Quickly makes you lose your mind.
Were you one of the three thousand or so cars that passed me today? I was driving the 1994 Ford F150 pickup with the bird cage stand in the bed, towing a 21-foot travel trailer from Wickenburg, AZ to West Wendover, NV.
The truck can pull the trailer, but barely. I’m lucky if I can get the speed up to 65 mph. Where the speed limit is 75 mph, everyone whizzes past me. Heck, they whiz past me just about everywhere, since I can’t keep the speed above 50 if I’m going uphill.
And there were lots of hills on this trip.
We — Alex the Bird and I — departed Wickenburg at 7:05 AM. The route, which was determined by Google Maps and adjusted to avoid Hoover Dam traffic, took us up U.S. 93 to I-40. We took the Interstate through Kingman, AZ and exited at Beale Street. Normally, we’d continue north on 93, but since I didn’t feel like dealing with a TSA search of the camper prior to crossing Hoover Dam, we hopped on State Route 68 to Bullhead City, crossed the Colorado River at Laughlin, and continued west on State Route 163. Then north on U.S. 95 to I-515 through Las Vegas. Then I-15 north to U.S. 93 north to S.R. 318 to U.S. 6 to U.S. 50 (briefly in Ely, NV) to U.S. 93 to U.S. 93A to West Wendover, NV.
Whew!
We were in the truck for 12 hours. I made one bathroom stop and two fuel stops, one of which included McDonalds. This was the first time I’d eaten at a McDonalds in at least three years. I hate myself for loving those fries.
I’ve never before been so aware of hills. The truck does okay on level ground and it even does pretty well going downhill. But get it on a slight incline going up and it’s an absolute dog. I mean, at times, I couldn’t even keep 50 MPH. When it dipped below 45 MPH, I had to turn the flashers on, like an underpowered, overloaded big rig climbing a hill.
Did I mention that quite a few of those passed me, too?
It’s funny, because everyone warned me to “take it slow” and “watch out for speed traps.” Hell, I’m more likely to get ticketed for driving too slow than for speeding.
Of course, there were exceptions. The ride down 68 to Bullhead City had a 6% downgrade for about 12 miles. I think that’s the only time I’ve ever been on a stretch of road with two runaway truck ramps. To save the breaks, I popped the truck into 2nd gear a few times to slow down. Worked like a charm. I had to repeat this exercise after a grueling climb up the other side of the Colorado River Valley on 163 when there was another section of road with a 6% grade.
I stopped for fuel at Searchlight, NV. Poor Alex seemed shell-shocked. I changed out his food and his water and closed him back in his box. (Alex travels in a lucite box with air holes, a perch, toys, and bowls for food and water. It’s really important to keep his box out of the sun when traveling.) I went into the camper to use the toilet and noticed that the fridge wasn’t running right. Later it seemed to be okay.
Then on to Las Vegas. I got a phone call from one of my cherry drying connections just as I neared the network of freeways there. When I hung up, I realized I was on I-515. I was supposed to be on I-15. But since the two highways merged north of the strip, I stuck with it. I had to pull over to make a phone call and I had to pull over again to check the bike rack after a passing car signaled me that it was loose. (It wasn’t that loose.)
Eventually, north of Vegas, I took the exit for 93 north. That started another trip through another featureless desert valley. Or maybe there were two of them. It’s easy to lose track in terrain like that. The mountains on either side were nice looking examples of uplifted sedimentary rock. But 93 miles of road with only 2 gas stations. And that’s where I nearly made a very big mistake.
The truck has two gas tanks. They each hold about 16 gallons of fuel. I usually stick with one tank until I get to E, then switch to the other. I’d switched to the second tank and had 3/4 tank left. So when I passed that second gas station, it never occurred to me to buy fuel.
I drove another 100 miles before I reached the next gas station. By that time, I’d completely drained the second tank — the engine was sputtering when I flicked the switch to change tanks. I was back on the first tank, seeing how far into the red I could get on its gauge when I reached the gas station. I would have been completely out of gas within five miles.
The pumps were so old that they couldn’t handle the math for fuel prices over a dollar. You know the kind of pumps. The digits aren’t created with LEDs or LCDs — they’re on a wheel and roll over as the numbers change. The owners of the place had taped the per gallon price ($4.28) written on a piece of cardboard over the place where the purchase total usually appears. I got out and spoke to the two women in the shack adjacent to the pumps. “I sure hope those pumps work,” I said. They assured me that they did.
I got two bars on my cell phone and used the opportunity to call Mike and check in. Good thing I did. An hour later, I had no cell signal at all. And I wouldn’t have one for more than two hours.
If you’ve never driven through the emptiness of Nevada, you probably have little idea of what it’s like. I’ve driven in every state of this country except Minnesota and there’s no state that has more nothing than Nevada. Sure, the rugged, rocky, barren mountains are pretty — for the first hour or so. The valleys between them are often nothing more than vast plains of nothingness. Think salt flats or dry lake beds or mile after mile of scrubby vegetation clinging to existence on scant rainfall and harsh winters.
