Taking pictures and leaving footprints in San Diego

Today is the day we see the world renowned San Diego Zoo. Of course, our zoo, the Riverbanks Zoo, has garnered acclaim of its own, so the bar has been set. Before we get there, though, we want to check out the Coronado bridge, a high bridge that leads to, where else, Coronado. We also have quite a bridge, the Cooper River bridge, back home. How will San Diego compare?

The Coronado bridge is indeed high, but not much higher than the Cooper River bridge, truth be told. Plus, the Cooper River bridge is a suspension bridge, so it wins the bridge competition. The Coronado bridge does afford an AWESOME view of the city of San Diego, and that made it all worth while.

We made it to the zoo around 9 o'clock. It was sunny and cool. Parking was easy, there was no wait for tickets, and the one day pass was good for the bus tour. At the entrance to the tour, there was a Macaw, just perched there to welcome us. The bus had two levels and we sat on the top. It took about thirty minutes to complete the tour and we saw all kinds of animals, and the ariel view afforded us atop the bus was unique and fun. The San Diego Zoo is amazing. At one point, as we were walking through one of the three open air aviaries, I thought they could lose the animals and the place would still make a great garden. The weather allowed the animals to be very active, which is something missing in the heat and humidity of Riverbanks Zoo. The polar bear enclosure, which is just one of the many animals not featured back home, had a glass wall for underwater bear viewing. The hippo enclosure had the same type of viewing area, which made me feel like I was seeing the hippo for the first time in my life. When we got off the skyfari, which was yet another way to cross from one side of the zoo to the other, the ramp down to the main path lead directly over an enclosure with small deerlike animals. And as if the Macaw at the bus tour and then these animals at the skyfari weren't enough to make us feel surrounded by wildlife, while we ate lunch outside at a patio restaurant, both a mother duck and mother peacock approached our table, complete with little ones in tow. Incredible.

Now it's time for the Panda paragraph. This zoo has pandas. Crazy, but true. The panda enclosure was the only one in the zoo that had a line. Seriously, a line to look at some animals. So we stood in line for the chance to watch a panda eat some bamboo. They are neat animals. We learned that NO PANDAS, no matter where they are born, belong to anyone except China. China has the panda thing on lockdown. We took some pics and left. Other notable animal enclosures:

The zoo has two meerkat enclosures, which are 10 times as big as the one at Riverbanks. The zoo had two different types of elephants, African and Asian. They had rhinos, sun bears, and tapirs, which we had never seen before, but they did NOT have an aquarium or penguins. Chalk one up for Riverbanks.

We did see a sea lion, in the one and only animal show we checked out. The show opened with doves flying over the crowd and included a wolf and dog duo. But it wasn't an animal show as much as it was a conservation message. The line that stuck with us - "Go explore our natural world, remembering to take only pictures and leave only footprints".

After seven and a half hours at the zoo, we realized the hardest thing about the visit would be trying to drag our exhausted bodies back to the parking lot. We then drove four hours to Bakersfield. The Pacific was beautiful from the highway. We reached Los Angeles at sunset and saw the city through the famous LA haze. It was neat. I noticed that the interstate signs had razor wire wrapped around the support posts here, presumably to keep people from spray painting graffiti on them. We were elated to reach Mark and Chris's house and some well-deserved time away from driving. What does the next week have in store for us? We can't wait to find out.

California Love

This morning we embarked on the final long day of driving for the week. We had just crossed the 2000 mile mark on our trek the night before and were ready to see the California sun. We stopped in Kingman, AZ, for gas and coffee because we had been told ahead of time that fuel exits would soon become rare. When we reached the California border, we were met by the agricultural custom agents, looking for rogue fruits and vegetables that might carry non-native insects. Or so I assumed. It might be possible that they simply wanted to assert their dominance over us. We showed them our apples and blueberries we had been carrying in the cooler across the country, and, once they deduced the apples were from New York, the fruit was deemed dangerous and confiscated. Something about insects in the apple cores. We were told, in no uncertain terms, that we had been eating maggots in our apples for years. "It's that bitter taste around the core," they said. No explanation was offered for the blueberries. I guess they just don't like those things. Then we stopped in Needles, CA, the LAST stop for MILES. The temperature was 104 at 11:30 and the attendant told us it would reach over 110 by the afternoon. They say a dry heat doesn't feel as hot, but in Needles, that isn't true. It was so hot that the car was radiating heat IN THE CAB and making the AC almost useless. We didn't reach the California Welcome Center until Barstow, where it was located in the Tangers Outlets, for some reason. When we left the welcome center and headed back to the interstate, we saw dirt roads with state road signs. It seems California could identify the road, but couldn't be bothered to pave it. The traffic was heavy in Barstow, and little did we know it would last ALL THE WAY to San Diego. That's two hours and over 100 miles of traffic.

