Toast to Go - A Road Trip!

Her perspective....

Let me start by saying a road trip to me means driving 15 minutes to DFW and flying in my first class seat.

Living in Denton while we built the new house meant driving back and forth constantly. That was probably the most I have driven in years. Even when I worked I was about 2 miles from home.

When I was 10 years old, my parents took Kim and I on a driving vacation.

When we moved from California to Oklahoma, I flew. Bob drove with the dog and Dennis alongside.

I did drive to Pensacola from here in my Beetle. Brian and I took turns driving.

We have driven to Tulsa a few times in the almost 17 years we have lived in Texas. We've driven to Austin.

We have taken many road trips in other parts of the world. In New Zealand we have driven the South Island on two different occasions. We have taken road trips in Europe, England, Ireland, and South Africa, just never our own backyard. And that's about to change! Our big adventure begins tomorrow!

There are some things you just can't see from the sky. Or so we have told ourselves. With that in mind and the Toaster filled with gas, we will head west tomorrow morning for parts 'sort of' unknown.

We originally thought we would head to California but that plan has already changed.

We know we would like to visit Santa Fe, some airplane 'graveyards', maybe the Petrified Forest, Painted Forest and the Grand Canyon.

We have some books on where to eat and where to stay along Route 66.

So buckle up and come along for the ride!

His perspective....
For those of you who have had the "pleasure" of driving with me in the past, you know that "buckling up" is putting it mildly.

My first trip on the Mother Road was when we migrated from New Jersey to our new home in Southern California. This was in August, 1959. My parents, my brother and I and the dog, nice and cozy in a 1956 Chrysler Windsor coupe. Yep, August. Air conditioning was from the windows that rolled down and the wind wings. I would imagine that the motels in which we stayed on Route 66 had similar ventilation systems. Interesting that probably none of us would entertain a car or hotel(let alone a "motel"!) without power everything and air conditioning today.
I vaguely remember, come on I was only 9 at the time, staying in Washington,PA., somewhere in Illinois, maybe Oklahoma and then the sights and trinkets from the Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon. Another vague memory is our last stop before reaching the promised land, either in Williams, AZ or Needles, CA. Needles may have been warm in August. Finally, we arrived in the promised land! The San Fernando Valley! The house wasn't ready yet, so we stayed at the Monticello Motel on Sepulveda Blvd, just south of Roscoe. It had a pool!
My, my how times have changed. The Valley was the promised land! And one probably wouldn't go through Sepulveda and Roscoe without an armed escort today. But I wouldn't mind having the '56 two-tone red and white Windsor in the garage!

So we're off to points west. Although we sold the nice car last week, the Toaster is fairly new and should do fine.
We're equipped a bit differently than my 1st trip 50 years ago, with necessities such as laptops, IPODs, cameras with tripods and monopods, cell phones and navigation systems.
I wonder if the box of my Dad's slides stashed in my closet contains some slides from that long ago trip? My, my.....how times have changed!