Lower 48

October 2018 - March 2025
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An open-ended adventure by Rosscoe Read more
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  • United States
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  • 27footprints
  • 2,350days
  • 142photos
  • 12likes
  • 16.6kkilometers
  • 11.5kkilometers
  • Day 31

    San Francisco revisited

    November 7, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C

    Our RV got absorbed back into the mass of hundreds of anonymous vehicles at the Cruise America lot at Newark, San Francisco.

    Bit of a shame we didn’t get to say goodbye because we slept, cooked, showered and went everywhere in luxury with this vehicle and it performed so well, gave us a great time but by the time we did the return paperwork and went outside it was gone.

    From Newark we had to get to the airport, about $US120 cab ride, that’s getting close to $A200, we’ll still use the cheaper Uber but after our previous experience we are not keen on over supporting them.

    Now there is nothing better than a bit of bartering so Taxies were bringing people in but there were few fares out of there, a good opportunity to do a deal as the airport is a choice destination.

    I picked the hungriest looking driver, the one that had been there the longest to get a price on the ride.
    A special price for us was $US100 normally $120 ...no no no good and I offer him $40, he says no way $85, I say no I’ll pay $50. This goes on for awhile and in the end I walk away and decide to call Uber.

    He then comes over and says final price $65, I say no final price $50 and he says OK thought when we are loading the bags in he says and $5 for the bridge so I let him have the last word and said OK.

    This was still very good though because while we were there two couples joined up to share a cab and thought that was a good idea because they only paid $60 each.

    We are now at San Francisco International Airport with a 8 hour wait for our 20 hour flight back to Brisbane because of the layover in Sydney. Nothing time for the distances traveled and places we’ve been.
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  • Day 30

    The Last Night... damn!

    November 6, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C

    A last night treat away from The Partridge Family, a RV Park with camping places underneath tall Coastal Redwoods, not Sequoias, we’ve learnt that much, it was a very beautiful spot.

    It should have been very peaceful too, it was except for a constantly yapping dog whose owners probably thought it was having an intelligent conversation with them, it probably was seeing each yap consisted of more syllables than any of the grunts they uttered.

    The place was probably wasted on us though because we had to leave early.
    We weren’t that far from San Francisco but experiencing the traffic here we count distances in hours not miles.
    This drive was no exception especially in peak hour, just another 8 lane highway crawl, though a few sections did open up so we did too.
    All that driving through South Dakota, Nebraska and Arizona didn’t go to waste, it was pedal to the metal for a while then hit the anchors hard to stop 5 tons of RV rear ending the commuting class.

    Good luck and a solid break foot got us back to Cruise America without one scratch on the RV and that was after many thousands of miles through desert, mountains, cities, deserts, mountains, etc... it goes on like this for a while and it was all good.
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  • Day 29

    Not drowning... waving!

    November 5, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C

    I mean not dead, resting!... I think, unless they got sucked into the power station.

    These lazy layabouts look like a pod of beached whales but are in fact a bunch of snoozing sea lions.
    This is a small group, the bludgers are all up and down the Californian coast, probably most of the west coast actually and in high numbers.

    As we were looking at them a Argentinian man who moved to the US in the 70’s and is now a volunteer at one of the viewing spots asked us if we had any questions.
    I did.
    From the late 1700’s American sealers hunted Australian seals practically to extinction and they have never fully recovered to this day.
    I wanted to know how come the Americans practically wiped out our seals but obviously left their own alone.
    Answer: They didn’t, they wiped theirs out completely then got stuck into ours.

    What happened is, later the Americans found the last surviving 50 or so on a island off Mexico, they captured these and moved them to California where they have now bred up into good numbers.
    Mexico though is probably lamenting the demise of their last seals, though seeing most Mexicans want to get into America they can’t really complain if some of their folk get the gold ticket entry.
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  • Day 29

    Power to the people!

    November 5, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C

    All right all you pinkie, leftie, greenies get out of my way with your biodynamic, rainbow painted wind farms and your organic hippie, dippie solar power rubbish.
    You want to worship the sun... become a Aztec and make way for us power hungry bastards who use the real deal, something that can fry you into the middle of next week or produces enough carbon dioxide to blanket the earth for a decade just from doing a bit of toast.