I’d hoped to write something interesting about the drive, but there’s nothing memorable about it other than miles of straight, empty blacktop cutting through the desert. If I’d broken down, I’d have to hope one of the dozen or so cars who passed each hour would be kind enough to stop. At least I was dragging along a little house with me if I had to spend the night out there.
Things changed when I neared Ely. I’d climbed into high desert, over 6,000 feet. The truck seemed to be wheezing for breath in the thin air; I was lucky to get 40 miles per hour when we climbed through the pass just south of town. I decided to call it quits for the day. It was 5 PM and I was getting tired.
But Ely — no offense to the people who live there — didn’t have much to offer. Sure, there was an historic downtown that looked kind of interesting. But I needed to park an RV and I needed to spend the night in it with Alex the Bird. (How many hotels do you think take parrots?) There was a casino on the east side of town with a sign promising $15 RV sites. But the parking lot was dirt and the whole place looked sad and neglected. I kept driving.
An hour later, I reached a crossroads. I was supposed to turn left on route 93 to head north toward Wells. But Wells, which was 78 miles away, was a speck on the map on I-80 and I didn’t know what I’d find there. If I kept straight on 93A, I’d reached West Wendover in 59 miles. The map promised a bigger town. What I saw inmy mind was a Nevada gambling town on the border of Nevada and Utah, right on I-80. I imagined casinos with big parking lots for trucks and RVs. It wouldn’t take me too far off course. So I continued on 93A.
I rolled into West Wendover around 7 PM. It was exactly as I’d imagined it. Bigger, in fact. I homed in on the casino with the brightest lights and biggest parking lot. I pulled into a spot at the far end of the parking lot and used Google Maps in my Treo to look up the casino’s phone number. Minutes later, I had the security department’s permission to park there rather than in the truck parking lot across the street. This shot was taken with my Treo a while later, after dinner in the casino’s steakhouse.
I’d been on the road for 12 hours with six short stops. I’d covered more than 650 miles. I was halfway to Quincy.
Our course took us quite close to 
I punched Boeing Field (BFI) into the GPS and we got back on course. We passed far to the west of Mount Rainier, then headed inbound. Louis had done much of his training at Boeing Field, which is squeezed into a tight area north of Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) and Renton (RNT), I so I turned all navigation and communication over to him.
The morning was cool with a very gentle breeze as we headed north. We were at the northern end of Sonoma Valley, where it narrowed. We climbed into the hills.
As we climbed, the landscape changed. There were tall pine trees, rocky outcroppings, and rushing rivers below us. At one point, we crossed over a new bridge under construction. Louis circled it at my request so I could get a decent picture of it.
We continued up route 101 until it dumped us into a valley at Eureka. In the distance, beyond numerous farm fields, we could see the ocean with a marine layer moving it. It appeared that we’d have the same coastal clouds we’d had the day before, farther south. I wasn’t interested in flying over the tops of clouds along unfamiliar coastal terrain. I wanted to go inland. But with fuel at half tanks, I also wanted to top off fuel before we changed course. According to the chart, Murray Field at Eureka had fuel. So we headed in and landed at the field.
By this time, the wind was coming off the ocean, bringing clouds inland with it. You could see wisps of clouds speeding east, over the airport. We were advised to head north along the coast until we got to Crescent City, then follow route 199 (I think) inland to Grant Pass. That’s where we could pick up I-5 north to Portland. I was doubtful; I really didn’t want to fly over the clouds for the 50 to 60 miles to Crescent City. But I decided to take a look. We said some quick goodbyes and started up. I took off, climbing steeply at 1000 feet per minute through a scattered 200-foot ceiling of clouds. From that vantage point, it was easy to see where the clouds ended and the land began. Sometimes the clouds would be out over the ocean. Other times they stretched inland into the mountains. I handed over the controls to Louis and we continued north along the edge of the cloud bank at about 1,500 feet.
The cloud bank had shifted out a bit to the ocean by the time we reached Crescent City. It was very tempting to continue north along the coast. But when I looked out beyond the nearest clouds, it seemed to me that the clouds were thickening, climbing higher into the sky. I didn’t want to have to climb with them. And I certainly didn’t want to lose sight of the ground. So I decided to head inland, following the advice of the guy at the FBO. We turned east, found route 199, and followed it.
About 20 miles south of Portland, I dialed in Portland Approach and told them where we were and where we wanted to go. Although we were landing at Portland, it wasn’t Portland International. It was Troutdale (TTD), which sits on the Columbia River just east of Portland. Neither Louis nor I knew the area, so I used the magic word: “unfamiliar.” We got a squawk code for our transponder and vectors toward Troutdale. When we got closer, we were handed off to Troutdale Tower. I told the controller we wanted to land at “TV Land” — which is what I’d been told — and he guided us in to a ramp near the east end of the runway. The grassy field I’d been told to park in was clearly visible and I told the controller we’d land there. Louis set us down and we shut down.
