Day 10/11/12

Ben Johnson:

The last three days have involved some sweet site seeing, ton of driving, and ultimately very few chances to take a load off and update the blog so let me get you caught up.

Tuesday was a day that I had been looking forward to the entire trip. My entire reasoning for wanting to come west was to see the Red Wood/Sequoia Forests and that day had finally come. We left Fresno, CA around 10am and made our way east into Sequoia National Park. After traveling on a never ending winding road up 6500 feet in elevation we were disappointed by a sign that said road closed in 8 miles. I was disheartened, but drove on and after a little bit of back tracking found our way to Grant Grove… home to the third largest tree in the world... General Grant. It was amazing and dwarfed any tree you will ever see.

We wanted to continue further to see the two largest trees in the world, but got black balled because of the record snows that had fallen the previous week. Ultimately, the Park Ranger told us that you would never be able to see a difference between the size of General Grant (#3) and General Sherman(#1), so we accepted this… took a ton of pictures… and got on the road for Vegas. One final fact about the trees; the largest trees range from 1800 to 2300 years old, which means that some of these trees were around when Jesus was born and have been holding on a long time for his return. That’s patience.

After we had snapped our final photo of the trees we made some sandwiches and then jumped in the car for the long haul to Las Vegas (because all of the mountain passes were closed we had to drive south all the way around the Sierra Nevada’s before heading back north). What we didn’t expect was some of the most amazing picture opportunities of the trip. We had to take this incredible unmarked county road south out of the mountains and found ourselves all by ourselves on this road for hours. This road had nothing but tight hairpin turns and 50 miles took nearly three hours, but the sight seeing was so beautiful that we stopped numerous times to take sweet pics. On the final leg of this road we ended up in this valley called Lemon Cove where 90% of California’s citrus fruit is grown (for those of you who have ridden Soarin’ at Disneyland/Disneyworld have flown overtop of these orange/lemon fields).

After the citrus fields we found our way back to reality and spent the next 6 hours driving east to Vegas. The drive was boring as sin and we warmly welcomed the bright lights of Vegas. At around 9pm we parked our car and checked into the Stratosphere on the northern side of the Strip. After dropping off our bags we took off to spend the rest of the night walking the strip. After 4 hours of walking (11 miles) Ben and I both agree that it is not all that it is made up to be. In fact, in Ben’s words Vegas is like ‘a filthy cesspool where hopelessness and sex mongering combine to make a putrid concoction of human emotional bile’. Thankfully, we are smart Vegas visitors and only threw a few bucks away on some silly gambling. All in all, when we finally made it back up to our room we were dog tired and crashed and burned almost instantly.

On Wednesday we woke up a little later than we wanted to and therefore had to skip the hoover dam and head straight for Colorado springs. All we can say about this day is that this trip is very long (around 14 hours) and don’t recommend it to anyone. Utah is boring as sin… other than a few cool rock formations the land was desolate and God forsaken. If it were blown up it would not be missed. On the other hand, Colorado/Rocky mountains would have been amazing to have seen during the day. Ben and I had both taken I-70 through the mountains when we were much younger, but did not remember Vail or the phenomenal Eisenhower tunnel. All we could see was silhouettes of the gigantic mountains around us. Also, we hit 11000 foot elevation making that the highest we had been on the trip yet.

We pulled into Colorado Springs around way later than we wanted to around 1am because of annoying traffic and us forgetting that we lost an hour. Thankfully we got to spend a little bit of time with Eric Dorsey before we hit the sheets for some much needed sleep.

Thursday started with us once again getting a later start than we originally wanted to. We wanted to stay and hangout with Eric in Colorado, but unfortunately we’re starting to feel the pinch since we have to have Ben back to Kentucky in less than a week and a half.

Before hitting the road we decided to stop off at the ‘Garden of the Gods’. This is a cool little collection of smaller rock formations that you are allowed to climb and stare at. The next 8 hours were very forgettable. Eastern Colorado and western Nebraska are as entertaining as female sports and had to do everything in my power not to go insane due to the droll. The only notable thing from the leg of the trip was that we had officially spent 100 hours driving on the trip. At this point the GPS showed that we had driven slightly more than 6100 miles thus far. Quite impressive for an 10 day stretch!

At around 8pm we pulled into Lincoln, NE to grab a quick bite to eat with my little sister Lydia. Although, we had to keep the visit short it was fun to spend some time with family even if it was just for a few minutes.

We pulled into Bettendorf, IA around 2am after 14 seemingly endless hours of driving. Amy Runde welcomed us with open arms and then we slept!!!

Bring on another 14 hour stint on Friday… ughhhh… Philadelphia here we come!

Ben and Ben