop across the street i'm going to go check out in a minute!

Second Day Afternoon + Evening

After that first day, I basically kind of locked into a Zen of Driving, so most things are going to be just lists of cool or weird stuff

Arizona

Arizona is very desert-y with a lot of dunes. Just enough rolling hills to keep some visual interest and some weird cloud patterns that all seemed to hover at the same altitude? It felt a little like someone had chopped off the bottom halves of a lot of clouds. Not quite as pretty as the section that I hit with the sunset the day before but much better than general SoCal.

I tried to take some pictures, but the pictures really do not look anything like what the views look like in person so I stopped bothering. There's a great blog post here: https://aaronhertzmann.com/2022/02/28/how-does-perspective-work.html about this effect.

The Native American advertisements were really aggressive in Arizona and felt a little sad to me. A lot of the time they seemed like they were just trying desperately to get anyone to spend money at their reservations. They were just big signs loudly broadcasting native american arts and at a certain point, they gave up on that as well and just resorted to doing stuff like selling $0.99 tacos. There was even a big sign that said "Yes, This is the place! Stop now!" It was also interesting to note that a lot of these signs used the term "Indian" and not "Native American"?

I passed by one interesting stop called Meteor City which had this cool dome. I'm looking it up now, and apparently, there's a big meteor crater nearby? Neat!

New Mexico

The border of New Mexico and Arizona was very striking! Right at the border, green plants started growing and we started driving past these huge picture-esque mesas. It was super pretty, even prettier than the SoCal area. I did end up lucky enough to see them during the sunset, but the color vibrancy of a New Mexico sunset doesn't really match California's.

The ads also seemed to ramp up? There were way more advertisements here and for weirder stuff. Probably, the best one was for KNIFE CITY which i imagine is just a big store for knives but it cracked me up to imagine a whole city for knives that was along this stretch of highway.

The Native American reservation signs also really ramped up. I started seeing casino signs that were very flashy and offered all sorts off fun stuff. One place bought like 5 billboards to advertise their friday seafood buffet??? They also started having brand names and graphic design which made me feel better cause it implied to me that these reservations had a lot more money, which seemed really positive!

Texas

I didn't see much of Texas cause it was nighttime but it still managed to be interesting. One of the first things I saw was a billboard that said something like "Welcome to Texas! You're a felon now! www.weed-texas.com", which I thought was very aggressive.

I did get to see something extremely cool though, which is a series of red lights really high up in the sky at different parts of the highway. The first time I saw them was on the left side, near Armarillo and it was a massive low density cloud of them, mostly blinking on and off in sync. I've looked it up now and I'm fairly certain they're wind turbines, but in the darkness, you couldn't see the underlying building at all, just some blinking red lights in the distance which gave off an eerie vibe. It was even cooler when the highway drove through an entire field of them stretching out as far as you can see to the left and the right. It felt like I was driving into a massive cosmic swarm of red lights. Very fun stuff! I'll remember that experience for a while.

I saw this in a gas station bathroom and thought it was funny

Third Day

Oklahoma

I was feeling pretty good during the night so I managed to get over the border into Oklahoma before crashing for the night! The views here are pretty boring. It's mostly pretty standard southeastern foilage, which I expect will be the case for the rest of the drive.

I woke up in the morning and made it to Oklahoma City! I had George's Happy Hog Bar-BQ and got some great BBQ - ribs, burnt ends and brisket, most of which was delicious. The one downside was that some of the burnt ends were tough but some of them were also the most tender meat of all of it!

It was right next door to Second Story Books, a little cute cafe/bookstore where I've been working and writing this up. It's very full of plants and witch-y stuff.

After I post, I'm going to be booking it to Memphis. My goal is to try and get there to get more BBQ for dinner before places close. Something that's fucking up my timing a bit is that i'm racing the time zone change, so I actually have 3 less hours than I originally expected! A friend told me Memphis BBQ is the best that he's had so I'm excited!

Memphis

I've been told I should try Rendezvous BBQ in Memphis so I'm trying to be pretty efficient with travel. Initially, If I drove without stopping, I would get there at 8pm, an hour before they close. I know I'm going to need to make a gas stop at some point and if I need to pull over and nap, that's also a possibility. As I leave the cafe, I chug some coffee so hopefully I stay alert and awake until I get there.

On the way, disaster strikes! I'm feeling a little drowsy take an exit to take a little nap, but I accidentally get off at the wrong exit for the gas station! Google Maps re-routes me and says this new route is going to take 20 extra minutes. The emotional impact of this setback wakes up. This new road takes me through some small town. We're traveling on single lane roads. At first, we're moving along pretty well, but then the car in front of me gets stuck in front of a school bus! We trudge along at like 20 MPH under the speed limit for what feels like an eternity. Eventually, I finally make it back onto the highway. I lost 25 minutes.

Eventually, I need to do a gas stop. I make a point of trying to be as quick and efficient as possible. I don't go in to pee or grab any snacks. I'm in and out. The whole thing only takes 3 minutes. This makes be feel pretty good.

Eventually, I get to Memphis, which apparently is right at the border of Tennessee, over a bridge. Immediately, Memphis has the impression of being the biggest city I've gone through so far. Looking it up, it looks like Oklahoma City technically has some more people, but Memphis had more of an impact. There are tons of big urban buildings but one building stands out and that is the BASS PRO SHOP PYRAMID, gloriously lit up. It's easily the biggest building in Memphis and I know I want to go check it out later in the night, but first, BBQ!

