Reason to Wander
Amy and Sloan are a thirty-something couple from Oregon who quit their jobs and sold everything to travel for a year. (Interview with Amy and Sloan)
Features
No. 170: A Pretty Good Canyon
Mostly, you expect to be left breathless by the Grand Canyon. Not just by the steep trails that plummet you miles down to the muddy Colorado River, but by the overwhelming scale of the thing. Etched in red, orange, buff hues, layer upon layer, a hundred tributary canyons feeding into the big one. Standing at any vista point, the ten crow-miles across the canyon look flat, like a painting you could caress. And then you move a little. Shadows shift, new light gives it new depth and the grandeur of it takes your breath away. This is what you expect of the Grand Canyon. What you don’t expect is the techno music.
No 163: Collecting Stickers, When You Can
The first time Amy wrote about our quest for good stickers, we were in Oklahoma about a year and a half ago. I was still reeling from the incredible revelation that not every museum gift store or quirky roadside attraction offers a sticker to commemorate your visit. I've gotten used to the idea now and am no longer surprised when a major tourist attraction's gift store offers a million different kind of magnets, patches, t-shirts and beer cozys and no stickers. Such was the case back in Atlanta, at Coke HQ.
No 161: Elvis Presley's Graceland
Unlike our trip from Oregon to Florida in 2006, Amy and I have packed our current cross-country itinerary with some of the greatest American road trip stops in human history. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Elvis Presley's Graceland. Here's how it happens.
The Wait: In our case, we waited a full 32 hours before actually getting in because we arrived on a Monday night to find that Graceland is closed on Tuesdays. Besides using this time to see Memphis (recommended), we also used it to download Elvis music and begin the process of saturating our consciousness with the sappy, tender melodies of the best selling musician of all time. When the big day finally arrived, we had already seen the Sun Studio space where the King cut his first record, all of the hotel signs along Elvis Presley Blvd. that boast "All King" beds, and listened to Elvis's 50 greatest hits on continuous repeat about two dozen times.
No 158: Walking in a Corporate Wonderland
Big greedy corporations? Boooo. Guided tours of corporate headquarters, including big gift shops and lots of free samples? Yay! So it went on our day spent in downtown Atlanta, where we toured the World of Coca-Cola and CNN studios. At Coke HQ, they pump you so full of soda love that by the time you get to the World Tasting Room and are granted bottomless samples of sixty Coke products from around the world, only bad things can happen. Bloated and sticky with the secret formulas of weirdo African and Latin American pops, we ambled through the movies, memorabilia and propaganda of an American corporate juggernaut. Besides an afternoon of funny gas, here were the takeaways: The only thing that matters in the world is Coke, which may or may not somehow improve brain and nerve function.
No 156: Driving Like Lightweights
For the sake of our sanity and the mechanical welfare of our vehicle (vee-hick’ll), we like to take our sweet time. That doesn’t just mean keeping it under 65, it also means not driving more than five hours a day unless absolutely necessary. What that gets us is easy afternoons and lazy mornings at beautiful state parks, watching the sun come and go while we shoot the breeze with retirees from Wisconsin and local bass fisherman on holiday. Time to watch the fog burn off the cold morning lakes of Georgia’s winter. Time to drink a beer, check the oil, skip a few stones before thinking about dinner. It also gets us a fair amount of teasing from road-worn relatives, like Amy’s uncle Kip in Marietta, Georgia.
No. 153: The Pickled Meats of New York City
There are so many authentic Jewish
delis in New York that descriptors like "institution" and "perfection"
are applied almost too generously, albeit always with fierce loyalty.
Shortly after we arrived in New York, local news outlets began running
a story on the relocation of Manhattan's 2nd Avenue Deli, from its old
location in the East Village to a cheaper, name-defying outlet at 33rd
and 3rd. If you're asking directions, that's pronounced toity toid and toid.
Stories
of the 2nd Avenue Deli's grand reopening heaped on words like
"institution," "famous," and "cholesterol," leaving little doubt that
we would visit this place. Applying small town logic, we tried to avoid
the afternoon rush by going for lunch at 2:30 and were rewarded with a
chilly forty five minute wait for a table. The 2nd Avenue Deli is a
"famous ""institution" of "cholesterol" that is open twenty four hours
a day in a city that is awake and hungry for twenty four hours a day.
There's always a line.
No. 148: Nothing, Before Everything
On the first page of my journal, on the day we first left the country,
I wrote the words “WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?” because I thought that a year
later, as we prepared to come home, it would mean something to me.
Instead,
there are really just two things in my head these days, these two
things more than any other things. The first is the song “ The End” by
The Doors. No challenge in working that one out. The second thing
though, is Alan and Robyn.
