Westward Ho!

We recently completed our cross-country adventure, traveling from upstate New York to Beaverton, Oregon. Not exactly a journey like the pioneers of the 1800's traveling the Oregon Trail, though Jan insisted everyday on wearing dresses like the woman below. They got a bit cumbersome on our hikes and runs, but otherwise seemed to work well. At least Jan didn't have to worry about ticks or snake bites, they wouldn't get through the dress material. My beard didn't get that long, though there were many days shaving seemed to be an unnecessary evil.

Amazingly I have a top ten list of what I liked best about the trip from east to west across the states!

1. Camping just outside of the main entrance to Devil's Tower National Monument, hiking around the base of the Tower and the next day running on a couple of the trails. Our KOA Kamping Kabin had a direct view of the Tower.
2. Having the speed limit be 80 mph in many of the states. The first 80 mph sign we saw was in Minnesota as we headed toward South Dakota. It makes one wonder why NY can't be at least 70 mph from the border near Erie, Pa to south of Buffalo.

3. Driving highway 59 and 387 through extremely rural Wyoming. Make sure the gas tank is full before leaving Gillette, it's pretty much the last chance for 200 miles. The road was extremely lightly traveled and more interesting, in a desolate kind of way, than the interstate. We probably didn't see 40 vehicles on these roads.
4. Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. A tiny town in the south part of the state. We stayed at a small local motel called the Alpaca Inn. Very peaceful. We swam laps in their local community pool, went to the springs twice, hiked and relaxed.
5. Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho. You have to want to go there to get there. It's not on the way to anything. It's worth the side trip if you like weird things Mother Nature has to offer. Remnants of volcanic activity that you can drive and hike around in a few hours. From there we drove to;
6. Hailey, Idaho.  A neat small town heading toward Sun Valley, Idaho. We basically picked staying there for a night by chance. I got to run on a trail while Jan biked alongside. The motel was great, they even had a pancake machine for breakfast! Yes, I'm a rube. We had the motel pool and hot tub to ourselves. The town is nestled in a valley with gorgeous mountains all around. It's a place you could spend a week visiting.
7. Traveling for 9 days with Jan. She was the navigator I was the driver. There were only a few meltdowns by me when traffic was an issue or we were "lost".
8. Running Pre's Trail in Eugene, Oregon. It was hot, we got lost thanks to my poor sense of direction, probably the only people to get lost on a mostly circular trail, but I'm still glad we did it.
9. Hiking up the Centennial Trail in Lava Hot Springs. I can say we liked it even though the 45-50 minutes "easy" walk/run turned into 2 1/2 hours of mostly being lost because we made it back down the mountain and have a story to tell. It was also nice recovering with a gallon of water each, then having dinner and plenty of wine before heading to the hot springs and soaking while looking up at the stupid mountain again and saying, "hey, we made it all the way up there!"
10. Being away from work, disconnected for long periods from the noise of the world. We had free satellite radio and hardly used that, the local stations, cd's or anything else considering all the time we spent on the road. That was nice.