Eastward Migration - Day 1

"You will live a very comfortable life."
-Panda Express Fortune Cookie

First you have to get to the other side of the country. So as I Twitter earlier the final tally on Day 1 was 644 miles and 12 hours behind the wheel of an automobile. Which put me in Kingman Arizona a small city about 50 miles over the California/Arizona boarder. My original plan, made when I was apparently mentally incapacitated, was to make it to Flagstaff Arizona...um...yeah no idea how I thought that was going to be possible. I have to admit I was really starting to drag as I pulled into the hotel for the night but hey 644 miles down and only about 2700 to go!! :-D Rather than ramble on and on I thought I'd just share some of the highlights of today below so here goes. Also be sure to check out some of the pictures I put on Flickr.

• This country is an extremely diverse place. I couldn't help but ponder as I made the transition from the green farmlands of southern California to the barren scrubby desert of eastern California/Arizona that this country is an amazingly diverse place climate, people, culture, terrain and how quickly all of the above can change. As you're driving through the desert on a highway that stretches as far ahead as you can see with some occasional snow capped mountains off the distance and NOTHING else around it seems bizarre that there can be literally 100s or 1000s of square miles with only the barest of human influences and then we humans can cram several MILLION people on to Manhattan island. As far as the desert goes it's a hot dry place, and of course you really need to remember to stay hydrated, I tried but I'll need to try a little harder tomorrow I think, GO FIGURE!
• Rail is dead in this country, shhhh don't tell the south. I have to say it was fun to see all the trains as you're driving along some of them with four engines stretching out for considerable distance. In many places the road is actually bridged over the rail tracks to give the trains right of way. Of course all of these are primarily for cargo transport but it is cool to see nonetheless. It is always weird to me to see a whole train just sitting there on the track going nowhere I have to wonder what kind of effort is required to keep track of things like that and what happens when someone's coming the other way.
• Mojave River (?!). One thing that was kind of neat was driving over a bridge in Mojave just like any other bridge you'd see of any other river completely with the sign informing you that you were crossing the "Mojave River." Of course what made the experience unique for me was that the sign was infact the only evidence that there's infact, or at least was at one time, a river there the riverbed was completely dry and didn't look like it'd seen any water in recent times.
• Highways that alternate between divided and not SUCK. Yeah pretty obvious I guess but I got stuck behind a semi convoy right as the highway went from a nice two land in each direction divided highway to a two lane ROAD with double yellows. Probably lost about a good hour or so there. Although I guess that is made up for a little bit by the fact that Arizona's posted speed limit it is 75 mph so good times there I guess. Also the moron who painted his truck with glitter paint and then decided to blind me completely for a good several miles yeah you also suck as well.
• Bugs go SPLAT!!

I'm sure there were other things I had wanted to mention as I passed them by but they escape me now. All in all it was a good incident (YAY!) free day. Several people have asked me "how I do it" but I don't know as I mentioned before there is something about the open road maybe that is why this country has such a love affair with cars. I just like the singular purpose and focus of the effort you kind of settle in set the cruise to 80 and that's it that is your only care in the world at that moment, try it sometime it's very freeing. You of course also need to remember that these roads are long haul roads it isn't like the 880 in San Francisco or 128 in Boston you can set the cruise control for the most part and just go that is a much different kind of driving.

Plan tomorrow is to hit Amarillo, Texas with a fallback of Santa Rosa, NM I think.  For now time to hit up the hotel pool ;-)  Don't forget to take a look at my lame iPhone pics for at least some idea of the terrain and what not.