aggienaut | Entries tagged with roadtrips

MONDAY, OCT 1st (map)
   It had been dark when we arrived in Young so we were finally able to see it during the day. It once again had that Old West look to it, with a lot of shops along the Main Street, and several former-hotel bars. Town had a mainly agricultural feel to it with a touch of tourism -- it's famous for its cherries and surrounded by many cherry orchards.
   Cass and I were both highly amused to find a restaurant on main street called "Juicy Lucy's Rude Food." Unfortunately since we got underway at 0700 not much was open yet (even the bakery!)
   Before leaving town we found the "Chinese Garden" which was quite pretty. Apparently a lot of Chinese came over during the Australian gold rush and settled in little pockets.

   Just the next town over (Cowra) we came across a "Japanese Garden," but admission was like $20 (the Chinese one was free!), and, after looking through the fence we declared it didn't look as nice as the Chinese one anyway. But apparently there had been a Japanese POW camp just next to this location, during WWII. Interesting fact, at the time there were some 2,223 Japanese POWs being held in Australia... and 14,720 Italian POWS from the Africa campaign. During a prison break in Cowra several hundred POWS and several guards had been killed. Many POWS were reportedly killed by their own countrymen, though neither the plaques at the site nor the wikipedia entry explains why.

   Just a few little towns later we found ourselves driving past the "historic village" of Carcoar, and once again made a spot decision to pull off the highway investigate. It was indeed a very cute little village that looked like it had somehow been preserved in the 1800s. We had lunch there, where we were shocked to discover the huge delicious grilled chicken sandwiches we'd just ordered only cost a measely $11! What madness!

   Once again it was only a short distance further until the next noteworthy location -- almost by accident we suddenly found ourselves driving on the famous Bathurst Racetrack. Apparently that's a thing. That's famous.

   After Butthurst our route merged with a major highway headed from the interior to Sydney (which was now only two hours away or so, though we very specifically planned our route to avoid the city). The highway here was broad and fast and boring. For the first time on this exciting roadtrip I found myself nodding off.

   Shortly though we began to rise up into the Blue Mountains, and the rolling hills and cows that had thus far marked pretty much the entire trip gave way to steep forested hills and mountains. And you know what? Apparently route forty has NO EFFING SCENIC TURNOUTS to pull over and actually look at things.
   So we took a detour that took us several ks off the highway to a place with some pretty sweet views.
   Continuing on our way, once we were no longer in the national park there were a lot of apple orchards and cute little shops selling apple pies. We stopped at one such place and I had a slice of apple pie on the balcony overlooking some blossoming cherry trees, a pond, and rolling hills:

   Just about when the highway popped out of the mountains and headed into Sydney, we turned left and gratuitously went way back into the mountains. The idea behind this was to stay on the scenic routes and avoid the boring cityscapes ..... but the sun soon set and the rest of the journey was in the dark. I'm sure the drive back through the national park would have been lovely though. Once through to the other side we saw the shadows of enormous mining trucks lumbering around near us like giant shadow beasts. Then we had dinner at the hotel restaurant of some small town, and it seemed to be the only place in town because even though it sure didn't seem hip, all the young people in town seemed to be loitering there. I had some delicious lamb shanks there. Then it was another hour or so on big highways to Newcastle, on the coast, where we found a hotel for the night.

....TO BE CONTINUED!!

( all pictures from this day )

Current Music: Slaid Cleaves - Breakfast in Hell

   Well I've fallen woefully behind again. Real life is the enemy of posting on lj. As is sunny weather, which deceitfully makes one feel like one ought to be outside in the fresh air!

   But now it's night on the farm and I have nothing better to do. The deterrent to posting from here is the lack of internet access. Its a bit of a hurdle. I actually bought one of those little broadband internet modems one can plug into one's computer and have internet anywhere... but when I got it all set up it told me my account had zero balance (I had been led to believe it would start with soemthing like 4GB on it!), and when I tried to charge it it rejected all three of my credit cards. ):

   So unfortunately I won't be able to add pictures and links to this until I have internet access.

   I believe I left off just about two and a half weeks ago, whereupon I had just departed Sydney for Melbourne.

