Day 23 - Laurel Hill St. Pk. to Richelle & Tim's House, OutInTheBoonies, OH (outside Springfield)

How fantastic it was to have our destination be the home of some long-time friends. Richelle is a friend of mine from my "previous life" when I lived in San Diego. I've only seen her once in about 20 years so this was definitely a treat. Her husband, Tim, is a fantastic guy who has good taste in women! He's lucky because his lovely wife has good taste in beer! Richelle and Tim had invited over some family members to share in this little reunion and partake of some good BBQ, good beer, good fireworks and good times.

It was so nice to have a captive audience to listen to some of our stories of being on the road. Guys, I hope I didn't bore you and monopolize the conversation too much. :-) It's plainly obvious that this road trip will provide fodder for conversation for years to come.

Dylan was in heaven being able to set off some of his fireworks. He set them off for about an hour and didn't even really make a dent in his stash. We will be having a good time in Reno with all these. It wasn't just Dylan setting off fireworks, either! Mother Nature decided to put on her own show with a good supply of lightning bugs in the back yard and real thunder and lightning in the sky above. Great evening!!!

Day 22 – Staten Island to Laurel Hill State Park, Pennsylvania

It was a day of driving. It poured down rain from the time we entered NJ until about 50 miles from our destination. I had checked the forecast and was quite confident that we would be rain free so I wasn’t too overly concerned. I really wish we had a little more time. We ended up getting off the Turnpike for about 40 miles or so and it was fantastic to be driving through the countryside again. There is so much history here in the Appalachian Mountains. We went through one little town…ummm….it was called…ummm…..Bedford, PA and there on the corner was an old tavern with a placard out front that said something to the effect, “Col. George Washington stopped here in 1750 to do something….” Freakin’ cool!!! I’m sure that the locals have really no interest whatsoever in the history of their towns. Back on the Turnpike we went.
So, the speed limit on these toll Turnpikes is always 55 or 65. Everyone drives 80. Cops be damned. I had made a vow that I would drive the speed limit this whole trip. Well….if I drove the speed limit on the Turnpike, I would literally be putting our lives in danger so I figured setting the cruise control to about 73 or so would keep me out of trouble. We’re driving along and I see in my rear view mirror a car that is seriously hauling-ass. I see that it’s a sports car of some sorts…I was doing almost 80 and it was coming up on me really fast. I alert Dylan as one of the new Maserati sports cars and a fully raced out Mercedes coupe go flying by. On the back of the Mercedes there was a vinyl sticker that said, “bullrun.com” We looked it up and it seems to be an “invitation only” rally of the most expensive cars out there driven by celebrities and other rich dudes. The entry fee is $20k!!!! A few minutes later, a tricked out Caddy STS goes flying by. Very cool. Dylan wanted to keep driving on the freeway but, alas, we were at our exit. Check out their website, it’s sounds like a party.

We arrived at Laurel Hill State Park around 5ish and, after setting up camp, the very first thing I had to do was laundry. Ugh!! Two loads of really, really stinky camp clothes. While hanging out folding clothes and such, we met some really nice people and enjoyed chatting for a while. Dylan had done a lot of exploring on the bike while I was doing laundry. It seems there’s a beach at the lake right over the hill from our site. Dylan scoped out some “hot chicks” and announced that he wants to stay an extra day here. I don’t think we can afford the time. I really want to make sure that we have available extra days for us in Yellowstone. Everyone has said that you can spend 2 weeks in Yellowstone and never see it all. I’m trying for at least 2 full days…maybe 3 there.

So, I had my last load of laundry in the dryer and a very nice woman had come in and put her laundry in the washer. After about 45 min., she walks over to our camp and asks if it would be ok if she took our clothes out and folded them and brought them to us! HuH? Now THAT is the friendliness that we’ve been looking for for 22 days now!!! I said that I would be there to take my clothes out in a few minutes. I’m taking my clothes out and I thanked her profusely for the offer of folding and bringing us our clothes. She said that some people might get a little weirded-out having a stranger fold their laundry, that’s why she asked first. How cool is that!!??

