Travel
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Roadtrippin' with Darla Kay
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Out West

Back East
  • New York City
  • Atlantic City
  • Amish Country
  • Washington DC
  • Plymouth Rock
  • Salem, MA
  • Waldon Pond
Up North
  • Maine
  • Vermont & New Hampshire
  • Madison, Wisconsin
  • Niagra Falls
  • Canada
Down South
  • Route 66

    • I have stuff (photos, etc.) for all the places listed here. I am updating as often as possible to get them all up. And there will be cool maps and travel info, too.
    Last updated on September 09, 2006 .

    Latest Trip!
    to the Outer Banks of North Carolina with much in between
    Wednesday, August 9, 2006, 2:30pm - Friday, August 18, 2006, midnight

    (8/26/6) We're back from the east coast! Casey Jones, Gatlinburg, Great Smoky Mountains, Cherokee and Oconaluftee, North Carolina Transportation train ride, Roanoke Island, Jockey's Ridge, the Outer Banks, lighthouses, the beach, ferries, Bodie, Hatteras, and Ocracoke, pirates, Beaufort, Shackleford banks, wild ponies, Carolina Beach and venus flytraps, Calabash, Chattanooga, riding the Missionary Ridge Local -- pictures and text coming in the next few days!

    Latest Trip Plan
    I'm currently planning a trip for me and Terry and Benjamin to the Outer Banks of North Carolina in the summer of 2006. Terry wants to see the Smoky Mountains which is convenient because they're right on the way. I have done a lot of the plans, at least until I got Terry involved and he kind of ruined things, says we can't take that long. Of course, until it's finished, you can't tell how long it will really take anyway. Here are the plans so far.
    7/1/6 - working feverishly on the trip plans...
    7/31/6 - Revised plan

    Update on the West 2005 Trip
    (3/24/5) I have pages up so far for McCormick Stillman Railroad Park in Scottsdale, Arizona, Knotts Berry Farm in Beuna Vista, California, Death Valley, the Sierras, Crescent City, California, Venice Beach, and Hoover Dam. They're not completely finished; I will add more text. I am currently rescanning old photos from previous trips and will combine those with the new ones from San Francisco, Las Vegas, and the Palm Springs area.

    Southwest US and California - May 13 -28, 2005
    Road trip out I40 from Fayetteville, AR through OK, TX panhandle, NM, AZ, CA, OR to Phoenix, Palm Springs, Death Valley, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Crescent City, and the Sierras. I've completed most of the plans page. Everything went pretty smoothly except when we lost the van in San Francisco. Luckily, it was in the Tenderloin district and a very nice homeless man helped us find it. We got lucky going to Knott's Berry Farm. I was debating not going, wondering if it was worth the price. As I pondered and drank a Pepsi, I noticed there was a coupon on the side of the can! Almost half off.

    Memphis in May - 2005

    October 2004 - East Texas
    Road trip from Fayetteville, Arkansas to Euless, Texas (Ft. Worth), Galveston, Texas, and Nacogdoches, Texas
    Camera problems, not sure how the pictures will turn out, had to use... disposable cameras. Eek! So, not sure if I will have pages, but we plan to go back. We stayed with Terry's sister in Euless and his brother in Nacogdoches. Galveston was the beach. We went to the Stockyards in Fort Worth (no pictures, only 8MM) and saw the cattle drive. Didn't see much of Nacogdoches, but plan to go back there also. It's the oldest city in Texas. Galveston was great. It's a cute little island and the streets are laid out so well, you can't get lost. This was Benjamin's first real road trip (and first time to see the ocean), and Terry's and my first trip with a small child; turns out he's a natural roadtripper! I will put up a page as soon as I get the pictures developed. I dropped one of the disposable cameras down the concrete steps that go down the seawall, and it landed in a pile of sand...

    Most of our trips have been based on going to visit people. Aunt Marilyn and Joe and Linda in Joshua Tree and then Palm Springs, Uncle Doc and Aunt Toad in Crescent City, Jimmy in Victorville, Los Angeles, and Michigan, Jeremy in Indiana, Sue and Jim and Jaret in Memphis, Randy in Madison, Rick and Tammy in Largo, Susan and Ommis in Miami. The exception was the trip to Louisiana; we don't know anyone there. But, Louisiana is close. We (Terry and I) live in Arkansas. Terry's name is not included in the title of this page because he does not appreciate the web. He barely appreciates roadtripping.