SUNDAY, SEPT 30th
   In Melbourne I was met at the airport by my friend Cass, and we immediately embarked on a four day roadtrip across Australia. Now the thing with Cass is, I had never met her before. She had responded to my gumtree (think craigslist) post looking for housing asking if I was having any luck, since she was about to move from Melb to Brissie herself. Anyway we kept in touch and she invited me to come on the roadtrip with her. Four day roadtrip across Australia with someone I've never met before? Sounds like just the kind of bad idea I love! :D

   Let's see it would really help jog my memory if I could look up a map right now but, yeah, about that.

   Cass literally picked me up on her way out of town for the trip, so I never saw Melbourne really. We drove along a pretty well maintained two lane highway, and the countryside surrounding us consisted mainly of rolling green hills with sporadic trees, and lots of grazing cows. Kind of reminded me of Ventura County along California or so. If I had access to the internet right now I'd give you a comparision of the latitudes.. [okay fine yesterday-me I'll look it up -- Melbourne is very close to exactly as far south as San Francisco is north. Brisbane would be about in the middle of Baja California if it were on the American west coast, so the total roadtrip would look like this.]
   The towns we rolled through reminded me of the Old West ... a dozen or so shops with large facades facing the main street (which had become the highway), and had silly names like "Wagga Wagga."

   Driving through one such town (Holbrooke?), what do we see but a SUBMARINE. Like, a full sized freaking naval submarine, probably 100 yards long and conning tower looming above the trees!

   This definitely warranted stopping to investigate! The submarine was located in a park, with just the top half of its hull above the ground, as if it was sitting in water, with kids clambering all over it. It was actually just the outer hull, empty inside of the pressure hull and everything else. Really its a good idea, since it can't be terribly hard to move the upper half of the external hull of a submarine, and it makes an awesome and eye-catching edition to a park.
   As to what it was doing in the town of Holbrooke, so very far from the sea, well, according to the informational sign, the town had been called "Germantown," but that wasn't a very popular name during WWII, so they renamed the town after, I believe, an Australian submarine hero of WWI ... and this was a subsequent submarine named after the same fellow? They also had a 1/5th scale replica of the WWI submarine in which the eponymous Lt Holbrooke sailed up the dardanelles and blew up some Turkish warships, or something.
   There was a museum on site even, but it cost money and we were in too much of a hurry to spend money seeing something we would rush through.

   Somewhat further along we noticed on the rather shoddy map we were using the denotation "Dog-on-the-Tuckerbox Somewhere Near Here" near the town of Gundagai (does Gundagai feature in some song or something? I swear it sounds and sounded super familiar), as if this was something exciting and worth seeing. At the exit for the town we saw another big sign for the Dog-on-the-Tuckerbox and go off the highway. It turns out it wasn't in town, but we did find a historical really long decrepid looking bridge. We found more Dog-Tuckerbox signs directing us back on the highway and about 5ks and 3-4 more excited signs later, we came to the legendary DOG ON THE TUCKERBOX tourist center!

   Yep. Thats the dog on the tuckerbox right there. Needless to say. We pulled up. Looked at eachother with WTFness, described the tremendous let-down of the place in colourful language, and went on our way without even getting out. Said dog-tuckerbox-monument even has a wikipedia entry!

   We proceeded on to the town of Young, where we discovered that throughout the state of New South Wales (which is most of the space between Melbourne (in Victoria state) and Brisbane (in Queensland state)) in nearly all the small town the parking in the central area is "60 degree rear-to-curb." Meaning you have to BACK in at an angle, and are then pointed the right way to drive right out. This seems far more tedious to me (and to Cass) than the more normal nose-to-curb arrangement.
   While we were looking for a place to stay I discovered another peculiarity -- it appears that all hotels are authorized to serve alcohol ... but not all hotels actually have rooms for rent! Ie, some "hotels" are in fact nothing but bars! I think these bars were in fact formerly functioning hotels and kept the name when they became merely a bar, but nevertheless, we encountered several of them.
   Had a delicious dinner at the "RSL Club" in town... apparently such places can be found in nearly every town in Australia, I don't know what the letters stand for but its basically the veterans clubs -- but they all (at least the ones I've been to now) serve really good food and are open to anyone (though you have to fill out a "temporary membership form" every time you go in).