Dylan and I went for a bike ride after dark to check out the lake. This park truly is beautiful and I do wish we had the time to spend an extra day here. Part of the ride takes us through a grass field. It was almost pitch black and the only reason we were able to ride was because Dylan had ridden the trail a few times before. In the middle of this field, Dylan stops to catch a firefly. He held it in his hands and the little guy just glowed and glowed. Fireflies are my buddies. They just seem to make everything better in some way. They are a little bit of magic in a world obsessed with reason. They make me smile….every single time I see one. Los Angeles needs fireflies. When we got back to camp, our Citronella candles were still burning and next to them were two freshly baked blueberry muffins!!! HA!!! More magic!!! Maybe it was the laundry girl, maybe it was the family with the 4 kids we met….we don’t know. All we know is that they were a wonderful finish to what started out being a non-eventful day! The forest was unbelievably quiet. No crickets, no katydids, no cicadas, no frogs. Weird. It was starting to get cold. We went to bed and actually slept inside our sleeping bags for the first time in about 20 days. I slept like a baby. Dylan is still sleeping as I write this.

Addendum: As Dylan and I were drinking the last of our coffee this morning, the "laundry lady" came by with her two young'uns and asked if we enjoyed our muffins last night! Dylan and I thanked her for her gracious gift of blueberry goodness and chatted a bit with her. What a treat to finally meet someone who is truly a nice person strictly for the sake of being nice. We formally introduced ourselves to Julie, her husband, John and her little boys, Hunter and Lane. We gave them the address to this blog so....THANK YOU JULIE for the blueberry muffins!!!!! We will always remember you.

Off to Ohio today!!

Day 21 - Washington DC to New York

Boy was I grumpy when I woke up in DC...or should I say, when I woke up in the Motel 6 in South Central L.A. At least that's what it felt like. When we asked the ranger at Pettigrew St. Pk. if we should be worried about any animals or anything he said that the only animals that he's afraid of are the two-legged ones. Dylan and I agree wholeheartedly. Dylan said that he would have much rather slept in an area with snakes around than in that Motel 6. We didn't have any problems but it was still living on the edge for these two blue-eyed white boys.

The drive to NY was pure turnpike the whole way which really surprised me about how many tolls you have to pay. I'll bet it cost us almost $30 to drive to NY on the turnpike. It was fairly fast, though. At first I was driving the speed limit and was getting passed by literally everyone but, eventually, I got wise I just stayed in the pack of traffic traveling at 75 to 80 the whole way. We saw a little traffic but it wasn't as bad as L.A.

I was carrying a lot of stress about where we were going to stay in NY. We are on a serious budget for this trip so spending $300 for a hotel in Manhattan wasn't going to cut it. We needed to find a place on the outskirts where we could easily get into the city for the evening. I thought that Staten Island would be perfect because we could take our bikes on the ferry and have it drop us right in Manhattan. Dylan was looking online for motels and coming up short. Luckily, Sandra volunteered to find something for us. It took her a while but she persevered and found us a brand new Comfort Inn to stay at. Perfect!! Thank you, Snardy!!!

The ferry ride to Manhattan was really kinda cool. To see The Statue of Liberty, one of the great symbols of America, as millions have before me, was really an honor. Before this trip, I was at a point in my life where I really thought that I would never get to see all these things. I will forever be a changed man. Manhattan loomed in the distance and got bigger and bigger and bigger. It kind of reminded me of coming into Seattle by ferry for the first time. Very impressive. Dylan and I disembarked and made our way to Battery Park and looked for a map or something. We saw a sign that said, "Broadway" and that sounded very NY like so off we went up Broadway. We rode around a bit and kind of came to a halt feeling very overwhelmed and a little lost. We had ridden by the Trinity Church and the World Trade Center site, which is just a construction zone now, and ended up at City Hall Park. We were hungry and really didn't know where to go. We wanted to see Times Square and Central Park but we didn't know where to go. I eventually went down into the subway station and found a bus map that saved us. Central Park sure looked a LONG ways away but we decided, "what the hell" and off we went.