I took this shot over the Cactus Plains east of Parker, deep in the old training area. No tank tracks here — the ground is a sea of old sand dunes finally stabilized by the growth of small desert bushes and other vegetation. You can clearly see the patterns of the shifting sands. I included part of the instrument panel in this shot to give an idea of scale; we were flying at about 1,000 feet up, where Louis seems to be most comfortable. This shot also shows how barren the area is.
A short while later, we reached Parker, AZ, along the Colorado River. This shot shows most of the town. The end of the airport’s new runway is on the right. The mountains in the distance are in California. The river is always beautiful and blue here because of the filtering action of the Parker dam less than 20 miles upriver that forms Lake Havasu.
This shot is a view looking south from just south of town. The area along the Colorado river is a heavily farmed on the Arizona side here; farther south near Blythe, CA, the farming activity is primarily on the west side of the river, in California.
From Parker, we continued west toward Twentynine Palms, CA. This was probably the most dreary part of the flight — mile after mile of empty desert. I didn’t take many photos. This shot of Iron Mountain gives you an idea. The cluster of buildings is a “substation” (according to my charts), but I don’t know what kind of substation it is. The open canal winds its way to the base of the mountain and enters it there, coming out of the mountain on the opposite side. Are they generating electricity there? Or is it a pumping station? Either way, Louis and I agreed that it was weird for the canal to take a detour through the mountain when it could have easily followed the road. I’d love to learn more about this if anyone has info; I came up blank on a quick Google search.
We continued west. The area beneath us was now densely packed with homes. We passed south of Palmdale Airport, flying between the canal and the main road. A while later, we were climbing into the foothills of the mountains. We passed just south of the Gorman VOR at Grapevine and continued on up a valley. It was a pleasant flight between rolling hills covered with green and tan grass and billions of orange flowers. Beneath us were ranches and small lakes — and the same road Mike and I had driven on two years before on a trip to Napa, CA.
Once away from San Luis Obispo, we headed northwest, intersecting the coast at Morro Bay. Anyone who has driven the Pacific Coast Highway (the PCH; Route 1) can tell you how incredibly beautiful it is from the road. But that’s nothing compared to the view from 1,000 feet up, just off the coast. I took quite a few pictures; this is one of the funkier ones I took with my fisheye lens.
A while later, we took a detour past Hearst Castle at San Simeon. My camera was having trouble focusing through the Plexiglas — I really should have taken the door off — but I managed to get a pretty good shot of this monstrosity, despite the glare. Mike and I had visited it years ago and it really is amazing inside.
We continued north, hugging the coast. Although we were wearing life jackets — which insisted on — I didn’t want to be beyond gliding distance of shore. Louis, who lives and trained in Seattle, is used to flying over water; I’m not. If we had a problem, I wanted to come down on dry land. Of course, for much of the distance, the only suitable landing zone on the coast was the thin ribbon of the PCH. An emergency landing would not be pretty.
We flew past Monterey and Pebble Beach, cutting across the peninsula to save time. On the other side, the tower instructed us to head due north, right across the bay. We were about three miles offshore, only 1,000 feet off the water, when I started getting nervous. I asked the tower if we could either come in closer to shore or climb. (I really do hate flying over open water.) The controller sounded annoyed, but let us come back to shore. Then he cut us loose, telling us to call NorCal Approach. I was glad to be rid of the Monterey area.
So we climbed to 2,000 feet and I managed to get the Flight Service Station on the radio. I asked if the low cloud condition persisted all the way to the Golden Gate. She told me that her satellite image was not that detailed. So we decided to take a more inland route. When she told us she couldn’t give us flight following at our altitude, I volunteered to climb to 3,000 feet so she could see me on radar. I don’t think she was happy about it. She turned us over to NorCal Approach just as we passed Half Moon Bay. I was glad we hadn’t landed there for fuel, since the clouds had already covered half the runway.
NorCal approach gave us a squawk code and confirmed that it saw us on radar. Then it turned us over to San Francisco Tower. They asked us to climb to 3,500 feet. That’s like nosebleed territory for me, but we complied without complaint.
The view from up there was absolutely amazing, with the marine layer coming in from the west like a thick, white, wooly blanket. To the east, however, the airport and city remained perfectly clear. I got a few good shots as we flew through.
I also got a chance to show off my traffic information system (TIS), which only works in Class Bravo Airspace. It clearly identified a number of targets that we were able to see in the air. With the fog coming in through the Golden Gate, all the sightseers were out in their planes. The tower warned us about a small Cessna at our altitude as we approached the bridge area. He recommended that we climb, but since we were already a bit lower, I told him we’d descend. Louis dropped us down another two hundred feet and we passed behind him. I don’t even think he saw us. I really don’t like flying high because of the planes that are up there. There are seldom any planes down at 500 to 1,000 feet AGL.