Cross Country Trip

My trip from South Carolina to Vancouver Island was overall outstanding, though it had its moments of misery. I drove a total of 3412.7 miles (5492 km) and camped along the way at state parks. I preferred state parks over national parks because most national parks have no showers.

Photos can be found here: http://www.seandaugherty.com/UVicTrip.html

Tuesday, August 23, 2005
I left Simpsonville, SC to drive to Lake Barkley State Resort Park in Cadiz, KY on the eastern side of the Land Between The Lakes area. This is a nice place to camp if you have a trailer, but it only had 5 primitive sites and only 1 of them had a flat area for a tent. Thankfully I managed to get that site and it was a nice warm night, just the right temperature. I had time to take a walk to the beach and the boat launch area as well. There were about 6 other campsites taken of the total 78 sites. The park itself is huge and even includes a golf course and an airport. It is not well marked (no sign for the first turn), but I followed my mappoint directions and they worked.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005
I left to drive to Clinton State Park in Lawrence, KS. I had a nice drive and arrived just as a storm was approaching. The campground is not really that great as it is mostly a large field with a few trees. My impression is that they actually tore down the trees to make the field. There were a few tent campsites on the edge with trees, but the places to put the tents were already a bit muddy. I chose a site that was by a few trees and bushes in the middle of the field that would protect me from the fairly strong wind. There was not much to protect from the rain.

It started to thunderstorm and I went to bed. During the night, there was a lightning strike that was very close and I made the executive decision to run from my tent to my car and sleep there for the rest of the night. It was then that I discovered that the straps that held the roofbag on my car created small openings in the rubber seal on the doors because the hooks were inside the car. The rain then ran down the straps and dripped in a very steady stream into the car. Needless to say, my food box was wet as well as a box of picture frames (which in the end did not ruin inside the box). I quickly undid the straps for the night and tried to sleep in a wet chair that could not recline due to the packed car.

Thursday, August 25, 2005
In the morning it was still raining and I took down my soaking wet tent and rolled up my wet sleeping bag and pad. Furthermore, I spent 1 hour figuring out how to reduce the drip from the straps so that I could drive one of my longer drives to west of Denver. I got the straps to not drip while going 70 mph and was off toward Denver.

I stopped at a gas station about 30 miles west of Topeka and leaving the station I had to drive through gravel. Of course, one piece decided to engage my tire and gave me a rather large puncture. So there I sat at the edge of the small local road and got out to look at my hissing tire. I then pulled out the gravel and threw it very hard into the ditch. Calling AAA took a while as the woman could not understand that I was in Kansas and not South Carolina. But in about 20 min, a tow truck arrived and attempted to tow my car. (I did not want to change the tire on the loaded down car, nor did I know where to buy a new tire.) Joe then decided that his truck was too small and went back to get a bigger platform-style truck. Even that truck made my muffler scrape on the road a bit getting on the truck.

I was taken to a small town car repair shop and put first in line (compare that to Wal-Mart!). By about 12:30, I was on the road again headed toward Denver, a total delay of 4 hours for the day.

My goal was to make it to Golden Gate Canyon State Park before dark (8:30). With Denver 8 hours away and the park another 1.5 hours, not including stops for food and gas, that was quite ambitious. At 6:30pm I was still 2 hours to Denver and about to drive into a thunderstorm. I pulled over to check that my rain strap system was ok and the wind started to pick up and I saw lightning. I decided that I did not want to drive through the storm, so I sat to eat dinner and sleep just through the storm. I woke up at 8:45 and the sun was down. The decision was made to stay put and I slept nervously at the rest stop all night, waking up every 30 min. At least there was 3 RVs and 3 other cars spending the night as well, though they mostly arrived later.

Friday, August 26, 2005
The original plan for this day was to spend the day at the park hiking through the Rockies. However, I still had 3.5 hours to go. I waited until 6:30 to leave the rest stop so that I would miss the rush hour traffic in Denver. I made it to Denver and got stuck in traffic with some semi-truck blocking the middle of 3 lanes. Besides that, the drive was great. I was very glad that I did not try to make the drive when it was dark because the last bit was a very curved steep road cut through the mountains with no lights. Furthermore, there ended up being a detour for anyone who could not handle 19% grade (me). Plus I got to see a great looking mountain pond in the bright sunlight.

I checked into my reserved campsite and the entire campground is very nice. The sites are all spacious and the bathrooms are very large and clean. This campground began the practice of charging money for showers, which continued the rest of the trip west. I got to lay out my soaking wet tent and with the super dry air, it only took 1 hour to dry out my tent and sleeping bag. I spent the rest of the day walking around the campground and driving to Panorama Point where I took tons of pictures. I did not walk too much so that I would not wear myself out because the air was noticeably thinner.