New York City is all about the sounds, smells and crush of humanity. At first, we were riding on the sidewalk but as we got further and further uptown, it was impossible...not to mention that we kept seeing bikers riding by on the street hauling ass. Into the street we went to battle with taxis and buses. In and out, stop and go, swerve here and there. Smells of sewer, hot dogs, diesel exhaust, cigarette smoke, electrical ozone smell from the subways below, perfume, bad cologne, sweat all intermixed with the dusty wind being kicked up by the cars and buses. We were in NY...in the trenches. We figured out that, when in NY, do as the NY'ers do and don't stop for red lights. Just wait until you're not going to get killed and go!! There is no such thing as getting a jaywalking ticket in NY. We watched people cross right in front of cars which had the right-of-way. Wow!

We followed 6th Ave for quite a ways when, like a mirage rising up out of the desert for parched travelers, a Chipotle appeared out of nowhere. Dylan immediately fell to his knees and thanked a higher authority for putting his very favorite place right there in front of us. We chowed down and watched the world go by. We noticed something very interesting in that virtually all of the women were wearing dresses. Women of all ages, too. In L.A., women tend to gravitate towards shorts and t-shirts or tank tops. Not here. Another thing that I noticed was that cell phone reception SUCKS in Manhattan....obviously because of all the buildings but it's not something that I expected.

Our hunger satiated, off we went. What a blast it is riding a bike in NY!! Far and away the fastest way to get around. We were in Central Park in no time. There is a road that circles Central Park that is closed to cars but very open to bicycles and joggers. It is literally a bicycle freeway! Hundreds and hundreds of bicyclists hauling ass around the park. Most were on street bikes which are significantly faster than our mountain bikes but we found that if we can catch up to one of the super fast guys we can actually draft behind them with very little effort at speeds well above 25 MPH. We had a blast riding around and checking out all the people. I asked a fellow biker how far around the full loop is. He responded that it was 6 miles all the way around. La di da....we're riding and riding and eventually we figure out that maybe we're seeing the same things again. I pull out my trust Droid with GPS mapping and, sure enough, we had ridden 1 1/2 times around and missed our exit to 7th Ave. Ooops. Well, you certainly can't ride against the flow of traffic without getting killed, so we made our way across the park to the other side. Wow, I could see how easy it would be to get lost in this park.

Our next goal was Times Square as the sun was starting to set. We found it with no problems and immediately stopped in the middle of it, got off our bikes and just looked up with our jaws dropping. Wow! We locked the bikes to a tree and proceeded to be part of the swarm on foot. Times Square is the Mecca of Consumerism. A shrine to our ability, as American's, to spend well beyond our means. Even Walgreen's has a store smack dab in the middle of TS that is, obviously, the chain's showcase store. We took pictures and played tourist with all the others. A lot of you readers got picture text messages from us. TS is pretty much the turning point in our trip. From NY, we head west towards home so TS kind of symbolized the beginning of the end of our adventure.

The ride back to the ferry terminal was a super fast, exciting road race through the darkened streets of Manhattan. I loved it!!! We said goodbye to NY and made our way back to the hotel. By midnight, I was drinking a Longboard Lager, eating Flavor Blasted Cheddar Cheese Goldfish and watching the Discovery Channel. Off towards Ohio tomorrow. I had planned to drive the almost 600 miles to visit friends in Springfield but I think we're going to do it in 2 days instead. Pennsylvania, here we come!

