Thursday,
September 6, 2007
Starting on 30th August, 2007, I
drove 6 days due east to get to Princeton, New Jersey from San Diego,
California. Traveling that far alone gets a little boring at times but
then you get a first hand experience of the US geography which, in
part, compensates for the boredom. I did not take too many pictures
during the trip. I took some while driving, so the picture might not be
the best quality or the picture might not be of the subject which was
intended. Here is the Flickr link for the pictures.
I was supposed to be taking a flight to Princeton
on 29th August while leaving my
car back in San Diego. The reason
for this was that I wanted to
avoid the hassles of long-distance driving. By the
evening of 25th August it was clear that storing the
car for 7 months was not entirely hassle-free
either. So, I decided to drive to Princeton. There was lots of things
to take care of. I got my car checked, packed my stuff, planned the trip,
got maps and directions from AAA (I even got a magellan GPS which
turned out to be a handy device) and then started on 30th August.The first stop was supposed to be Phoenix which is only around 350 miles from San Diego. I reached Phoenix in the evening and checked in Motel 6 in Scottsdale which was quite good. It was a very hot day (I checked the local newspaper next day and they were reporting it to be one of the hottest day of the summer). Fortunately, the air conditioner in the room was working well and I was able to get good sleep. The best thing about the location of the Motel was that there was an Udipi place just beside the Motel and I had an excellent Dosa there.
The target for the next day was to
reach Albuquerque, New Mexico which
is around 470 miles from Phoenix. I started early in the morning around
6am on 31st August. This gave me enough spare time to visit a couple of
places on the way. Initially, I drove around 75 miles on I-17 through
the Arizona
desert with not much to please my eyes.
 Driving through
the desert
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 That would be me
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 My Magellan GPS
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 Leaving the desert and going into the desert |
 A mistimed shot. The side of the highway you don't want to be |
 What is this "A" doing in the middle of nowhere |
 More desert if you haven't had enough |
 A neat mirage. I though I was going to splash through some water |
 A curious looking vehicle. You just need to add a mustache and you have an funky "cars" character |
 The classic Arizona desert cactus |
 The hundredth one
does not seem so classy though
|
 A mis-focused shot .
Insects which suvived the desert chose my windshield instead
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Being deprived of any kind of
vegetation for more than an hour, I decided to take a detour and drive
through the Oak Creek Canyon and Sedona. I took 179 followed by 89A.
Things started looking up as I took the detour.
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Driving through Oak Creek Canyon was
nice. I would highly recommend this detour to anyone travelling through
Arizona desert. Here are some pictures to put some weight into my
recommendation.
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After the nice
ride through the Oak Creek Canyon, I got onto I-40
which was supposed to be the freeway for most of my
remaining journey.
My next stop was supposed to be the
Meteor Crater near Winslow. It started raining as I took the exit for
the Meteor Crater (which was around 5 miles away from I-40), but it
soon stopped. It was kind of a template tourist site with a costly $15
ticket. The site was nice but $15 is way too much you would like to
spend to see it.
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