Coast
to Coast - Border to Border
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"How far do you think these cars could go?"asked Paul on the CB radio as we drove our '55 and '56 Chevys back to Orange County, California, from a Chevy Show in Santa Maria, CA, in March, 2003. It didn't take me long to respond, "You Son of a Gun, you are thinking of driving these cars back 'home!" Home to me is Hayden, Indiana, where I left the farm for college in 1960. Home for Paul is Fitchburg, Massachusetts. We had both moved our families to California in the 1960s, he to Downey, and me to Anaheim. We had driven and flown back to our hometowns through the years, first following Route 66, then later the Interstates. We met in 1980, when we moved in across the street from him in Placentia, California. We became car-buddies when I bought a 1956 Chevy from Roger Hunter in Huntingburg, Indiana, while our son was a senior in college at Oakland City College in Southern Indiana. We went to car shows together, me in our '56 Chevy and he in his '60ish Ford T-Bird. Paul eventually bought a 1955 Chevy in Poway, California, and we began going to shows in earnest thereafter. We enjoyed driving our Chevys and chose shows farther and farther away from our homes in Placentia and Anaheim, California. Our adventures took us to Reno, Nevada, for Hot August Nights for three years, to Laughlin, Nevada, for "The Gambler Classic" for three years, to Morro Bay, California, for their May cruises, and to Pinetop, Arizona, for the Classic Chevy International Western Nationals in 2003. After agreeing to drive 'back home' in May, 2004, with a side trip to visit my family in Maryville, Tennessee, we began making plans to visit friends and family along the way. In the meantime, Paul traded his '55 Chevy for a '57 Chevy convertible. This website was an outgrowth of that planning, and a way to communicate to the world on the Internet about our Ultimate Road Trip. As we told friends about our 40-day, 10,000 plan, we found folks had one of two reactions; either: "You're crazy!" or "Man, I wish I could go with you!" Since I plan to publish my pictures and words on the Internet < MoKnowsPhotos.com/USA >, folks started becoming Sponsors. They donated everything from gas cards, coffee cards, hotel rooms, Indy 500 race tickets, cash and attraction tickets, to a bed for a night in their homes. Commercial sponsors will have their logo on our Sponsor page , and will receive a DVD or 8 x 10 print from this website of their favorite shot once the trip is over and the story is finished. (If you'd like to purchase a DVD of this trip for $30, please e-mail me at CptrTchr@hotmail.com . Being born on a farm with the front property line on Hwy. 50, and the back property line on the B & O Railroad, near Hayden, Indiana, I always had the desire to travel the full 3,000 plus miles of both the highway and railroad from coast to coast. I had completed the cross-country railroad trip with my family in earlier years, but had not yet driven US Route 50 all the way from California to Ocean City, Maryland. Now, my dream has come true. How do you get enough time to take a 40-day road trip, you might ask. Well, as one travel author once put it as a title of his book, "First, you quit your job." Not being adventurous enough to do this, I simply waited through 40 years of work, retired from public school teaching, then decided to do the trip. In researching the trip, I found there was a gentleman and his mechanic who had completed the first trans-continental car trip in 1903, before there were any roads, about 100 years before Paul and I attempted it. His name was Horatio Nelson Jackson, and his car, called the Vermont, is in the Smithsonian, maybe we'll donate ours as well! His story is currently being told in the Smithsonian, in a display called, America on the Move. See the display at www.americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/exhibition/exhibition_7_1.html. Horatio Nelson Jackson drives the "Vermont" through sage during his cross-country drive in 1903. Credit: University of Vermont, Special Collections Well, read on with these theme songs playing in the background:
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Nevada |
Hwy. 50 in Nevada is the "Loneliest Highway in America." |
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Click the photo above for a double-sized copy, Click BACK in your browser to return to this page. |
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Click the photo above for a double-sized copy, Click BACK in your browser to return to this page. |
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Click the photo above for a
double-sized copy, Click BACK in your browser to return to this page. |
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Anderson Ferry from KY to OH. Click the photo above for a double-sized copy, Click BACK in your browser to return to this page. |
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Maryland
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Fenwick Island, DE, lighthouse on 146th St. |
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Cape Neddick Light, York, Maine - 1879 Click the photo above for a double-sized copy, Click BACK in your browser to return to this page. |
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Portsmouth Harbor Light, Portsmouth, NH - 1771, 1804, and 1877 Two other lights can be seen from here. Click the photo above for a double-sized copy, Click BACK in your browser to return to this page. |
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Bridges of Madison County Click the photo above for a double-sized copy, Click BACK in your browser to return to this page. |
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Arizona |
Kingman Click the photo above for a double-sized copy, Click BACK in your browser to return to this page. |
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Near Newberry Springs, CA,
east of Barstow, CA.
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