Day 20 - Kiptopeke, VA to Washington DC

On the way, I had Dylan start checking prices of motels around DC. Yeah, they're expensive. We are on a serious budget for this trip so it's very important for us to find cheap lodging. Remember, after sleeping in a tent dealing with dirt and bugs and such, even a cheap motel is inviting. We've thrown our need for luxury digs out the window. Dylan found a Motel 6 about 10 miles outside of DC proper in a location called Camp Springs, Maryland which is right across from Andrews AFB. Well, we pulled in and noticed that we were the only white people around. OK, no biggie. Walked into the office to check in and noticed the bulletproof glass with the one-way drawer to exchange money. OK. Paid my $60, got my parking pass and made my way to the room. Noticed a cop sitting in his car in the parking lot. Ok. Pulled into a parking spot in front of the ice machines and noticed a Rottweiler with gnarly spiky chain collar running loose. Ok. Opened the door to the ice room and noticed the lock on the door had been drilled out innumerable times and the window was broken. Ok. All the vending machines had bars on them. OK. Noticed homeboys standing around smoking. Ok. Made our way up the stairs that smelled like piss and excused ourselves as we walked by a homie carrying a baby. OK. Did I mention that we were the only white boys around? This is fun!!! It's like camping in South Central. :-)

Took showers, and prepared for the drive into DC. No big deal but when we got to the Monuments, the NAV chick stated taking us in circles and we ended up looking for parking for about 40 minutes. Literally. Finally found parking and hopped on our bikes. Having bikes to check everything out was a blessing. There is no way we could have seen everything we did if we had to walk. Did all the Smithsonian Museums. The museums seemed to be much more up-to-date than I remember them from my visit back in the mid-ninety's. It was quite enjoyable to see the huge collections amassed by the US government and to know that "we" are taking such pains to make sure that "history" is collected, organized and displayed for future generations to enjoy.

When the museums closed at 7PM, we rode our bikes from the Capitol to the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial...enjoying the sunset and taking pics along the way. It had cooled down quite a bit and was an excellent evening. We finished our tour of the Monuments by visiting the Vietnam War Memorial. Once again, I couldn't help but tear-up. Dylan was quite moved by it also. There was a family who had found the name of a loved one and were gathered around for quite a while. The matriarch of the family had stood up from her wheelchair and shuffled over to the wall to touch the name. The name which was one of tens of thousands. The name which represented a loss of life...a loss of a loved one...maybe a son or brother. She cried as her relatives comforted her. Tourists walked past without feeling her pain of loss from almost 50 years ago. Dylan and I felt her pain. We watched. We were quiet. We showed respect. It was very emotional.

We walked up to the directory of names to see if, by chance, there was a Lochridge listed. There was and he was from Olympia, Washington. My family is from Washington. Oh geez. Dylan and I found the name....Robert Eric Lochridge. I don't know him but, chances are, he is a relative. We share the same last name so both Dylan and I felt connected to this man who gave his life fighting a war in some far-off land. Dylan sat down and touched his name. I touched his name. We gave our respects to a distant relative who died for our country. We sat there with him for a while. When we left, we walked past the family who was still paying their respects to their family member. War sucks.

We made our way back to the truck and noticed that it was almost 10PM. Dylan and I were hungry and I had promised Dyl seafood so I decided that I would get us lost and then ask the NAV chick to find us some seafood. We ended up at this gas station across a bridge, bought some Gatorade, then asked the NAV chick if there were any restaurants on the way back to the motel. It seems that there were quite a few not too far away. We turned left and withing about a 1/4 mile, found ourselves on a very cool street of 200+ year old refurbished buildings that had been turned into trendy shops and restaurants. We were in Georgetown!!! Found a parking spot and made our way to Bodega which was a very nice Spanish restaurant. Dylan and I were both amazed at all the hot chicks out and about. Dylan immediately professed his love for Georgetown. Dinner was great and we made it back to the 'hood with no problems.

Off to NY tomorrow.

Day 19 - Pettigrew St. Pk. NC to Kiptopeke St. Pk. Virginia

You know, we never did see anyone at Pettigrew St. Pk. We were by ourselves the entire stay. The night was uneventful and actually it wasn't as bad sleeping here as it was at Lake Lincoln in MS. Took showers and hit the road for Virginia. The goal for the day was pretty much planned out to take us to Kitty Hawk, NC and then from there decide where we were going based on how much time we had left in the day.