   ...and that's it for Day 1!

TO BE CONTINUED!

( more pictures from this day )

<< last episode (Sydney)

Current Music: Busby Marou - Biding My Time

Day 11 - Wednesday, Sept 4th - Weaverville to Davis (Map) (Janelle, Myself, Garnesh the British Guy, & Dave the Towtruck Driver)

   So we wake up in an empty lot in the middle of Weaverville. We bummed around town until around 1pm I think the mechanics announced that they had figured out the problem and they didn't have the part we needed and it would take five days to get it there (!!).
   So we arranged to have the car towed to my awesome mechanic in Davis (203 miles, but Janelle has Super Awesome Triple AAA Status with 200 miles of towing (I only get 100 /= )). So they put the Krismobile on a flatbed and Dave (who had been our towtruck driver the night before) joined us for the around three hour trek to Davis.

   And so we arrived in Davis that evening in style on the flatbed. My super awesome aunt and uncle Ben & Bev were awesome enough to let us crash at their place even though my cousin Holly and her husband Simon were visiting at the same time (which was actually excellent because I would have missed their whole visit if I hadn't crossed paths with them there (they currently live in England))
   While walking back to Ben and Bev's from down town this creepy guy started walking with us and wouldn't leave us. It was the creepiest thing thats ever happened to me in Davis and I was like oh great now Gargamel and Janelle are gonna think Davis is weird. After polite hints that he should leave us failed I progressed to "am I going to have to call the cops?" and he tried to argue I wouldn't have a case, so I told him that when we got to the Co-op (which was coming up ahead and a reasonable well lit public place) I would be calling the police and waiting there until they arrived. He said he'd call the police himself and say I was following him, but when we stopped there he kept walking and so we were finally able to backtrack back to Ben and Bevs. d=

   Went out again and strolled about town. Gargamel apparently saw a palm tree for the FIRST TIME EVER (wtf aren't they all over tv?) and was astounded ("what IS that?! it looks like a giant toilet brush!!"). Eventually we ended up at the local brewery, Sudwerks, where not much was going on but we had ourselves our own little pubquiz asking eachother trivia questions.

On the Way to Davis
This picture actually taken by Gilgamesh the British Guy

( Moar pictures from this day )

Day 10 - Tuesday, Sept 3rd - Into California (Map) (Janelle, Myself, Garnesh the British Guy)

Continued along the coast into California (there was a gruesome deer roadkill RIGHT at the base of the "Welcome to California" sign. Welcome indeed) and through the beautiful Redwood National Park. Down to Eureka and the plan was to then head inland towards Chico.
But as luck would have it:

17:51 - In the middle of nowhere on the 299, car battery light has come on - power steering is consequently going. Road is curvey...

18:05 - Car overheating, leaking something. Stopped on side of the road five miles west of weaverton or ville or something (text updates to my other lj)

   Turns out the Tensioner Pulley on the Serpantine Belt froze up, thus putting out of commission charging of the battery, the power steering, and, most importantly, the car's ability to keep itself from overheating. Had ourselves towed into Weaverville where we cooked up food in the mechanic's parking lot and pitched the tent in the empty lot next door which belonged to the guy who owned and worked the corner market.
   Special thanks to vakratundra who got in contact with me to recommend a mechanic in Weaverville!

   And with the addition of some pictures by Garmin (the British craigslister we'd picked up in Portland) plus my camera was for once working decently so there's a variety of:

Pictures from this day!
(I suggest scrolling to the bottem of the page and reading from the bottem up, since Flickr insists on putting pictures in reverse order in the daily view)

Day 9 - Tuesday, Sept 2nd - Oregon Coast (Map)

After crashing at Brian's place again we picked up Garnesh the British guy (whom recall we had missed in Seattle, he greyhounded down to Portland and caught up with us). Then on Mindy's recommendation we ate at this awesome place called Voleur somewhere in the middle of Portland that had fancy delicious food at highly affordable prices (Janelle and I got this fancy mac and cheese with sausage, a burger with black beans on it and a salad), and xaositecte and my friend Sameer met up with us there. They were apparently about to embark on a roadtrip of their own eastward to Boston and I unsuccessfully lobbied them just to join ours on the spot (hey worked on Aaron last year). Then we proceeded to and down the Oregon coast (awesome as always). Stopped by the Rogue Brewery (Maker of Dead Guy Ale which you'll see around and I recommend) (Ganesh has a pic of me there looking like an old codger)