We were greeted in San Diego by a temperature of 68 degrees. We on the east coast take the Gulf Stream, and the warmth it brings to the ocean water, for granted. The Pacific is cold, all the time. After we checked into the hotel in Point Loma, we took in a bite to eat at Pizza Nova. The marina was incredible and people packed the waterfront as they waited to board commercial fishing boats and, judging by their gear, head out for some SERIOUS offshore fishing action. After dinner, we walked back to the hotel only to discover the WiFi service there did not work, and were told our computer settings needed to be reset...again. Savannah swam in the heated outdoor pool, but Rebekah thought it was too cold to use the pool or the heated spa, since the prospect of walking from the room to the spa in her bathing suit was too much to bear. We went from 104 to 68 in the same day, and turned in for the night with high hopes for an amazing zoo experience tomorrow.

A river runs through it

We awoke in Albuquerque to a windless morning. It was just a clear reminder that we couldn't leave this town behind us soon enough. We set course for Williams, Arizona, and hit the road. We stopped at the Arizona Welcome Center for our first photo op. Right next to the welcome center was the first Native American tourist trap of the day. It looked like it was built from leftover plywood, with no windows, and it struck me that one could walk into that place and never walk out again, and no one would ever know what happened. As we continued to drive through the Navajo Nation, we saw a number of crazy statues next to even more of these tourist traps. One depicted a winged snake of some kind, another a two headed lizard with fangs barred. We even saw a dinosaur with a baby in its mouth. I started thinking about 'From Dusk Till Dawn' and John Carpenter's Vampires. The place really creeped me out. I didn't relax until we left the reservation.

The desert landscape has a savage beauty. It appears inviting and unforgiving at the same time. It demands strength from those who wish to tame it, an idea that is as much an illusion as any mirage the heat might create, using only a little distance and light. We were quite taken with it, but still found great comfort in the mountains outside of Williams. The ascent was gradual as we left the desert and soon we were surrounded by pine trees, a warm reminder of home. We stopped in Williams, booked a hotel room, and headed for the canyon.

The Grand Canyon National Park located at the canyon's southern entrance has everything a camper and hiker might want. At the Visitor Center, large displays are available that describe all the hiking trails available, complete with level of difficulty and expected time of travel. The information is invaluable. We checked out the charts and decided that hiking along the rim was our best option, given that we only had an afternoon to spend and we were out of breath after just walking from the parking lot. We chose to walk the Hermit's Rest route, which has multiple observation points, all serviced by a dedicated bus system.

The canyon was, of course, breathtaking, in both its geological splendor and incomprehensible size. I had heard many times that the Grand Canyon was an awesome display of the power of the Colorado River, but after seeing it, I am convinced that this explanation is just an easy way out of saying 'I have no idea what could have done this'. I'm sure the science is right, but it just seems impossible that this canyon exists simply because a river runs through it.

The people we passed along the way were a mix of different nationalities and cultures. And no one was speaking English. The park rangers were outstanding, and the canyon was so inviting I hated we didn't plan a day just to hike into it. I especially wished we could spend some time rafting on the river. The best we could do was stay to watch the sunset. It was worth it. We didn't get back to the hotel until 10 o'clock or so, and we collapsed. What a day.

Disappointment, thy name is Albuquerque

This morning we bought our first souvenirs, from a shop outside of Oklahoma City. They had a field where Savannah chased butterflies and a large pen with actual buffalo. Neat. We crossed into Texas and stopped for lunch at the first rest area, which offered an INCREDIBLE panoramic view of the windswept valley beyond. The wind had been sweeping nicely all day, so I assumed this was just par for the course. Next we stopped at the actual Texas Welcome Center, where the highlight was seeing a prairie dog in the adjacent field. Although, since there was a 'prairie' dog in it, it must have been, by definition, a 'prairie'. It may have been a marmot, come to think of it, because I'm pretty sure it was a field and not a prairie. I could be wrong, but I just don't think it was big enough for even a 'little house'. We weren't in Texas long, so our next stop was the New Mexico Welcome Center, where signs about how we shouldn't drink the water and should watch out for dangerous snakes and insects greeted us. Inside there were aliens to remind us of Roswell and something about a naval submarine, but all I really paid any attention to was the FREE COFFEE!

