On the Road (Trip)

“We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.” - Carson McCullers, American writer. More stuff on Instagram: @ktdrasky

[ontheroadtrip]

Day 5, Spa Day at West Baden Springs

I’d been here before, but Viki hadn’t. So, when planning this drive West across the country, I thought a spa day would change things up. And rejuvenate us both on a day of rest between two long drives. We spent the first half of this humid and rainy day being pampered with Swedish massages and saunas and the second half planning the next day’s drive.

A quick look around the French Lick resort and this cheesy dolphin fountain situated in its indoor pool. This is the kind of thing we road trip for! I love wandering through here, before returning to the slightly more sophisticated West Baden resort and its phenomenal, “awe-inspiring” atrium, once called “the Eighth Wonder of the World”.

[ontheroadtrip]

Day 4, Baltimore to West Baden Springs, IN (673 miles)

Watching the sun come up in Maryland (from the passenger side of the vehicle, of course!). A long, rambling drive along Highways 68 and 64 through “wild and wonderful” West Virginia. A pit stop in Kentucky (and a video of the hotdog/corndog and something called a Nashville Chicken roll) at a Love’s. At the end of this nearly 13-hour drive, we were ready for a spa! Good thing we arrived at the one and only Spa at West Baden Springs. 

[ontheroadtrip]

What’s a Wawa?

I vaguely remember one Wawa market in Connecticut when I was growing up, but I guess they could never compete with the plethora of Cumberland Farms in the area and kept their focus on the Mid-Atlantic states.

We started seeing Wawas in New Jersey and I finally had to stop at one to get gas. Here’s all you need to know about these convenience stores we kept seeing in Delaware and Maryland: A Brief History of the Wawa, which by the way, employs some 31,000 people!

It does not replace my allegiance to the QT, or a new favorite, Sheetz, where we were able to purchase salads for lunch. I know that might sound like a really small thing, but an edible salad from a convenience store on a road trip is a rare find, indeed. 

[ontheroadtrip]

Day 3, Wildwood, NJ to Baltimore, MD (207 miles)

Today’s drive was going to be a relatively easy one, but in an effort to pick up another state we drove this way to hit a bit of Delaware and cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. We’d also hit our first patch of Highway 50, heading West.

Once arriving in hot and steamy Baltimore, we were sort of slightly bitterly disappointed that Peter’s Inn would not be open for dinner. It was a John Waters’ recommendation and I had to do something in the Charm City that channeled the man who brought the world the cult-classic films Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble.

Enter one of those “Things to Do” in Baltimore magazines in our hotel room that steered us to the American Visionary Art Museum - folk art and air conditioning. Added bonus: some installation/collage/photo art by early Waters’ set photographer Bobby Adams.

Thunderstorms threatening but never materialized, we found a cute enough pub in Fell’s Point for some Charm City cocktails (vodka and lemonade, basically) and cheesy crab dip, before a stroll over to the Domino Sugars sign.

I try to avoid driving into cities on long road trips, and may not have done this without Viki. She’s doing most of the driving on the way back, mostly because she’s only going as far as Tulsa and wants her turn behind the wheel. And while we arrived in Baltimore an hour or two earlier than we had planned, we had to leave by 5:30 am the next morning for a super long haul to West Baden Springs, Indiana.

[ontheroadtrip]

Can’t believe I went to Wildwood before I saw this movie! Filmed in 1994, it’s barely a time capsule. Not much has changed. Hooray for the all-women crew who put this together back in the day. Available on Vimeo for rent or purchase.

Wildwood, NJ.

Directed by Ruth Leitman & Carol Weaks Cassidy This film takes you down the shore with an all-women crew to Wildwood, N.J. - the last great American blue-collar seaside carnival town.

Wildwood moves beyond gum-cracking, big hair, and press-on nails to look into the souls of women raised on the boardwalk’s rides and lights and come-ons.

Grandmothers and go-go girls; girls who work as vampires in boardwalk haunted houses.  Tween girls stretching out on their first trip without their parents: young, rangy a little drunk on Bud, dukes up, nose open, with a cuppla’ bucks to burn.

A Wildwood honeymoon, virginity lost to a boardwalk stranger, fistfights, madness, babies -  and no matter what -  returning to Wildwood year after year as they grow up and grow old.

Wildwood, NJ. was filmed with an all women crew over the summers of 1992 and 1993.  It was filmed by co-producer/ director Ruth Leitman on Super 8 film and then synched frame by frame in the early days of non-linear sound and picture editing.

