Crazy road trips

Anyone ever just be sitting around and think of or hear of a place and just hop in the car and drive there to check it out? I use to do it often.

In the late 80's a lady I worked with was always talking about this great truck stop(where she grew up) that had the best Navajo Tacos she had ever eaten. It was located in Tuba City, Arizona.

Sitting around one day thinking about those tacos the lady kept raving about, I decided I wanted to get one.

Hopped in my car and drove from east Kentucky to the Arizona truck stop. It was a little over 1800 miles each way. I would pull over at rest areas to nap in my car.

The tacos were pretty good. I ate until I was full, talked to some locals in the truck stop then I drove back home.

It was a blast and I got to see a lot of scenery on the trip.

I did road trips for over 10 years. You think about/hear about/read about a place and say to yourself...'that sounds like a place I gotta see'. Jump in the car and go. The only planning was the road atlas I kept in the car.

Another one, I wanted to see Yellowstone park in wyoming. Picked up soap and a tooth brush on the way. Took baths in creeks wherever I could find a secluded spot.

Bought a fly rod and reel plus 3 day fishing permit to catch trout to eat. Dang, the regulations to fish there were tough. You could only fish in certain areas. Like from so-and-so bridge to the big rock in the bend of the creek, etc.

Other times, heck, just make a Coors run to the west side of the country.

I was just thinking about an hour ago how I would like to put a cab over camper on and take off for the Alaskan high way. No set schedule just see things and drive when I want too. Doubt I will ever get it done.As I have gotten older and more bills to pay my time for adventure has gotten smaller and smaller.

Not that spur of the moment,but the vet told me one time that I was the most traveled dairy farmer he'd ever known.
We like to pick an area of the country,get on line and find a cabin rental in the area,then stay there until we've seen about all there is to see in a days driving distance.
Thing is,now that I'm not milking anymore,we've found places that we like so much that we keep going back there. I need to get my sense of adventure back I guess,but that trip the wife and I took down New River Gorge alone in a rubber raft was about the last of it for me.

(quoted from post at 12:29:27 01/12/15) Anyone ever just be sitting around and think of or hear of a place and just hop in the car and drive there to check it out? I use to do it often.

In the late 80's a lady I worked with was always talking about this great truck stop(where she grew up) that had the best Navajo Tacos she had ever eaten. It was located in Tuba City, Arizona.

Sitting around one day thinking about those tacos the lady kept raving about, I decided I wanted to get one.

Hopped in my car and drove from east Kentucky to the Arizona truck stop. It was a little over 1800 miles each way. I would pull over at rest areas to nap in my car.

The tacos were pretty good. I ate until I was full, talked to some locals in the truck stop then I drove back home.

It was a blast and I got to see a lot of scenery on the trip.

I did road trips for over 10 years. You think about/hear about/read about a place and say to yourself...'that sounds like a place I gotta see'. Jump in the car and go. The only planning was the road atlas I kept in the car.

Another one, I wanted to see Yellowstone park in wyoming. Picked up soap and a tooth brush on the way. Took baths in creeks wherever I could find a secluded spot.

Bought a fly rod and reel plus 3 day fishing permit to catch trout to eat. Dang, the regulations to fish there were tough. You could only fish in certain areas. Like from so-and-so bridge to the big rock in the bend of the creek, etc.

Other times, heck, just make a Coors run to the west side of the country.

Click to expand...

Couple years ago I saw a forklift I was looking for down in CA and the next day I was on the road. Also found another tractor to fill up my trailer. Two weeks later found another tractor down there, so back on the road...also found another to fill up the trailer. For me, it has to be for something bigger than tacos....

Ya'll keep talking like that and my wife and boss will have an APB out for me! LOL

I used to make those kind of trips several times a year, from short jaunts to long trips, I did these on my motorcycle, with a backpack tied to the sissy bar. It was a lot of fun, and inexpensive.

Rich

rrlund-Yup, milking does keep you tied to the far. Glad I never got into that.

Couple funny tales of raod trips to New River....

When my son was around 8 or 9 years old, I took him on a guided white-water rafting trip.