When we reached Albuquerque, the first thing to strike us was the modesty of everything we saw. It appeared the entire population was stuck in the lower middle class. Needless to say, we fit right in, but it wasn't at all what we expected. We checked into the hotel and mentioned that we needed a place to eat. We were directed to a local New Mexican eatery, where they used so many chilies that they offered to use their spicy sauce as a dressing for the salad I ordered. Apparently they couldn't dispose of it fast enough. I just got the Ranch. They also had NO sweet tea, which is something I had often heard about the West but never really believed. What's so hard about brewing sweet tea that a restaurant owner would say 'No thanks, I just don't have the energy to dedicate to such a complex undertaking'. But this letdown was just a taste of what was to come.

The Sandia Peak tram is an elevated tram that takes passengers through the mountains that surround Albuquerque. For Rebekah, this was the only redeeming quality of New Mexico, the only thing she could find that justified staying in Albuquerque. I should have known that the constant wind we drove through all the way there would be a problem, but honestly it never crossed my mind. After we finished dinner and went back to the hotel to freshen up before going up to the tram, a random guest overheard our conversation about it and told us the bad news. The tram wasn't running on account of the wind. Rebekah, refusing to simply believe just some guy in a hotel lobby, called and confirmed the truth. No Sandia Peak tram ride. It was the first real bump our well laid plans had hit. Suddenly, staying in Albuquerque seemed like a total waste of time. We pulled it together, though, and tried to make the best of things. And then the Internet connection refused to work in our room, and the hotel assured us the problem was with our computer, which is one way of saying they didn't want to deal with it. Little did we know, this would not be the last time we would hear this. The fine people at Verizon, the company that bought our previous cellphone service provider, refused to upgrade our service to include Nationwide minutes without our signatures on a new contract for service, which would include an additional $20 charge on our monthly bill. We deemed the change unnecessary and decided to depend on our computer as our only means of communication with our loved ones back home. And now it refused to work. Great. Tomorrow, the Grand Canyon awaits. And, on the bright side, we have extra money in the budget. Ain't optimism grand.

Capturing the moment in OKC

This morning we awoke to the Mississippi sunrise. In the hotel parking lot, a swarm of about 30 dragonflies greeted the day with us. Some might think this an omen. I thought it symbolic of the rural environment that is most of Mississippi, but whatever. After filling the cooler with hotel ice, one of the only good things about this hotel, we were Memphis bound. We took a few pics at the Tennessee welcome center (which is hardly worth talking about) and set a course for Graceland. I expected something special, almost transcendant. A legendary memorial, even. Turns out, Graceland is off the side of the road like anything else, such as a gas station or a homeless person. After seeing it from the car, and the 'Heartbreak Hotel' across the street, I thought we should check out Libertyland, an amusement park my family visited when I was just a kid. The Tom-Tom mapped a route, but when we 'reached our destination' there was just an old parking lot. Apparently, Libertyland had been torn down and nobody told Tom-Tom. He really needs to get on the ball because the part of town we ended up in wasn't the part of town we would have voluntarily visited, what with the high risk of drive-by shootings and all. So we left the parking lot behind us and headed through Memphis, where we quickly realized it wasn't Tom-Tom's fault, really. ALL OF MEMPHIS is the part of town we wouldn't have voluntarily visited, what with all the trash and filthiness. On the other side of Memphis is the Mighty Mississippi and the Arkansas line, and we were soon at yet another welcome center. The attendants there seemed rather apathetic about our visit to their state. Or maybe being welcome center attendants wasn't what they dreamed about as innocent young children, and they just liked taking out their dissatisfaction with how their lives had worked out on those unlucky enough to stop by. On the way through Arkansas we saw the Ozarks...which was the most interesting feature of the state.

We reached the 1000 mile mark on our journey while in Arkansas, which was cool. It made me wonder - Why are we always so keen on celebrating numbers divisible by 10, like the 30th birthday or the 100 yard dash? Numbers that end in zero are really uninteresting. Why not celebrate the 1221 mile of the trip, a number that is a palindrome, or the 35th birthday, a number that can be written as the sum of two cubes?