I get to Rendezvous at about 8:30pm and they seat me, no problem. I get a ribs and brisket plate which comes out pretty quickly. I take one bite and enter a fugue state in which my entire world is barbeque for the next 15 minutes. It's amazing. The brisket is the most tender and juicy brisket I've ever had. Despite being a lean cut, it's more tender and juicy than most fatty cuts of meat I've had. It's delicious on its own, but has a fairly mild flavor, which goes along excellently with the sauce it comes with. The ribs come coated in a thick spice rub. The texture is not as tender and juicy as the brisket but the flavor is so incredible that it's easily just as good, maybe even better. Maybe this is some other way of cooking ribs where they come out less tender but more flavorful? Anyways, it's the best barbeque I've ever had in my life. It also came with some baked beans, which were also phenomenal and some coleslaw which was just good.

Afterwards, I have a few hours to kill before I head out so I decide to explore Memphis a bit. I decide to walk to the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid and immediately stumble upon this large walking plaza. It's really cool, has shops and parks along the edges, doesn't allow any car traffic and has a street car that transports people through it! I walk through it for 3-4 blocks to the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid and have a good time. There's also a good number of people out and about, bar hopping and what not which feels cool.

Eventually I hit a little stretch that's less populated and a little more sketch-y feeling and I start feeling a little concerned. I don't usually feel concerned walking around at night, but I realize there's a lot of factors here - I'm in an unfamiliar city, I have no idea whether this is a dangerous neighborhood, if something happened to me, it would be way harder to get help than at home, etc. I could really feel the weight of being alone with all my stuff.

Eventually, I make a weird turn and hear Uptown Funk in the distance. I think "Oh, someone must have a bluetooth speaker", but then I hear some banter from the singer and realize it's a live performance happening ahead of me! I slowly approach a massive party happening in the street. As I get closer a security guard stops me and says "Private event. You can't come through here." I explain that I'm just trying to get to the other side and I ask them if they know an easy way around. They say they don't and I start worrying that I'm going to have to take this long roundabout path when another security guard chimes in and says, "I'll walk him through." which I'm super thankful for. As we walk through, I see that it's an Octoberfest party, with a bunch of people in lederhosen and giant pretzel and beer. The security guard explains that it's a corporate AutoZone event, which feels incredibly surreal to me. They walk me halfway through the party and they're like, "OK, you're good", which I think is mildly funny. They actually drop me off right in front of that stage that I was hearing earlier. There's also 3 or so carnival game booths off to the side. I bask in the environment for a bit and move along.

Eventually I get to the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid and I'm immediately struck by the size of it. I feel like it's the biggest building I've ever seen, which can't literally be true, since I've seen skyscrapers, but something about the shape and how it's presented to me impresses its size upon me. I also don't understand what's going on. Even the base level of the pyramid could easily fit 10 normal sized Bass Pro Shops. I walk around and find an entrance. Most of the building is closed, but then I find that the pyramid contains a hotel! I'm tempted to stay the night, but I know it doesn't work with my schedule so I leave. I find out later that the pyramid is much more than just a large Bass Pro Shop. It also contains:
- A giant cypress swamp environment with ponds, alligator pools and duck aviaries\
- ?Ten? aquariums with 600,000 gallons of water and more than 1,800 fish (I have no idea what this could mean)
- An interactive wetlands and waterfowl education museum
- 13-lane bowling alley that offers a chance to bowl "in the ocean" amid under-water scenery and ball returns that resemble sharks and alligators
- Pistol and archery ranges, an arcade, and a billiards room.

As I leave to go back to my car, I pee on the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid.

Once I get back to my car, It's about 10pm. I know I should sleep soon, but honestly, I'm feeling amped. It's only 6 hours back to Atlanta, so I decide to get as far as I can in the night. I end up driving 4 more hours! I briefly contemplate driving the last two hours and waking up my friend whose house I'm staying at, but it would be like 4am which seems rude so I decide to call it there for the night

Fourth Day

I wake up in the morning feeling amazing. I know I'm only 2 hours out and I'm ready to go! Those final 2 hours are euphoric. Seeing signs for Atlanta, seeing the foilage slowly change to what I'm more familiar with, seeing the "Welcome to Georgia" sign - it's all incredible.

Hilariously, I start running into traffic like an hour an 10 minutes out from my destination. I'm in good spirits so, really, it's just funny to me. The worst stretch is the last 15 minutes downtown, but after that, I get to my friend's house, and that's the end of the trip!

Takeaways

Overall, I'd say it was really arduous but also really rewarding. If I had done only 6 or 3 hours of driving a day and it was with a friend, I think it would have actually been a ton of fun. It's also really cool to be able to draw a line from roughly one coast to another! Taking a plane gives you kind of a sense of "teleporting" from place to place, but not driving! I would also say it gave me an exciting glimpse at all the weirdness in the country! People act like big cities are the only places worth going to or knowing about, but that's not true! There's also sorts of interesting things happening going on in all sorts of places!

WHAT'S THE LAST PICTURE HE TOOK

WHAT'S THE DEAL