september 3-15, 2004

my sister had just come back from japan, and her next navy duty station was in san diego, california. since she had to drive her car there from here, we decided to make a roadtrip out of it. with my trusty camera in hand, we set out on our long long... long drive west.

here are some of sights and memories.
a journey's gotta start somewhere.
after driving treacherous fog enshrouded roads overnight, i take a break and watch the sunrise somewhere in illinois.
we hardly stopped during our first day of driving so we decided to relax a bit in st. louis, missouri. here's the mississipi river, it was pretty nasty. we took a short tour on the river boat.
me and sis
that big mcdonalds looking arch thing. supposed to represent the gateway to the west which i thought was appropriate.
when we got to the arch thing, we saw that people were going underneath it, which i thought was strange, but i figured there was some museum underneath. turns out, you can go inside the arch to the top...
...which we did. all my life i thought it was a solid concrete structure... who knew.
view of st. louis from the top, cool shadow of the arch.
oklahoma. the most memorable thing about driving through that part of the country were the radio stations. why more than one country station is necessary? i don't know. but the most freightening thing was all the references to god on the air. some lady was dedicating a song to her fiancee, and she was thanking god so much that you'd think he he had personally set them up. and the talk show host would say god bless you to all her guests. the speed limit was 75, which means we were driving 90. at that speed, the rate at which bugs are smashed to smitherines on the windshield is astonishing. in some areas, it was more than one a minute, and these are huge texas size bugs. so after a couple hours, the windshield was plastered with bug bits blocking the view which we had to squeegy off every hour or so. nasty.
oklahoma city memorial. i remember the day of the bombing so clearly because it was during april vacation and i was home watching coverage all day on TV.
it's wierd how something like this becomes a tourist attraction.
I-40... ugh. this interstate highway would bring us all the way from oklahoma to california. i'm can never complain about driving to boston again.
these long highways where the exits are 50 miles apart weren't really built for commuters taking the long way home, but for ground transport.
up til st. louis, the drive was still foresty. then through oklahoma and texas, it was so mind numbingly flat, then finally in new mexico, we started to see an interesting change in geography.
i never realized that new mexico was at such a high elevation. it was blazing hot during the day when the sun was out, but once it set, at that elevation, it was bone chilling cold.
i love this, vintage looking sign with a web address.
squeegy break.
this is indian country, so there were plenty of indian gift shops along the way.
detour... what roadtrip is complete without a stop at a national park?
flagstaff is the "major" city an hour from grand canyon. it's very scenic and holds onto its western frontier history.
cool, devastated by forest fire. or locusts.
we stayed at holiday inn near the park entrance overnight. we lucked out cause we made no reservations and a bunch of the places we checked were booked. next day, we got up at 4:30, then made the 20 minute drive to the canyon to watch the sunrise.
good, no cheesy music. hardly as rewarding as mt. fuji though.
of course, the cellphone camera.
waaahhhh.... sugoi.... that's all i heard around me...
...because the place was full of japanese tourist. i was getting major flashbacks. there were also lots of dutch, british, chinese, and indian tourists. but hardly any americans, and not a single kid or black person. it didn't feel like america at all.
pretty
grand canyon, check.
this is my first attempt at blending together images to made a panoramic view. unfortunately, when i was looking over my pictures when i got back, i forgot what that i took pictures to do this and i was going, this picture doesn't look good, click, delete, oops. so i can't make a whole 360 view cause i'm missing some parts.
i love how you can point the camera anywhere and get a picture that looks like it belongs on a postcard.
the cool here is that they kept it pretty natural, so there are railing only in a few touristy points. and everywhere else, if you slip, you plummet a few hundred feet to your death.
another panorama view. i don't know why, but i was surprised by how much it looked like i expected. it really was huge, and majestic, but it's just one of those places that have been photographed so many times, you feel like you've already been there.
sobe yourself
there's that parasol again.
we left that day to continue to california. from flagstaff, we drive south to phoenix, from which we drove straight west. that drive south to phoenix was the most awesome drives i ever had (luckily it was my turn to drive). it was pretty much straight downhill for half an hour, descending from 7000 ft to 2000 ft. to add to the fun, there were a ton of curves, beautiful scenery, and oh yeah, i was going 80 miles an hour. it was crazy because we were moving through so many different climate zones as we were doing downhill, first there were tall evergreen trees, then shorter trees, then shrubs, then cacti, then nothing, then cacti again as we were going uphill. i was going fast, but i literally had my feet on the brakes the whole time, freakin scary. there were also "runaway truck zones" which were long straightaways out a sharp curve because with all that momentum, i guess it's hard to control. but unfortunately, i couldn't take any pictures of it since i had my hands on the steering wheel, darn.
OUCH!
woohoo, finally made it to san diego after 3500 miles on the road.
nice stained glass ceiling at the hard rock cafe in SD
next day, we spent the afternoon at sea world. unfortunately, since it was the middle of the week, there weren't many shows. my sister wasn't a fan of the rides, and it was hot and sunny so we didn't stay too long.
these sea otters were awesome. they sorta swam around and played, and reminded me of my cats. the funny thing was that during feeding time, they unleashed tubes with frozen shrimp into the water. the otters would grab a tube and bang them against the glass to release the shrimp. it was so unnatural, but very cute.
just practicing my wildlife photography skills. except that they're far from wild.
I wonder if whoever made this realized how gay it looks.