An opportunity presented itself to undertake something I’ve always wanted to do...a cross country road trip! Last year we moved from Charlotte, North Carolina (our home for 6 years) to Pensacola, Florida. As I have written on this blog before I love full size American cars and my parents happened to have a surplus vehicle that was right up my alley. I decided to fly home to California and drive the car back to our new home in Florida. The vehicle is a 2002 Cadillac DeVille DTS, a lot of folks were worried and probably thought I was crazy to try driving across the country in a nearly 20 year old car. I also had a very small window to get back home so it would have to be a pretty grueling pace in order to meet my deadline.
There were a couple of variables that had to line up, the one way ticket to Los Angeles had to be relatively affordable and I had to accommodate a previously scheduled vacation before I could fly out to Los Angeles. As it turns out I found a great ticket for the Saturday morning of the Martin Luther King, Jr holiday weekend. My vacation would end on Wednesday, I would work Thursday & Friday and then fly to California Saturday morning. I had to be back to work on Tuesday. This gave me the outline of my trip; Saturday to travel to California and Sunday & Monday to drive back. My gps was reporting 29 hours of driving exclusive of any pit stops. In theory I paced myself at 2- 16 hr drives...that was my plan anyway.
California
I had expected to have to travel to New Orleans or Atlanta in order to find an affordable ticket and to have to fly into Los Angeles International Airport. I was really amazed to find a ticket from Pensacola (a very small regional airport) to Ontario, California (via Atlanta)...Ontario airport is much smaller than LAX and only about 20 minutes from my parents house. It has been my experience that there is a premium to fly out of these airports. Things needed to line up just so to make this trip work and this seemed like a good omen. The flight out of Pensacola was a red eye , and with the Atlanta layover and time difference I arrived in California at about 10:20 AM, this gave me a full day in California before starting back. Saturday was spent visiting with family and then resting up for the long trip. On Sunday morning I loaded up the car with cargo I wanted to take back to Florida, spent a little more time with family and then got on the road heading east on Interstate 10 at about 2:30 PM Pacific.
My route would take me about 2000 miles to Pensacola, Florida deviating off of Interstate 10 only for the bypass around New Orleans, Louisiana and then rejoining Interstate 10 just before the Mississippi state line. Otherwise it was going to be I-10 all the way. I have driven from San Bernardino to outside Tucson past Benson, Arizona previously so it was going to be a while before I encountered any new to me scenery. After living on the East Coast for nearly 11 years ago the landscape of California and the Southwest now seems very exotic to me. The mountains rising from the Los Angeles basin are particularly dramatic and I enjoyed seeing the wind farm outside Palm Springs. I stopped at the Cabazon Dinosaurs to take pictures before it got dark, it seemed like the kind of classic roadside attraction you must indulge in while on a road trip. The freeway overpasses have been labeled with “Desert Hot Springs” / “Palm Springs” script from the classic Palm Springs welcome sign, I thought that was a nice bit of place making. I left the Coachella Valley behind and headed towards the Arizona state line. The sun would set somewhere before Blythe...the last town in California before the Colorado River.
Arizona
My trip through Arizona was completely at night. My earliest road trip memories are on the family night drives to visit my Grandmother when she lived in Morenci, Arizona. She would move to greater Los Angeles in the 80’s and after that the frequent trips stopped for the most part. We would occasionally visit every few years to see other relatives. But I’ve been through the state enough to recognize how much Phoenix has sprawled across the desert. The distance between Phoenix & Tucson doesn’t feel as great as it once did, perhaps one day the two metro areas will grow together. After Tucson it was remote again. I stopped briefly around the cutoff towards the part of the state my parents grew up in when I saw the signage for Safford...the largest town near Morenci...their hometown. I felt the prayers and good vibes on this trip and really leaned on my guardian angels to get me where I was going safely. I would pass milestones that reminded me of family, and loved ones gone. My godmother had retired to greater Phoenix and was recently laid to rest there and my Grandmother’s final resting place was in Morenci. As I passed by these locations I took comfort in believing they were watching over me on the trip.