Kitty Hawk was amazing! Dylan said to me, "what's Kitty Hawk?" prior to us getting there and I had to explain to him about Wilbur and Oroville and how they did their thing back in the early 1900's. The National Park Service has done a good job setting up the park and showing how they first accomplished flight. Standing atop the hill while looking out at the landing field gave you a real sense of the size of their balls as they took off in their glider for the first time. I can only imagine how scary it must have been once they actually started mastering powered flight. It would be tantamount, in this day and age, of being the first person to get "beamed" to another place, a la Star Trek. Barely 100 years later, we have people casually flying around space on such a regular basis that we don't even know anymore when the Space Shuttle takes off or lands. Remember when rocket launches to the moon were broadcast live on every channel and it was the only thing that people talked about? If you're younger than me, you probably don't remember. I vividly remember sitting on Aunt Dora's living room floor watching Man set foot on the moon for the very first time. Yes, I'm that old!!

So....we're driving along and I notice out of the corner of my eye a "Grave Digger" monster truck half buried in a field. Huh? I look closer and it was the home of the Grave Digger monster truck franchise. We bang a "U'y" and drive into the parking lot. Sure enough, this is where they build these monster trucks. They were everywhere and it was quite the scene. Who knew? We were in the middle of nowhere NC. Kinda cool the things you see on the road.

Kiptopeke St. Pk. was right across the 24 mile long Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Very weird concept to be 12 miles out to sea in your car. We found our campsite in the quite full park and began to notice that most of the people around us were blond, very tan and of stout build. We picked a site that had a most attractive teenage girl next door (I'm always thinking of my son) and setup shop. As we were setting up, we noticed that nobody was speaking English. Listening closer, we determined that it was Russian. Hmmm..... After getting everything setup, we decided to go for a bike ride and check out the beach and see the sights. More Russians. Hmmm.... As we rode through the park, we saw names on the camp posts like, Ivanhov, Checkov, Burisky, Blablapov, Purpinsky, Makingitupinsky, etc. What the hell was going on here? Our site was right next to a trail that led to the beach so as the family next door was walking back to their site, I struck up a conversation with one of the men. Seems that they were Ukrainian and it was just a huge get together of extended families there at the park. Literally, of over 300 sites, I'll bet at least 1/3 of them were Ukrainians. It was kind of like we were camping in the Ukraine!!!

Had a good time riding around on the bikes. Saw some deer, talked to Sandra and found out about the big earthquake in SoCal, watched people catch fish, talked to some kids who were catching crab after crab after crab, stumbled upon a Geocache by accident, played cards back at the site and got my ass KICKED by my son who I taught the game to, had some burgers and hit the hay! All good.

5:55AM and I get up to take a pee. Nobody is stirring yet in the campground. I feel a little mist come down through the trees. I just assumed that it was a little squirrel piss or something. You know how trees feel kind of wet underneath them sometimes? Well, I finish and crawl back into the tent for a little more sleep. Knowing that the camp was going to start getting up, I put earplugs in. About 15 minutes later, I'm awakened by Dylan stirring and sitting straight up. I yank out the earplugs and hear him say, "Dad, it's raining". SHIT!! We bolted up out of bed and started dismantling camp before everything got too wet. By about 6:40, we were in the car headed out to the highway and looking for coffee. Thank goodness that there are McDonald's virtually everywhere and they have fantastic coffee. Really....and much cheaper than Starbucks or Coffee Bean.

Washington DC was our destination and the NAV Chick said we'd be there before noon. Cool!

Day 18 - Myrtle Beach to Pettigrew State Park, Cherry, NC

11AM 7-6-2010

Dylan is driving this morning. I am soooo dragging today. I was up late last night and didn't sleep very well. I definitely feel like I'm going to need a nap today. When we got up this morning, Dylan pointed out a HUGE spider web near our tent. The spider on it was the largest most bad-ass looking spider that I've ever seen out in the wild and it was having it's breakfast. OMG!!