    I have just found my Nirvana, a power station, next to a RV Park, along side a beach.
    This is where power stations should be, built right on the dunes, the space being properly used, not wasted on some endangered species that won’t need it for much longer anyway.

    It’s all about enhancement of the landscape. First you have the industrial aesthetic then you get the most glorious sunsets created from the abundance of toxic chemicals in the air.
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  • Day 27

    Sequoia National Park

    November 3, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 14 °C

    You know we have been had.
    From my first trip here to our last couple we believed and have been telling people we’ve seen the Sequoia trees when all we saw was those damn imposters the Coastal Redwoods.

    Admittedly the Coastal Redwoods are taller but so what, you can’t see the tops of stuff that gets that tall anyway but the the Sequoias are bigger because of their sheer mass.

    This is the President, a 3,200 year old Sequoia and has rarely been captured all in one photograph because of its size. It’s part of a grove called the Congress Grove which is a 3klm forest walk through hundreds of Sequoias many over 2,000 years old.
    The size of these trees is hard to comprehend and also to portray in any photographs, they just didn’t capture the enormousness of them so we stopped taking pics, any we took were disappointing so gave a false impression of them and the forest.

    I’ve seen and been impressed by big stuff. Skyscrapers in New York, Mount Rushmore takes you back a bit and there ain’t no finer bit of erosion on the planet than The Grand Canyon but the Sequoia Forests top the list of things I (we) have ever seen and now have been lucky enough to have wandered amongst.
    In any photo you can’t see how they tower above and how thick and massive the trunks still are at 150 feet high and more before they start to taper in.

    The Sequoias, you MUST see them for yourself.
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  • Day 23

    Joshua Tree National Park

    October 30, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C

    The Joshua Tree is a Yucca on steroids, they grow about an inch a year so deserve a little respect, along the lines of you should respect your elders and like most old folk they’re a mite prickly and why not, I get cranky at just about everything now so after two hundred years or more I’d be ropeable.

    Speaking of old fools, we drove across the Mojave Desert to visit this incredible place and on walks in the desert I noticed some beautiful cactus and said to Rhonda “wow! those spines look sharp” while putting my hand down to feel them... wack!!! Oooooch! After the pain subsided my hand went numb, so finally my brain had some company.

    The camp sites are right in the middle of the best parts of the park, a dumb idea if you are trying to protect these areas but brilliant for experiencing the place.
    Again we went walking in the desert, straight out our door from where we were camping. This was in amongst ancient stands of Joshua Trees and many other beautiful plants that take a serious approach to protecting themselves.
    Now though maybe the brain is a little numb I’m still no goldfish so can remember past the last 3 seconds, in fact I can remember back to the Mojave Desert and to leave things that look sharp well enough alone.
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  • Day 23

    American Graffiti 3

    October 30, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 28 °C

    Very bad service over here.

    1: Low payed Mexican gardeners.
    2: We wanted to treat ourselves to a bit of dining and dancing but the chef and band never showed up.
    3: Manufacturing standards have dropped now everything is made in China.
    4: We wanted to watch The Village People perform but only the cowboy one showed up, our least favourite.
    5: The only thing hot about this meal was too much chilli.
    6: Come on we’ve got a desert to cross, can someone pump us some gas!
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  • Day 22

    More good stuff in Arizona

    October 29, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    Just when you worked hard to dislike a place so much it keeps throwing up stuff to make you warm a little bit more towards it.
    Now unless you hug one of these just a little too hard so you have to spend the next five weeks picking out spikes from most parts of your anatomy then there’s nothing more cuddly than the Organ Pipe Cactus.

    These beautiful species have decided to make their home in Arizona and that raggedy arsed State is all the better for it. Combine these with the Grand Canyon and five star accomodation (please see wigwam pic) and you have to admit your original opinion of the place could be wrong.

    While I’m on a love fest about Arizona I have to mention the prices of things especially fuels like gas (petrol) and propane (gas). They are really cheap, almost half the prices compared to that over the border, over populated, over taxing, over rated, delusional State better know as California.

    Now I’m in the mood to go off on a rant about California but I’ve learned my lesson with Arizona and if I come out swinging it can come back and land some pretty heavy haymakers like the Sequoia National Park, Death Valley National Park and Joshua Tree National Park which should be coming up next.