Around lunch time we landed at a ramp to disembark and be transported to the next set of rapids. We boarded a school bus and drove down a narrow one lane blacktop road. We were served lunch in styrofoam flip top trays. My son had a window seat as I sat next to him on the aisle side.

We opened or trays and looked at it. The meal contained Humus, Tofu and bean sprouts. I turned around to check what others on the bus was getting. They were just eating away and talking about how great the trip had been so far.

Then I heard the click-click-click sound of the bus window being lowered from beside me. As I turned to see what my son was doing, the whole bus became silent. By the time I grasped what had happened he had dumped the entire lunch, styrofoam tray and all out the window. The entire bus erupted into screams. The bus driver stopped the bus on this one lane road. The other passengers were screaming like they had just lost their first born. I tried to rectify the situation by explaining that I would have him go back and pick up the items he had discarded. The bus driver said 'no, we need to get to the next dock so everyone can continue the trip. Plus, we are blocking other buses behind us if we take time to block the road.. I was embarrassed to say the least, but we continued on.

We were shunned for the remainder of the trip.

The other road trip was....

Every 6 months, my company had me train someone from their partnership with another refinery in Oman (East Africa).

One time, I got a guy that wanted to try fishing, he had never been and saw it on TV. His name was Mohammod Alnumanie Aldibaid(sp).

Anyway, I took him for a three day trip to fish the Gauley river in West Virginia for small mouth bass.

Showed him how to bait his hook and other things...like casting and techniques.

I move to another area to fish but still remain close to him. The Gauley is filled with boulders and you jump from boulder to boulder to fish from them.

I look over to check on him and he is standing there raising his rod up and down, just enough to bring his hook out of the water.

I hop rocks back to him and ask him what he is doing. He says 'That is how they do it on the American cartoons I watch'. So, I explain it all to him again

A little while later, as I am standing on a boulder, I look across the river to check on him. He is in his underwear, thigh deep in rushing water with his arms splayed out in the water. I thought what is he doing? Is he trying to catch the fish by his hands.

So, I hop rocks back to him and ask him 'What are you doing?'. He replies 'I tried to cast like you said but the front half of the pole came off and sunk into the water'.

I got him back on a rock and showed him that all he had to do was reel his line in and the front half of the rod would come with it. The look on his his eyes was like he had understood the Theory of Relativity.

This was in August. High temps and high humidity
Me and two buddies had caught some fish. Evening comes and we clean the fish and build a small campfire to cook the fish on.

Skeeters start coming in. So we eat and everyone beds down for the night.

Get up at daylight and notice Mohammud shivering like crazy and bundled up. I ask him what is wrong. He says 'I have Malaria and did not bring my quinine medication'.

I got a little upset and told him 'Here we are in a mosquito infested area and you did not tell me that you had Malaria?'

I grabbed my pistol and my two buddies jumped on me before I could get a shot off.

Everyone made it back safe and sound.


Sorry this took so long. Just thinking about some of the memories.

Thanks for reading

RCP- I had forgot all about the term "sissy bar".

Thanks

We rented a cabin near Beaver West Va. The wife wanted to go what water rafting. There were brochures in the cabin,so we headed down to Hinton. Looked around and found Cantrell's.
We went in and asked if they had any guided trips going that day. They said no,it had been dry and the water was low so they hadn't had any trips going for the past week or so.
The gal said one of the dams was open and the water was higher today,so if we wanted to go alone,they'd put us in and pick us up 8 miles down river.
I looked at the wife and asked her if that's what she wanted to do,all the while thinking to myself "NO-NO-NO". She said "Hey,I came to go white water rafting".
So the gal behind the counter pulled out a map and starts showing us where to be when we got to this place in the river,then get to that side and go there.......All I'm hearing are the banjo's from Deliverence. She startled me back to reality when she said "Be sure you get to this side of the river here and get out before you go over the falls".
Great,I'm gonna die. I might as well just leave the keys in the truck so they can have it when they find our bodies washed up somewhere. She says they'll pick us up at the falls in about two hours. We got out on the river,it's going good for an hour or so,were wet,but alive,then the clouds start to roll in over the sides of the gorge. Lightning,thunder,it's raining hard behind us. We get to a smooth,quiet place in the river and I can hear a roar up ahead. I said "We must be coming up on the worst of the rapids she was telling us about".
Unknown to me,we had already gone through those. Way over on the far side of the river,I think I see an orange sign. Then I start to remember her telling us to get out at the orange sign before we go over the falls. At that point,that river looked as wide as the Ohio. We paddled like crazy,made it to the bank just upstream from the falls. I roll out and the wife's screaming at me not to let her go over the falls!!
Hey,this whole thing was her idea.
It started storming like crazy just after we get the raft pulled out. There's a little park there,so we wait it out in the restroom. It was still another hour or more before anybody came to get us.
I was pretty sure they had just figured no hurry,that we were probably dead anyway.