New Mexico
I also travelled New Mexico entirely at night, passing through Lordsburg and taking the longest non meal break of the entire trip at a rest stop on a ridge outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico. I got back on the road just before dawn and watched the sunrise over the New Mexico/Texas border.
Texas
Texas would be nearly half of my entire trip. The sun rose Monday morning in El Paso, set in San Antonio and I crossed the state line into Louisiana at midnight Tuesday. My family also has roots in the El Paso/Juarez area and I had been there as a child. It too has grown tremendously since I was last there. I found the mid-century modern rest stops of Texas very interesting, they were fairly sophisticated designs with long planar walls and elegant outstretched beams supporting in 2 cases thin slab roofs and in one case A-Frame like gables. They had interesting block, and or stone work and remarkable mosaic tile murals. The three I stopped at were in good condition. I stopped for breakfast in Van Horn, Texas which bore a striking resemblance to Radiator Springs from the Disney*Pixar Movie “Cars”. In Van Horn I saw a great old pueblo style hotel and a remarkably intact 1970’s Thunderbird on the side of the road. I associate that Thunderbird with my late Father-In-Law who had one when my wife was a child, I took it as a sign he was watching over me on the trip as well. The drive across Texas was scenic and very long! At one point I drove past the town of Segovia on Sycamore Creek and immediately thought of my Grandmother & Godmother both of who were Segovias! And my Grandmother used to live on Sycamore Avenue, so I definitely felt them with me again. I rolled into San Antonio at dusk and kept on going until I hit Houston at night. After Houston it was on to Louisiana.
Louisiana
I hit the Louisiana border at about midnight central time. My elapsed time was about 31 1/2 hours at that point. The Louisiana welcome center was notable for the sign near the pet walking area that said “beware of Aligators” and because there were 2 wild boars hanging out in the parking lot. I managed to evade the wild boars and get back on the road and passed through Baton Rouge while crossing the Mississippi River. I split away from Interstate 10 for the rest of the trip through Louisiana to bypass New Orleans. This would be a more direct route, and the bypass would converge back with I-10 at the Mississippi state line. Traveling at night through the wooded highways does not provide much scenery but I had a very comfortable vehicle equipped with 7 CDs in the radio so that kept me entertained. I must admit around Houston that I was very tired, but at no point dangerously so. I was much like Forest Gump on his cross country runs...if I needed to rest I just would. But it would be dishonest to say I was not tired. Thanks to the luxurious seating of the Cadillac I can say that I was not physically fatigued at all, the car ate the pavement like nothing at all and it was like traveling across the country in a Laz E Boy chair!
Mississippi
New Orleans is about 3 hours from my house, so once I was across the Mississippi state line I was starting to have that so close but still so far feeling. I want to reiterate that I never felt unsafe, but math is math and I had been on the road for nearly 36 hours with only minimal pit stops. I was relying on prayer, angels and caffeine to get me through the home stretch. Again it being night there was not much scenery but I loved stopping at the welcome centers for breaks and to snap a picture of the state signs.
Alabama
Oh I could really taste it now, we are close enough to Alabama that we travel to Mobile on occasion and yet it still felt like so much more to go! It was still dark when I crossed in to Alabama.
Florida
Victory, with the sun starting to rise somewhere near Mobile I rolled into Florida at 7:00 AM Central time 38 and 1/2 hours after setting out on my journey. I started on a Sunday afternoon and it was now Tuesday morning. Some how my rest breaks and meals added about 10 hours to the pure driving time my GPS had estimated.
I tried to post regularly on Facebook as I made the trip and between that and texting my family I felt a lot of support that kept me going. I’m not sure I need to do a trip like that again anytime soon, perhaps if I did I would try I-40 next time. I-10 is a safe, well improved highway and there is much raw scenery, but not too many attractions on the open stretches. It would have been nice to visit the cities or see the Alamo but it was not to be on this trip. My vehicle performed admirably delivering superior comfort and reasonable fuel efficiency...I think I was getting close to 450 miles per gas tank, and for most of the Texas leg of the trip the speed limit was 80 MPH!