(It says "Roguesonian Cultural Heritage Interpretive Centre & Beerquarium" near the top)

After the sun set we passed two hitchhikers who looked like non-crazy guys in their early 20s, and it being gathering evening and the van being relatively empty we decided to give them a ride to the next town. "How long you been on the road?" I ask. "Six years" "Oh you do this every summer?" "No I've been on the road for six years -- my dad was a crackhead and I ran away when I was 14." So they had a lot of interesting stories.
That night we camped in a campground at a small state park called Humbug Mountain.

Day 8 - Monday, Sept 1st - Seattle and Portland (Map)

Went from Everett down to Seattle (like an hour south). Had thus far not actually poked around downtown Seattle. Visited a famous coffee shop there (Victoriola or something?), Janelle and I met up with her mum (again). Then we picked up two riders (two quiet grad students, a couple, not much to say about them) and failed to find this rider Garlen (I guess he had just gone across the street from his hostel, so we left without him) and proceeded down to Portland.
In Portland we got rid of the two riders and then proceeded to the Kennedy School Pub, which is an elementry school which has been converted into a movie theatre, hostel, restaurant and pub. Very interesting. Nice little pub. There Janelle and I met up with xaositecte (friend of mine from Model UN, also participated in 30 in 30, and had just gotten out of the Air Force and back from Germany the day before), meowmeowpants (Mindy, 30 in 30 participant, one of my favourite people), the-guy-Mindy-is-currently-dating and Janelle's friend Brian (whose awesome place we crashed at on the way up). So we had a fun little time there. And then I guess xaositecte commandeered the camera so there's several pictures of Janelle and I from the pub. That night we once again crashed at Brian's place.

xaositecte and Brian

( More Pictures )

Day 7 - Sunday, Aug 31st - San Juan Islands (Map)

   The evening before Janelle's cousin Rick, whom she affectionately calls "my big ugly cousin" had come over and hung out with Janelle and I and Janelle's sister Lindsay for a bit (though of course J & I only got back from our Olympia adventure after midnight). Rick had brought over some "Shock Top" Belgian White Ale and was so proud of it (insisted on pouring it into glasses rather than drinking it out of the bottles) until I casually mentioned its brewed by Anheuser-Busch. haha. Filthy Belgians. ;)

   Anyway, so Janelle, Rick, Lindsay and I made a pit-stop at the town of Mt Vernon to visit her other sister, had lunch at the ferry terminal town of Anacortes, just barely missed the ferry to Friday Harbour, and caught the next one to Orcas Island. (went as "footers" since we wouldn't be needing the car on the islands)

   Being out on the water was delightful. It was a really nice day. I think I took over a hundred pictures, but I've only bothered to upload four so far.
   We disembarked on Orcas Island. Had some pastries and iced teas at a quaint little cafe. Everyone else ran from yellowjackets despite my attempts to assure them foraging yellowjackets are extremely unlikely to sting. Took a picture of Janelle on some steps to match a picture she has of her as a wee lass on those same steps. Then we realized we could get to Friday Harbour after all as a ferry was about to go from Orcas to Friday, so we hopped on the boat again.

   The town of Friday Harbour was also extremely quaint. Again I took a lot of pictures, but anyone can find quaint pictures of sailboats riding at anchor and all that shit so I'm not so much in a hurry to upload them all. Poked around there for awhile, had a round of drinks at the local pub, and caught the ferry out at about 8pm but it was still light out. A bagpiper was bagpiping away on the deck as we left. Trip back took about an hour and the sun set during that time, so it was really perfect timing.

   We (Janelle, her sister & cousin and myself) stopped by her other sister's place in Mt Vernon again on the way back. She had made a delicious apple pie, and when we got there was playing Apples to Apples with her housemate and housemate's family (her mom, sister, sister's boyfriend). We joined this game, so there were nine of us there playing I believe.
   Janelle's sister (Tami?)'s roommate Danielle it so happens is lesbian and pregnant. We were a bit unclear as to whether this was a purposeful attempt to have a child (though she has no significant other) or the result of some kind of "experimentation" gone awry. Additionally this condition was not stopping her from taking smoking breaks. Interesting.
   Anyway, after an hour or so of these shenanigans we were on the road again and returned to Everett.