    But I still think Jed Clampet should have stayed at home.
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  • Day 22

    Route 66

    October 29, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 13 °C

    In my early twenties when I was traveling the US and meeting gun toting crazies heading towards Alaska or wandering the streets of Phoenix Arizona Route 66 hadn’t quite reached the legendary status it has now and a lot more of it still existed then so I feel fortunate to have traveled a good part of it before the extinction of most of the original route happened.

    Now days every second person you meet and their pet budgie wants to travel Route 66, it’s one of those bucket list dreams people have.
    I’ve pointed out that it doesn’t really exist any more, its been carved up by interstate highways so there are only a few intermittent sections left and the businesses along these parts milk it to death.
    This is a good thing though because in places they have left a lot of the old stuff there like the motels that haven’t changed since the sixties, probably the sheets haven’t either.

    There are a lot of old fool bikers out here too on those few remaining segments they are trying to relive that era. The open road, the freedom, the wind in their hair... if they had any or what they had just got blown off.
    Now they can finally afford that Harley and all the leather gear to go with it, trouble is it all looks just a little too new, the bike, with no real street cred, the new leathers squeaking when they walk or maybe thats just their bones making the noise.

    But we can’t have a go, us smug bastards in our luxury RV, road tripping America with all the comforts of home compared to years ago when I mostly hitched or splurged on a Greyhound bus then booked into the cheapest hotel in the worst part of town, thats if you could afford one, if not you slepted by the road. We didn’t realise we were living a Jack Kerouac novel for real.

    Jack’s mate, the poet Alan Ginsberg also lived that life and many years later he tried to relive it all so as to rediscover the America they once new.
    He got a train to the outskirts of New York and stood hitchhiking for about 5 hours in the rain. No one picked him up, so totally drenched he caught the train back home.
    The experience didn’t go to waste though, it gave him plenty of material to write about, especially the loss and decline of America. Personally I don’t think you need get totally soaked holding you thumb out and get puddle splashed to become enlightened about that.

    Now with life on a shoestring a distant memory we sit back as this V8 monster regularly cruises at 85 miles per hour, thats a lot of kilometres and at this speed we reached the Painted Desert Inn one of the original stops on Route 66 and one of the first fast food restaurant chains in America.
    It was started by a Mr Fred Harvey because he was sick of getting bad food when traveling.

    So then you set up a fast food chain to get healthy food, imagine... ”hey boy get some meat on ya bones, you’ll looking a mite poorly... here eat this tub a lard, if ya dig deep enough ya might just find ya’self a few fries but the real nutritions in that there lard”.

    I think old Fred has a lot to answer for, he’s inspired a whole food culture and each town entrance is plastered with their signs. So many you have no idea of the name of a town so instead you say “yeah I came along Highway 40 through Popeyes then on to Crispy Creams, took a left at Dunkin Donuts to Arbies All You Can Eat then a right at Puffy Pizza then straight down the highway to Extra Big Footlongs so now here we are we’ve finally arrived at destination, Fat Arse Waddleville”.
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  • Day 22

    Back in Arizona

    October 29, 2018 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 3 °C

    This is an attempt to find something else good about Arizona besides the Grand Canyon.
    With my first ever trip here back in my twenties I had gun pulled on me in Phoenix so I’ve maintained a fairly low opinion of the place ever since then but you can’t let one bad experience taint your opinion so I’m back to give it another go.

    Unfortunately it hasn’t gone too well the second or third time either.
    Clearly avoiding Phoenix we made the effort to exit the interstate to try out a few other towns only to find staying in truck stops metres from the highway has more appeal.

    Probably the best one is just over the state border. As well as a truck stop, named Speedies Truck Stop is has the Indian Arts and Crafts Centre where they sell pretty much everything which is good for tourists as you want to take home something special to remember the place by.
    Now having a good look around I thought this is the place for me though I ran into a little trouble with what I wanted to buy.

    If you look at the photo of this tourist trap the signs on the store clearly read STORE WIDE CLEARANCE and EVERY MUST GO so I took them at their word and said I want to purchase the yellow horse on top of the building and being a hard bargainer I wanted a pair of sunglasses thrown in too, for the horse not me.

    Sadly the yellow horse purchase didn’t go well though I look on the whole experience as an educational one, instead of my horse I gained extensive knowledge of some very colourful Indian language.
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