Saturday, August 27, 2005
I woke up at 5:30 (after 9 hours of sleep) to start my longest day of driving. My ground cover was wet on the bottom, so at 6:00 I laid it on the picnic table to dry. Even though the sun did not begin to rise until 6:30, it was amazingly completely dry at that time due to the air.

The goal for the day was to make it to Antelope Island State Park, an island in the southern part of the Great Salt Lake. Basically, Denver and Salt Lake City are at opposite corners of an interstate rectangle. So, I could have taken I-70 through Colorado then shortcut US-191 to I-15, or I could have taken I-25 to I-80 and driven through Wyoming. The first (southern) trip is the most scenic, whereas the latter (northern) trip is rumored to be more boring. The problem is that the southern trip involves lots of mountains and after the Appalachian Mountains, I wasn't sure that I could make it, especially with spotty cell phone coverage. So I took the Wyoming route, which was not so boring for someone who had never driven it before. Plus, it was actually quite flat. The mountains were avoided in the eastern and central Wyoming, and were minor in western Wyoming.

I actually made very good time and could photograph the causeway coming in and had time to drive around and find bison and antelope on the southern part of the island. I was kind of surprised to find that Cheyenne is more of a town than a city.

Sunday, August 28, 2005
I slept in a bit, until 9:00 and then had to get a few things done before meeting up with Andrew H. (from High School) for lunch at noon. During that time, I did make it out to go floating in the lake. Despite the rumors of tons of brine flies, they really weren't that bad. They generally moved out of your way when you walked, whether on the beach or in the water, and they didn't really land on me either. It was neat to listen to swarms of them fly out of the way. It looked and sounded like little waves.

Floating in the lake is really an awesome thing. It took a while for me to brave the cold water, but it was worth it. There is seriously no effort at all required to float, and I do not float in normal lakes or oceans. Pretty much what they say is true: to find the out of state people, look in the water. Though the lake is 5x saltier than the ocean, the interesting thing was that the salt crystals seemed to be smaller than the ones in the ocean, there were just lots more of them.

Andrew came up from Provo (about 45 min he said) and brought a great picnic lunch to the campsite. After lunch, at about 1:30, I noticed I was bright red because today was the first day that I wore a super-human muscle shirt. I quickly put on suntan lotion, but that was too late. I really only got burnt on my upper arms and neck, none of which hurt too bad to sleep or anything.

After that, we drove around the island looking for bison and antelope, but only found bison. We did see lots very close though, as they just wander across the road whenever they feel like (like pedestrians in Canada).

For my second night on Antelope Island, I went to bed later (about 10:00) and heard the coyotes howling from each direction. I also saw jackrabbits with their long ears while driving around at night.

Monday, August 29, 2005
Today's drive was to Hilgard Junction State Park in southeastern Oregon. This drive was the least dense in terms of gas stations. It was easy to go 50-75 miles without a station. There was also a very strong headwind of about 20mph through Idaho, so it took a lot of gas to go 60mph.

There were some great views though, especially the ones coming down out of the mountains looking out over the valleys. Also, it was very nice to finally see trees again after about 3 days without them.

Hilgard Junction is pretty much sandwiched between I-84 and a small creek. It was originally a campsite along the Oregon Trail, so there are a few historical notes there. There are no showers, but it was nice for a quick stop along the way. I would not recommend it as a destination.

Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Today's drive was to Sequim Bay State Park, just 30 min from the ferry in Port Angeles, WA. I reserved campsite 80, which was probably the best site in the entire campground because it was private (trees all around) with a nice view of the bay.

The first half of the drive was one of the nicest drives of the trip. I went by I-84 to I-5 through Portland, rather than going on I-82 and I-90 to Seattle. This way I drove through the Columbia River Gorge. Here, I drove right beside (sometimes over) the fairly wide Columbia River, and immediately on both sides were some small mountains. It was neat to see the mountains go from no trees to fully covered with evergreens.

Driving up I-5, I was told that I should be able to see Mt. Rainier, but I never did. There were too many trees beside the interstate the entire way.

Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Today I drove to my apartment in Victoria. After stopping at the post office, I made it to the ferry at 9:30am. The next ferry did not leave until 12:45pm. So I had a nice breakfast at a local restaurant. The 90 minute ferry ride was not as cool as the one from Vancouver to the island. It was just open water the entire time. Near the beginning I saw seals or sea lions (I can't tell them apart that quickly). At the end, it was neat to pull into Victoria's inner harbour and see the entire city in a thin fog from a distance.

Customs was rather painless. I just had to wait until the entire boat cleared and then I got my study permit and was free to go.