No. 142: Enjoying a Benchmark
It was one year ago yesterday, November 6, 2006, that we loaded our backpacks, our trepidation and our anticipation into a little yellow Volkswagen camper. When we left Portland, when we began this trip, it was an appropriately melancholy day. It rained intermittently. It was cold. The exposed edges of interstate 84 were whipped by fierce winds and I could barely control the sluggish breadbox mass of that bus. We spoke very little that day. When we did speak, even our fiercest reassurances were leaking doubt. The bus, thankfully, did no leaking of its own and when we woke the next day, there was sunshine in Idaho. That last day in Oregon was already a year away from us.
No. 140: The Volkswagens Of Taxco
At times, Mexico feels like it’s the natural habitat for the old-style
VW Beetles, like they were never a German car to begin with. They’re
made here, adored here, impeccably maintained here and it’s impossible
to drive for more than a few minutes on most roads without passing one.
The first two days we were in Mexico, our ten-month running
international Punchbuggy match took a turn for the ugly.
Amy: Punchbuggy red!
Me: Goddamnit.
Amy: This is going to be eas-PUNCHBUGGY GREEN!
Me: Ow!
Amy: Got a little exci-PUNCHBUGGY WHITE!
Me: Stop punching my neck!
Amy: Punchbuggy red again!
No. 138
Some decisions are bulletproof. The week spent on Malaysia’s Perhentian Islands. Three days living with elephants in Laos. Renting a car in Ireland. The time I decided not to get into an Indian taxi that had literally just caught fire in front of my eyes, despite the driver’s enticing cry of, “Come! Cheap!”
Months ago we decided to change our original itinerary, forgoing the worthwhile (though possibly over-hyped?) Trans-Siberian trip for a thriftier, more tropical, happy ending in Mexico and Guatemala. Belize in December sounds nice too. But before that, there would be the sunset wedding of our Portland friends Zach and Elsa, on the Pacific beaches of Troncones, Mexico.
No. 137: Surviving the Mother of All Days
Dawn breaks at the Hong Kong airport and we know we're in for a nightmare of a day. The flight that will take us from Hong Kong to Mexico City is actually three flights, totaling about 26 hours of air and layover time. The first one to Tokyo, on Japan Air, is a breeze because everyone knows that traveling to Japan is like visiting the future. Lots of legroom, people wearing crazy wristwatches, little TVs everywhere and the very last, relatively tasty in-flight meal we'll be served in Asia. Three words: Included noodle sauce. The second flight, to Los Angeles, is the long one. The entire flight, we're nagged by the feeling that we're cheating somehow, like we're coming home early.
Drinking Chinese Tea, In Context
If a Western foreigner walks into a restaurant in China and orders tea,
odds are good that they’ll be served a Lipton tea bag. It’s made in
China, of course, but still Lipton. If you know that tea was first
cultivated in China, that it’s been produced and savored here for at
least the last fifteen hundred years, then you understand the travesty
of this. Amy was first to work it out and start demanding the good
stuff. It does require some persistence.
Amy: I’ll have tea to drink.
Waitress: Lipton.
Amy: No, Chinese tea.
Waitress: Chinese tea?
Amy: Chinese tea.
Waitress: Chinese tea?
Making Peace With Lijiang
There must be so many small corners of China that deliver the sensory experience of the Old Country without the admission fees and flag-waving tour groups of the New Country. I suppose if we had the benefit of better language skills and more of a PeaceCorps sense of adventure in this ninth month of travel, we would be riding for days in cramped mini-vans and sleeping on straw beds to discover these places. But pacing wins the marathon and sometimes we have to behave like we’re on vacation, like normal people just taking a break, and not making a job of moving around and roughing it. We collect experiences like paychecks and then, when it feels like we’ve hustled enough weird conversations in bus stations and awkward stares in back alley produce markets, we go to Lijiang.
Recent Updates
No. 175
Getting Back to Normal: As if we needed another major milestone to prove that you can quit your life
No. 174
New Trips In An Old Car, Part 3: There are lots of things Iâm looking forward to in Oregon. Good o
No. 173
A Story For Grandchildren: A boy wrote to a girl on the Internet and they decided to meet for a drin
No. 172
Valley of Fire: It always seems so unlikely that you can find gorgeous feats of nature just outside
No. 171
Having One Hell of a Big Day: Contrary to the nice nâ easy philosophy thatâs governed most of ou
No. 170
A Pretty Good Canyon: Mostly, you expect to be left breathless by the Grand Canyon. Not just by the
No. 169
New Trips in an Old Car, Part 2: Drivers of classic cars, be they just motoring on a Sunday afternoo
No. 168
Pie Town: "Great Pie on the Great Divide - It's All Downhill from Here." So goes the motto of the D
No. 167
The Unsurprising Bounty of National Parks: There are so many National Parks and Monuments in the Wes
No. 166
The Surprising Bounty of State Parks: Few roadtrip moments are as rewarding as taking a chance on a
