Longest Trip Taken in the Z or G
06-03-2007, 10:43 PM
#42
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Originally Posted by Shift_Z33
You driving cross country are nuts! I'd rather just fly or take a train.
But I'm taking 2 1/2 weeks this year to go from the Bay Area to Florida, and will spend over a month on the road from Virginia back (Via Maine to Seattle). It's an amazing country out there with a lot to see. And that is one of the reasons I bought my Z. The trip in getting from point A to point B can be just as important as the destination.
06-04-2007, 06:39 AM
#46
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From Ottawa to Winnipeg non-stop (stoping for gas and the occasional wee) 18 hours. Stoped and took a one hour nap in the backseat then drove the rest of the way non-stop to Nelson B.C (another 15 hours)
Something like 3400 Kms in 33 hours...
Cessna (Will never do that again)
Something like 3400 Kms in 33 hours...
Cessna (Will never do that again)
06-04-2007, 08:05 AM
#49
Registered User
No Fly Zone
JohnsilvZ said it earlier and the best.Car travel is not about the destination,it's about the ride.The Z,in my opinion,is one of the best all-around Road Trip vehicles extant.Since I've owned mine,it has been on some marathon trips,odysseys that I have written some things about here and on other sites.
For years,my job demanded travel,so I've flown all over the USA many times.The recipe was always the same--fly in,rent a car,do the job,eat at Denny's and leave without ever knowing what kind of a town you were just in.You might get a glimpse of it when you fly out,and think..."I'd like to come back (to Phoenix,Houston,Denver...)someday,spend some time,explore",but I never could,so these towns were a mystery,a non-starter in a conversation.
Been there,sometimes 3-4 times.
That's all.
I'd been cross-country on planes a half-dozen times before I resolved to drive it and really find out what all those smalltown places I'd flown over were actually like.
From on high,I'd seen the mountains and the deserts and the colors of the land;I watched as the little,isolated twinkly towns burst from the darkened landscape 30,000 feet below,looking like strands of lights on a midnight Christmas tree,then vanish beneath the wing,but until I actually drove the Country I knew nothing about them or the landscape they took for granted.
Until I did it,I knew nothing of the miles-long trains that pull tailings from Wyoming mines,of the icy smell of a whitewater Idaho river choked with snowmelt runoff from nearby mountains,of just-caught Trout on a breakfast menu in North Georgia.
When I drove,I got to see the OK Corrall in Dodge City,got to eat Buffalo meat burgers in outback Arizona,got to visit the lonely site where Nez Perce Indians had their whole tribe wiped out.
They don't even feed you on planes...
Discovery awaits along each milepost when you drive backroads,and you are never let down.
Unless I am in a huge hurry,I avoid Interstates as much as possible.On one trans-Texas trip,I followed US 180 through the heart of the state and I discovered that the President's hometown,Midland,has a Downtown as empty as a poor man's pocket on pleasant May Saturdays.
I was there for 2 hours,walked around and except for a few sad examples near the bus station,I did not see another live human.Couldn't find an open bar,or get a soda anywhere.Even the traffic was nearly nonexistant.A whole city,abandoned,like from "Vanilla Sky".
Later,outside Odessa,within a field of pumping,grasshopper-looking oil rigs,I found the second-largest meteor crater in the USA.Who knew??
Flying,or driving past on the Interstate would never have yielded these intimate details.
When you travel long distances by Z,you are afforded the sensual pleasures of actually controlling your destination and your environment.You cross strange territory,sometimes seeing breathtakingly stunning examples of Nature set free,sometimes seeing the horrible degradations that we have allowed on our geography.
Did you know that some Colorado beef lots are miles long,and on both sides of the highway?Do you know what one million fresh cow pies smell like??Do you know how fast you have to drive to get AWAY from all that crap???
Have you ever seen the endless landscape of lights strung out over Mexican Mountains as you approach El Paso in the night,or the total blackness of a thousand square miles of Nevada desert from a lone butte at midnight??
When you roam off the beaten path,often you will visit a place where you have never even thought of being in,then later,something happens there and you'll go..."hay,I was there once... !!".
That was the case with Greensburg,Kansas,the little town that just got totally wiped off the map by a tornado.Don't remember much about it,just another little farm town planted in an ocean of wheat,with a three-block long Main Street,but we were there once,me and the Z...
You don't get ANY of that if you fly or drive the Slab.
For years,my job demanded travel,so I've flown all over the USA many times.The recipe was always the same--fly in,rent a car,do the job,eat at Denny's and leave without ever knowing what kind of a town you were just in.You might get a glimpse of it when you fly out,and think..."I'd like to come back (to Phoenix,Houston,Denver...)someday,spend some time,explore",but I never could,so these towns were a mystery,a non-starter in a conversation.
Been there,sometimes 3-4 times.
That's all.
I'd been cross-country on planes a half-dozen times before I resolved to drive it and really find out what all those smalltown places I'd flown over were actually like.
From on high,I'd seen the mountains and the deserts and the colors of the land;I watched as the little,isolated twinkly towns burst from the darkened landscape 30,000 feet below,looking like strands of lights on a midnight Christmas tree,then vanish beneath the wing,but until I actually drove the Country I knew nothing about them or the landscape they took for granted.
Until I did it,I knew nothing of the miles-long trains that pull tailings from Wyoming mines,of the icy smell of a whitewater Idaho river choked with snowmelt runoff from nearby mountains,of just-caught Trout on a breakfast menu in North Georgia.
When I drove,I got to see the OK Corrall in Dodge City,got to eat Buffalo meat burgers in outback Arizona,got to visit the lonely site where Nez Perce Indians had their whole tribe wiped out.
They don't even feed you on planes...
Discovery awaits along each milepost when you drive backroads,and you are never let down.
Unless I am in a huge hurry,I avoid Interstates as much as possible.On one trans-Texas trip,I followed US 180 through the heart of the state and I discovered that the President's hometown,Midland,has a Downtown as empty as a poor man's pocket on pleasant May Saturdays.
I was there for 2 hours,walked around and except for a few sad examples near the bus station,I did not see another live human.Couldn't find an open bar,or get a soda anywhere.Even the traffic was nearly nonexistant.A whole city,abandoned,like from "Vanilla Sky".
Later,outside Odessa,within a field of pumping,grasshopper-looking oil rigs,I found the second-largest meteor crater in the USA.Who knew??
Flying,or driving past on the Interstate would never have yielded these intimate details.
When you travel long distances by Z,you are afforded the sensual pleasures of actually controlling your destination and your environment.You cross strange territory,sometimes seeing breathtakingly stunning examples of Nature set free,sometimes seeing the horrible degradations that we have allowed on our geography.
Did you know that some Colorado beef lots are miles long,and on both sides of the highway?Do you know what one million fresh cow pies smell like??Do you know how fast you have to drive to get AWAY from all that crap???
Have you ever seen the endless landscape of lights strung out over Mexican Mountains as you approach El Paso in the night,or the total blackness of a thousand square miles of Nevada desert from a lone butte at midnight??
When you roam off the beaten path,often you will visit a place where you have never even thought of being in,then later,something happens there and you'll go..."hay,I was there once... !!".
That was the case with Greensburg,Kansas,the little town that just got totally wiped off the map by a tornado.Don't remember much about it,just another little farm town planted in an ocean of wheat,with a three-block long Main Street,but we were there once,me and the Z...
You don't get ANY of that if you fly or drive the Slab.
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