The Oklahoma welcome center was really awesome. I mean, they had a coffee station! Swarm of dragonflies aside, THIS was an omen. There were a lot of neat portraits of Native American life and actual Native American dress adorning the walls. Apparently, Oklahoma was BIG with these guys. The ladies working the desk there were super nice, and even mapped for us a route to the hotels in Oklahoma City. At the Arkansas line, it was hard to get the attendant to even acknowledge our existence, so you can understand our appreciation for this level of personal attention. The picnic tables outside were covered by large concrete teepee structures, and there were about a dozen of them. Very nice attention to detail, we thought, and we knew then Oklahoma was going to be great. And it was.

Once we made it to the OKC (that's what Snoop Dog called Oklahoma City on 'King of the Hill'), we stopped at the bombing memorial first. Without the aid of our trusty Tom-Tom, navigating this city would have been impossible. The city designers were probably those guys who graduated 'thank-the-lordi' from community college. The roads seemingly had no real pattern and didn't really seem to work as team. When we parked outside the memorial, a parking officer rolled over on a segway to check on us. Classy.

The memorial itself is hidden from street view by a black wall three stories high, with a single doorway in the bottom center. Once inside, we saw a field filled with bronze chairs sitting on clear cube bases. Each one has the name of one of the 168 victims of the attack. On the far side of the black entryway is another identical black wall entrance. Between the walls is a rectangular reflecting pool. Each entryway has a time carved into the top. The one we entered has the time 9:01, and the one on the far side has the time 9:03. These walls symbolically frame the time 9:02, capturing the moment of the bomb's detonation, the moment that changed the country, frozen in time. It was like nothing we had ever seen before.

Since we are traveling across the country to lands we often thought completely out of reach, it was decided to eat at as many restaurants featured on The Food Network as possible. Today we chose the Cattleman's Restaurant, where everybody wore cowboy boots and had big, shiny belt buckles. We even saw a guy with spurs, actual spurs, on the heels of his boots. I had a dish called lamb fries. Think fried clams, with cocktail sauce and everything, but instead of clams, it was lamb. On the way back to the hotel, we noticed that Oklahoma City is a very clean city, and it was a real pleasure navigating through it. We will miss it.

You can't go home again

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Yakov Smirnoff said that. Really, I'm pretty sure it was him. Our first step was getting the rental car from the airport. Once we made it clear it was our intention that we travel across the country IN A COMPACT, the attendant gave us a pity upgrade at no charge. Hello, Chevy Cobalt LT! And then we were off. We stopped to take pictures at the Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi welcome centers. Georgia had the best one, by far. The folks in Mississippi were super aggressive about getting us to sign the register, which leads me to believe their funding must be dependent on it.

Once we made it to Oxford, the first thing we did was go by the elementary, middle, high school complex for the county of Lafayette (pronounced la-fett in Mississippi). Lots had changed, of course, but the kudzu remained, like those penguins in Happy Feet when the sun disappears. Then we drove to the Oxford square in search of an authentic Oxford dining experience. We settled on the Ajax Diner, a very 'Vista like' restaurant and bar with 300 or so sandwich toothpicks stuck in the ceiling tile over the entire dining area. Apparently, patrons order sandwiches and get these toothpicks with colorful tops stuck in them. So they take the toothpicks, load them in a regulation drinking straw, and fire them into the ceiling. It was charming. We ordered some entrees and as an afterthought we ordered some cheese fries.

And now comes the part of the blog where I pull out the soapbox and stand confidently upon it. Today's mainstream eating establishments have ruined the legacy of the cheese fries. Imagine, if you will, a golden potato fry. It's hot, it looks a little wet from the grease it was fried in, and it BEGS to be dipped in something. Now, envision some shredded cheese. Notice this cheese is a solid at room temperature. If you were at home and wanted to make a cheese dip for your delicious french fries, would you think it a good idea to fill a cup with shredded cheese, toss it in the microwave and heat it until the cheese is melted? Of course you wouldn't, and do you know why? If you said it was because once the cheese cooled it would retake its solid shape, thus making it an impossible dipping substance, you would be correct. Why does this simple physical property of cheese escape the restaurant business? One must use a cheese that is not a solid at room temperature for cheese fries!