Dangdest thing is,if it hadn't been storming and they had offered to take us up and put us back in,I would have done it,now that the fear of the unknown was gone.

LOL

The wife has wanted to raft the New River for years, but this old man ain't gonna do it LOL. And we don't live too awfully far from there. We do like to go there for bridge day in October tho. Keith

In aviation they call it "Hundred Dollar Hamburger" spots. It takes about a hundred dollars of aviation fuel to go from one to another.
I have hit a lot of them and there is even a publication that is called "Pilot Getaways" that has a lot of them featured. Great fun and many beautiful memories of the characters that you meet along the way.

How about the Ape hangers and Extended forks. I had those kind of trips but they were called service calls. After forty years I got tired of them.

Billy- the Ape hangers always looked very painful to drive. Extended forks were cool, just depends on how far they were...

greg

Yap !! road trips are fun . I always drive the back forty roads looking for iron . Heck , last summer I was in upper Michigan and bought a 920 Cat loader home . Great machine for snow plowing etc. And always willing to try some good old home cooking dinners.

My wife's uncle lives in kans.city. Her mother lives about 350 miles west. We were visiting her mother one weekend when her uncle walks in carrying a local paper. His sister asks whats he doing there when he didnt call or bring his wife. He says " I told her I was going out to get a paper. I didnt say which one."

I did once, my Wife and I got a taste for some genuwine cajun cooking. We took off to Lafayette, 500 miles away.

The funniest road trip I've heard of was a few years ago. There was a few farmers around the shop talking about BBQ. They decided to go get a rack of ribs and everybody loaded into the cab except for one guy who was in the back. He thought they were just going to the local BBQ joint. They didn't stop until they got to Chicago. He had rode in the back all night. :lol:

Billy- here is a stock picture of what I rode in 1987. My uncle gave me the bike. 1968 Honda CB 750 w/ raised handle bars and extended forks. Painted in gold metal flake.

I wound up giving the bike away a few years ago because I did not need it any more.

The wife and jump in the car and take day trips just to have a day away. Just pick a direction and go.

I had all the adventure I could ever want in the Army. Rappelling off of cliffs, tall buildings and out of choppers was the fun part! Combat in cities training was great too! got to see a lot of Europe and South Korea and little of some other countries. But I spent enough time in the field and deployed that camping is no longer fun. Heck I don't even like eating outdoors anymore. My idea of roughing it is Super 8 and McDonalds. We are planning a trip to LA next year. Want to do a little fishing and see the sights. Thinking some bass fishing and maybe a off shore charter!

Rick

My Dad did that with a kind of a beater car and a pop up camper when he was about 70 or 71. He seemed to enjoy it and I know at that time he was on a pretty tight budget.

Oldtanker- when I was rappelling, my favorite was
the 'Australian rappel'...talk about a rush of
adrenaline.... running down the side of a cliff.

Shipmate of mine had a 1964 Sportster.I think the forks were five feet out and the handle bars were four feet tall. He was always complaining about being tired after a run.

I used to have a cup of coffee where ever a 5 hour drive took me. Live about middle on NY state also been known to go to another state for lunch. Another time was in NY city on Saturday and had lunch in Niagara Falls on Sunday.