Feed on:
Posts
Comments

At the End of a Long Drive


Shreesh and Neena Taskar

We didn't make the decision, the decision made us. On October 20th, 2007, we left our comfortable city of San Francisco to follow a simple algorithm - go North till the road ends then turn around and then go as far South. In between those two points was the stage, the timeline, the space, where we made things happen and things happened to us.

The past is fleeting and the stories, the sights and the feelings are perishable. One sees what one wants to see, and perhaps we are not capable of more. We saw that people are kind and helpful even if they were not materially rich. Some we could understand even though we didn't speak the same language, the motivations of others were incomprehensible even though we did. In the end fragments remain - the smell of roasting chocolate, a flock of snow Ptarmigians on snow, the creaking of the rainforest, the rough feathers of penguins, and the intoxication of Curanto.


So these are our stories. Every time you visit the site you will see a random post below. Each starts with Lo que pasa es que...

Reflections on the Loneliest Road

Jan 24th, 2008 by

On so lonely

Sign proclaiming the
loneliest road

Just a few days of warm weather causes us to miss the cold – just a little. About the drive on the Loneliest Road. (Map this!)

After waiting six weeks for the car to be done we were hoping for a nice relaxing drive home. Hah! We just happened to pick the worst storm of the season to drive to San Francisco. After dumping nine feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada it moved straight towards us. Luckily we skirted around it but outside Idaho Falls we hit the slipperiest spot on the trip. Going 50mph was fine until I wanted to pull over to take a photo – the FJ scooted forward like a hockey puck upon the most minimal braking.

Sand

First Greenery in weeks – Sand Mountain

The storm provided us with an excuse to take “The Loneliest Road in America”, a somewhat gimmicky moniker for Route 50 going through Nevada. In the 1980’s a guide book disparaged this section of highway and gave it this title in a pejorative sense, but the locals have turned it into a marketing tool to entice travelers to drive through. There is a small industry that sells pins, stickers, and other trinkets saying things like “I survived the loneliest road”, and such.

In a state where glitzy casinos are the main draw the Loneliest Road is a pleasant tongue-in-cheek diversion. The towns are spaced about an hour apart, hardly what one would call a remote area. There are also eleven(!) mountain passes, some that rise to almost 8,000 feet and others that are a mere 4,000 foot bump. The road conditions were excellent through out and did not have much traffic, certainly better than contending with the trucks on the interstate.

The road Big Storm Lenticular Clouds Will it end

All this already seems remote, as I write this in Baja California. Sitting on the beach with multi-colored drinks provides ample opportunity to reflect on our travels through cold weather with nostalgia.

2 Responses to “Reflections on the Loneliest Road”

  1. Vinay says:
    January 24, 2008 at 4:18 pm

    they’ll market anything out here

  2. madhuri says:
    January 24, 2008 at 4:51 pm

    The pictures of storm clouds are beautiful!

Leave a Reply