So the cheese fries were awful. But the rest of dinner was pretty good. We ordered the fried eggplant as a side and discovered this uncomfortable truth - just because something is fried doesn't mean it's delicious. After dinner, we went and checked out the house I grew up in. On the way, we found the very first baptist church I ever attended. It is standing and still in use, and looks exactly the same...only smaller. Time, apparently, has a way of shrinking things. Everything around the area where my childhood home stood has been developed. The Country mouse is now a City mouse by proxy. But, unbelievably enough, our old driveway is still there and it leads to the old house, which has all but been swallowed by the ONLY undeveloped land left in the area. It makes one wonder what kind of stuff must be going on behind the scenes here in Oxford to leave this 2 acres of land undeveloped for all these years. I did it, I found the old house, and after looking upon its ruin, I came to one conclusion - You can't go home again. Bono said that. Really, I'm pretty sure it was him.

How do we get there?

When I was a young college student in Greenwood, SC, a good friend of mine decided to take a cross-country road trip. Since he didn't have a car of his own, he talked a young woman he knew into taking this trip with him. I wasn't invited, even though I owned a small Nissan pick-up truck my parents had given me for high school graduation that would have made the trip. I guess he decided the prospect of spending time with half dressed hippy communes high in the Rocky Mountains wouldn't appeal to me. He didn't ask, but he would have been correct. When the summer arrived, he and this young lady packed up whatever late model used car a young lady who lived in a room behind the local college speakeasy could afford and off they went. They drove from Greenwood, SC and eventually arrived in Seattle, WA, where they parted ways. Turns out, young ladies who live behind bars have a tendency to be crazy. Who knew. He called home, got a bus ticket wired to him in Seattle, and set out on an entirely new adventure - traveling from sea to shining sea compliments of Greyhound. He, uh, doesn't talk much about that. Ah, to be young again.

A decade or so later, the Gongre family has decided to do exactly what these young people did. My wife has a brother who has planted a church in Bakersfield, CA. It is his idea that traditional church services are not reaching the youth of this country, what with the hymnals and the early services and such. And he is right, at least in Bakersfield. His church is growing quickly, and God is being brought to the masses. We are all very proud. Rebekah is especially proud, not only of his service to the church, but also for his sacrifice. Her brother Mark has a family of his own, and he moved his lovely wife and his two sons far from the Heimburger clan here in Columbia, SC. My wife misses her family, and this is why we are setting sail for Bakersfield, CA. I will finally get to see the fabled 'streets of Bakersfield' and will know what Dwight has been talking about. Then I will be free to judge him...unfairly, perhaps harshly, but free, nonetheless. I'm coming Dwight... Anyways, our first question after making this decision - How do we get there?

If I was still a young, carefree college student, I suppose I would be perfectly content with packing up the 2006 Honda Accord we own and heading out into the wild blue yonder. But alas, the wisdom that comes with age has settled upon me, and I thought it would be prudent to have the family car checked out and cleared by a mechanic first. There is a difference between adventurous and reckless these days. Sad, but true. The mechanic informed me that the timing belt on Hondas need to be replaced as a matter of routine maintenance. As we are looking at a three week trip which covers around 6000 miles, he recommended we go ahead and do that. This was news to me, as I have owned my share of late-model clunkers (none of them Hondas, by the way) and never had a timing belt issue. So I inquired of him what kind of price tag he was talking about. When he said $750, I decided I'd take my chances. I contacted my cousin, an expert himself in all things Honda, and he assured me my mechanic was correct. And that wasn't all. If the timing belt were to break while the car was in motion, say, traveling 80 miles an hour on interstate 20, for instance, the entire engine would suffer catastrophic failure, amounting to thousand of dollars in damage. After I hung up the phone with him, I began reflecting on my college friend's now seemingly reckless trip all those years ago. Ah, to be young again.

We can't fly to California, though I didn't mention this earlier, because I live in a world where no one has the money to fly a family of three to California from South Carolina and back, so it goes without saying. We checked out Amtrak, which took too long and was still too expensive. The last option - renting a car. The challenge - finding a rental agency that would allow their car to go from the east coast to the west coast, crossing through four time zones, and back again. The answer - Hertz. Apparently Hertz is run by a madman who doesn't care where you drive his cars. That's a good thing. My wife, though, was convinced she could find a better deal. My wife is an avid couponer, who for months now has been honing her budgeting skills with our family food fund. And she is sharp. So I figured, hey, I know Hertz will do it, so what could looking for options hurt? Well, guess what... We now have a reservation with Enterprise for a Hyundai Accent that will serve as our faithful stallion for the ride of our lives. Of course, Enterprise now has to change their website to reflect the fact that, in the future, they DO NOT want their cars driven from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. I guess the guy who runs that outfit isn't a madman, he's just a little careless with his website rental conditions. Game on. America, here we come.