Other Pictures From This Day
(Presently there's only four, now I feel like I should upload some more)

Day 3 - Eureka to Eugene (Map) - Wednesday, Aug 27th

Woke up in a campground in the redwoods near Trinidad, CA (some small town on the coast up in the NW corner of the state). I'd pitched the two-person tent but Ben just slept outside, Janelle never woke up (so slept on the backseat in the car) and Brett lacked a sleeping bag (and Janelle had stolen his blanket haha) so he also slept in the car. So Ben feasted on blackberries and other berries while I packed up the tent and Brett and Janelle didn't wake up until we were on the road (specifically, when road construction made me come to an abrupt stop and Janelle fell off the seat and landed on Brett =D )
Anyway we cruised up the coast and pretty much as soon as we got to Oregon the beaches were fricken amazing. All sand dunes and driftwood and undisturbed sand. So we frolicked on the beach a bit. Ben caught a crab and wanted to eat it right there. But we prevailed upon him that we wanted to get back on the road so we got to Eugene before it was crazy late.

   In Eugene we met up with Garian, my ex from freshman year (holy crap I started college seven years ago )= ), where she and her fiance were house-sitting her sister's house. I was prepared to hate the fiance on principal but he turned out to be a pretty hard to hate guy. As always Garian was awesome and I'm really bummed I neglected to get a picture of her.
   Ben revealed that he's actually a pretty good cook and whipped up some pasta with mussels he'd gathered at the beach and the crab.
   Crashed at Garian's (sister's) place that night -- Janelle Brett and I on cushions on the floor or on couches and Ben outside on the trampoline.

( More Pictures from This Day )
(mostly of the Oregon Beaches)
(note there are two pages)

   Sorry for the delay. Been busy helping my friend Janelle move out. I will now commence my attempt to recount the trip one day at a time.

Day 1 - Orange County, CA to San Francisco (Map) - Monday, Aug 25th
   Trip started illustriously with a visit to my mechanic in the morning. The engine check light had been on, the power socket didn't work and neither did the heater. The mechanic apparently assigned some 18 yr old (or less?) tech to fix these things and when I came back after noon I had to chase him down and have him give me back part of the dashboard he had neglected to put back in and to replace the fuse for the power socket (the heater never did get fixed).

   Then I went to go pick up two riders I had found on craigslist. First was Clark, riding up to SF with us, whom I knew little about. But I knew he was gonna be cool when I said "I'll be wearing a Flogging Molly shirt" when I talked to him on the phone before going into a Dennys to meet him and he was like "Flogging Molly awesome!!!" He was a awesome 30 something guy with lots of tattoos and such.

   Next was this guy Brett, who I also barely knew anything about. My first impression was a generic looking 18 yr old OC kid wearing a baseball cap. But then I was like "wait.. is that a mohawk under that cap?!" and it was. He turned out to be real cool. Had barely been out of OC before so he said things like "I want to eat at Taco Bell every day of the trip!" and "whats a co-op" and "whats a hostel?" But it was fun seeing him experience the wider world for the first time and I think he'll do just fine.

   The drive from OC to SF is super boring so this is the only picture from that day:

It is a sculpture made of tank parts in some dinky town off The Five. Thats Brett (left) and Clark (right).

   That evening we prowled SF a little and stayed in a hostel downtown.

Meanwhile in Janelle-land
   This is not part of the roadtrip really but its what I was doing the day before and I think its interesting and Janelle was part of the roadtrip all but day 1 so:

   Day 0: Day before the above, I hung out with Janelle while she tried to invent a drink for a barista competition. You probably don't recall but I actually blogged about it. Well on Day 1 of the roadtrip she had said competition. She ran out of port during it, which was a critical ingredient, and this kind of overlaps the roadtrip because I was about to go past where it was happening in LA so I was going to bring her more port BUT she made her own (!?!)
   She, I don't know, mixed things at hand together until she had something comparable. I am totally amazed that she (A) was able to accomplish this at all, (B) was able to accomplish this without it tasting nasty, (C) was able to do this and WIN THE COMPETITION with it!! Truly she must be an amazing alchemist.
   Anyway, she'd be flying to Oakland the next day and catching up with Team Roadtrip in Berkeley. More on that TOMORROW...