Our destination is in northern NC near Phelps Lake. I had originally wanted to go to one of the campgrounds out on the Outer Banks but we would have had to deal with a very limited schedule on one of the ferries. Better to be on our own time-frame.

7:00AM 7-7-2010

The drive was relatively uneventful. It was kind of nice to have Dylan drive for almost 3 hours. I was really dragging and having him drive was a good thing. The drive was split fairly evenly between back roads and 4 lane hwy’s. We did kind of find it interesting that our GPS was outdated enough to not show some of the new freeways that we were driving on. At one point, it showed us driving across a river in the middle of nothing! Pettigrew, like Lake Lincoln State Park in MS, was down a bunch of empty farm roads with no GPS available at all. The GPS showed us arriving at our destination in the middle of a tobacco plantation! We had to actually follow the signs. The park office was closed and locked when we got there so we decided to drive through the park to see what kind of campsites it offered. There was nobody around. And when I say, “nobody”, I mean that the park was completely void of all human life. Period!

It’s a small park of only 13 campsites set about 150 yards from the second largest natural lake in NC; Lake Phelps. We picked out our spot and Dylan immediately noticed the very large snakeskin lying in our campsite. Nice. We looked around a bit and decided to go for a bike ride. As we were riding out towards the ranger station, the ranger was driving in to meet us. He was a very cool guy and took a lot of time showing us all the mounted animals that he had in his office and explaining about the flora and fauna of the park. Red Wolf, otter, beaver, bear, weasels, birds of every imagination, snakes of every imagination, nutria, bats, etc. He was so happy to have visitors that he started showing us pictures he had taken of all the animals. I eventually had to excuse ourselves so that we could go exploring.

Right next to our camp was an old carriage road which led to an old preserved plantation settlement of the Pettigrew family. It seems that the Pettigrew’s were pretty big-time in this area from the 1700’s to the late 1800’s. At one point in time, they owned about 150 slaves whose small quarters lined the carriage road that we were riding on. Kind of a weird concept to grasp. We continued down the carriage road to the Pettigrew family cemetery which was right on the edge of the forest and the plantation. Remember, we were completely by ourselves. Nobody else in sight. The burial “mound” was a square of earth that was built up above the surrounding area by about 3 feet. There was an old wrought iron gate that you had to go through to get into the cemetery. The gate had the eeriest sound you could possibly imagine as we opened it. As if we were opening the gates of Hell or something like that. We stood on the mound just staring at the 200+ year old gravestones and both of us had chills going up and down our spines.

Came back to the site and got everything set up. Ate sirloin steak burgers, drank a couple beers, ate some watermelon and blueberries, made a fire, swatted bugs and waited for the impending gloomy darkness. Boy did it get dark!! No moon, no lights anywhere. We were waiting for that “bearigator” to come chew us up. Interestingly, other than the stifling, omnipresent, sticky heat, it wasn’t as bad as Lake Lincoln in Mississippi. Dylan and I spent some time talking about what it’s going to be like when we get home. One thing we both agreed on is that we will forever be changed men. This trip has really put things in perspective and has shown us the privilege that we have to live the lifestyle we do in Southern California. It’s easy to take for granted your beautiful house, big screen TV’s, computers, cell phones and nice cars when everyone around you has the same thing. We have seen a broken America in our travels. Shuttered businesses, family homes for sale in the droves, people living their lives from day to day. The scenery is, of course, beautiful but to see fantastic old farmhouses falling down right next to a mobile home purchased to replace it is kind of disheartening. It’s cheaper to just plunk a mobile….uh, pre-manufactured home down on your family land than spend the money to fix up the 150+ year old home sitting right next to you. We’ve seen this all across America. EVERYONE lives in mobile homes and drives pickup trucks.

Today we’re off to either Virginia or the Outer Banks kinda depending on whether or not Sandra can pull things together and use her mileage to fly out and meet us in Washington DC for the upcoming weekend. Both Dylan and I are really hoping that she can make it work. We both miss her so much!