    Some of them were total road trips and some involved airplanes and rental cars.

    For our next trip, I want to again combine airplanes and cars. Our next trip will include a small child. That will be new...

    Our first road trip was to Florida to see Rick and Tammy in Largo (the one by Clearwater, not the Key) and Susan and Ommis in Miami in 1991. The photos from that trip aren't so good. I didn't have a good camera back then. I also didn't take as many pictures then. Now a one week road trip will run me 15 to 20 rolls of 24exp. film.

    OK, honestly, I can't remember all of our trips off the top of my head, but I'll look it all up and delete this and put all the info here.

    I always tried to keep good records. I would start off on the trip entering times and mileage and place names and every time we stopped for gas and how much we paid and every dime we spent, but by the end of two weeks living in a car, you just don't care anymore. So my travelogues are more or less incomplete. And that's if I even knew where they all are. They're in boxes... And at some point in a trip, in between taking good notes and not caring, I will start scribbling notes in the atlas. Notes which become more and more undecipherable.

    One of our next trips was to Oregon to drive my mom and her new husband back in his motor home. Yep, you heard me right. Just try to imagine it. On top of that, I had a cold and was sick the whole time. I believe there is one awful photo of me from that trip, and I have not included it on these pages. We flew to Oregon, into Portland, and they picked us up and drove us down to Salem. I don't have pages for the photos from this trip here yet. I don't know where most of them were taken. I would be awakened as we drove down some highway somewhere out west (Oregon to Arkansas) and told to take a photo of something and I would and then go back to sleep. There was no travelogue on that trip.

    Actually, I've been sick on most of trips we've taken. Usually, it's a cold or flu and Terry had it too, but there was also the time that I got food poisoning at Venice Beach after eating chili cheese fries. I was miserable for hundreds of miles through California, across the Golden Gate Bridge, in the redwoods. Then I was miraculously cured by Mount Shasta. I had heard it had "powers". It does. I went from horribly sick to eating refried beans from Taco Bell just from the sight of Mount Shasta. So, now anytime I'm in Weed, California, I have to get refried beans from the Taco Bell. You can see Mount Shasta from there. Usually, we only eat at local cafes, but this is the exception.

    We have made more trips out west to California than anywhere else. We only went east once. Some of the places out west I have been to two or three times.

    One of things I want to do here is offer some roadtrippin' advice. Such as buy postcard stamps BEFORE you leave. Take a ballpoint pen in case it rains. Take your address book. I guess this is just good advice if you like to send postcards to people when you are on a trip. I think it's fun, sitting on a bench in some plaza, thousands of miles from home, missing my cat and worried about a million things and feeling very homesick and writing a happy postcard to someone. Some more advice:

    • Travelers' checks and one credit card, leave the check info with someone back home and have the credit card company's phone number to call.
    • Don't bother trying to reserve rooms anywhere; you don't know when you might get there or if you'll change your mind about going there at all. You can always find a cheap motel on a road trip. Sometimes you just have to drive a little farther.
    • Take an ice chest.
    • Check the weather forecast for everywhere you are going to be, and then check it all along the trip, and be prepared to swap your plans if you need to.
    • Find out what time the sun sets so you know how much time you have to see things in daylight. This is important for me because I plan our trips so far in advance.
    • If you're going to a big city, find out about intercity transportation and parking beforehand. Parking and riding a bus or subway or cable car or metro or whatever is usually best in a big city.
    • Find out beforehand the hours of any place you might visit so you don't show up when they're closed.
    • I always check for festivals near the route, but I have never had any luck with this one.
    • Map everything out, even places you might not go.
    • Think of each trip as a reconnaisance mission. Then if it goes poorly, you don't feel as bad.

    Trippin' Links

    Maps & Directions

    DK's map comparison chart

    Road Trips
  • Lycos Roadtrips
  • Rand McNally - Plan A Road Trip
  • On the Road Again...The Great American Road Trip
  • Travel Library - US - Travelogues

    • Travel Weather

    Flights, Rental Cars, and Hotels

    Airplanes

    Other People's Travelogue Sites

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    This page was last modified on September 09, 2006
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