So for this roadtrip I'm taking my Eurovan, affectionately referred to as either "the brick" or "the Krismobile." Its always had persian rugs in the back to prevent the floor from getting dirty. The backwards facing seats are usually in a removed state to allow transportation of things like centrifuges for honey extraction and other such equipment, but we put one back in for the roadtrip. Also note it has a fold out table.
But the real crowning glory of it right now is that among the things Janelle needs to transport to Seattle is a big potted plant. So we placed that right in the middle of the car. This picture doesn't do the hilarity justice:

But I find the whole scene to be relatively hilarious.

Also Janelle is currently in a barista competition in LA and had to invent a drink to make tomorrow so we spent awhile this evening experimenting with different concoctions. Apparently she's currently in second place to the world champion (there's a world champion barista? who knew) so if tonights creation pulls her ahead, I might be travelling with the best barista in the world? Also all this experimentation felt very food channel. Also.. now I'm wired d=

You may be wondering what happened with that roadtrip I was planning. Well it was pushed back. The new start date is August 25th (this Monday, ie tomorrow!)

Current participants are:
Myself (obviously)
Janelle Bel Isle
Ben Shapiro - A lad who just rode his bike from Ohio to San Francisco! (trip up only)
An 18 yr old lad named Brett
Brett's girlfriend (maybe?)
Malaika Millions (yes thats an IMDB link, google her!) (trip down only)
(4.5 people each way (Brett's gf being maybe I'm counting as half))

Basic Itinerary:
Day 1: August 25th, Monday - OC to SF, hopefully with time to cause a ruckus in SF that evening
Day 2: August 26th, Tuesday - SF to circa Eureka, CA
Day 3: August 27th, Wednesday - Through Eugene and Salem to Portland
Day 4: August 28th, Thursday - Spending the day mucking around Mt St Helens & Mt Rainier! Camping!
Day 5: August 29th, Friday - To Seattle!
Day 6: August 30th, Saturday - Vancouver?
Day 7: August 31st, Sunday - Vancouver to West Mt St H
Day 8: Sept 1st, Monday - Down to the Colombia River mouth
Day 9: Sept 2nd, Tuesday - Through Bend Oregon and into Nor Cal
Day 10: Sept 3rd, Wednesday - Through Chico to Davis
Day 11: Sept 4th, Thursday - Davis to SF
Day 12: Sept 5th, Friday - SF to OC

So if you're on our route, clear you schedule on the date(s) we're passing through, and drop me a line if you want to meet up!

Also, if you're interested in hearing about the roadtrip while in progress, I suggest you friend my other lj emosnail - I'll probably be updating that one more frequently. Last time I went on a roadtrip I was able to update with pictures just about every day. Or for that matter if you just want to see the pictures keep an eye on my flickr account

Current Music: Planet Smashers - Police the Nation

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Page Summary

Melbourne-Brisbane Roadtrip Day 2
Melbie to Brisso Roadtrip, Day 1!
Day 11 - Triumphant Entrance To Davis (on a flatbed)
Day 10 - Breakdown!
Day 9 - Back Down the Oregon Coast
Day 8 - Seattle and Portland (again)!
Day 7 - Island Hopping
Day 3 - The Oregon Coast
Day 1 - Up to SF!
This Is How We're Rollin!
Epic Roadtrip 2008 -- Prepare for Departure!!

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The Agrinautica

Tales of a Beekeeper Errant

Entries tagged with roadtrips

Melbourne-Brisbane Roadtrip Day 2

Melbie to Brisso Roadtrip, Day 1!

Day 11 - Triumphant Entrance To Davis (on a flatbed)

Day 10 - Breakdown!

Day 9 - Back Down the Oregon Coast

Day 8 - Seattle and Portland (again)!

Day 7 - Island Hopping

Day 3 - The Oregon Coast

Day 1 - Up to SF!

This Is How We're Rollin!

Epic Roadtrip 2008 -- Prepare for Departure!!