[ontheroadtrip]

Days 1-2, Norwalk, CT to Wildwood, NJ (198 miles)

Traffic jam from I-95 in Connecticut through the Bronx, over the George Washington Bridge and well past Newark. But by magic hour my wife Viki and I were riding the Great White roller coaster, eating boardwalk food and immersed in all things Jersey Shore. Kicking off the road back with 100% American kitcsh.

[ontheroadtrip]

3,115 Miles - Coast-to-Coast

In the spirit of On the Road, I wanted to see how fast one woman could get from San Francisco to Norwalk, CT (near NYC) on her own, with no amphetamines. The answer: 5.5 days. This allows for minimal stops during the day, road food just off the highway and hardly any photos. All-in-all, an epic experience!

Top row (left to right): Salt Flat sunrise. Wildflower and red rock. Motel in Cheyenne.

Middle: God bless. Sweet corn. Name the Quad Cities.

Bottom: Culver’s. Appalachian mountains. Arrived at my parents’ house.

[ontheroadtrip]

TasteAtlas, An Interactive Map That Plots Where Popular Local Food Around the World Can Be Found

TasteAtlas is a wonderful searchable, interactive map that plots exactly where the best and most popular local foods can be found anywhere in the world.

Roadtrip essentials. 

[ontheroadtrip]

It’s official! I’m making my second coast-to-coast roundtrip roadtrip of the decade during the month of August. I’ll be posting here, and also on Instagram, so get yer follow on!

[ontheroadtrip]

The Best of 2018 (and a few good road trip photos from last year, too)

I’ve been slack - but everything is ok. I moved this year and finished making a short documentary and began a long-term doc project on Divisadero Corridor. I squeezed in some travel, especially back and forth to Detroit for the promotion of my film (shot there from 2015-2017). I found creative ways to fly somewhere, rent a car, and then drive through the width of Pennsylvania three times. I hope you enjoy these pics (none of them are from Pennsylvania lol).

Youngstown, Ohio. Five minutes later I got my first speeding ticket ever. Two minutes after that, I was in Pennsylvania.

This place was closed. Butte, MT.

Desert Hot Springs, CA. Forgotten paradise?

I never get tired of this place. Joshua Tree National Park, CA.

Intrigued by Delano, CA - off Hwy. 99. I would drive back here later in the year. And next time I would stop.

That’s me on Detroit’s famed Eight Mile Rd. after a successful meeting with the theater owner and some other Northeast Detroit VIPs. Confirmed. My short doc, Uncle Frank’s House: An American Dream, would world premiere here in October.

Gratuitous road food delights. In N Out Animal style burger somewhere in California and a Coney Island at Duly’s Place in Detroit (the late Anthony Bourdain’s C.I. of choice).

R.I.P., sir. His death in June shocked the world. They say he had every food and travel writer’s dream job, but it couldn’t last, could it?

Back to Delano, CA in August.

Dang! Tumblr tells me no more than 10 photos per post. Say what!? You haven’t really read this far, have you? More soon.

[ontheroadtrip]

Big Sky Country - My 49th State

It’s an even 1,000 miles from San Francisco to Butte, Montana. Crossing the border from Idaho, I stopped at the first rest stop to take a selfie and screw around for too long. It was another 2 hours to Butte, a long dark drive. I was never so glad to see the “city lights” from the freeway - a Taco Bell, a Shell station and a Best Western!

[ontheroadtrip]

Death Valley Road Trip, from San Francisco and Back via Highway 395 and Reno (1,500 miles)

It seemed like it had been a long time since Viki and I went on a road trip - just the two of us. What better way then to celebrate our 6-year wedding anniversary than to hop in the car and go for a five-day drive.

We have been traveling most of the year but by plane, so just getting in the car and driving as far as we could go felt fantastic. Driving to Death Valley is not a straight shot from San Francisco. It was 500 miles from home, but it felt like 500,000. And we took a different route back along the lonely Eastern side of the Sierras. Fasten your seat belts for a journey to both the lowest and highest points in the contiguous United States (and they’re both in California).

[ontheroadtrip]

The perfect conclusion to a romance with the road ends in a small casino town in Nevada. I’m not talking Las Vegas. I mean Winnemucca or Ely, and if you simply can’t find a small town then the biggest little city in the world will have to do!

We rolled into Reno around 5pm, and waited until about 6:30 to go out and photograph some old motel signs. The biggest prize in the photo department though is a shot of this world famous sign. Who doesn’t love pink neon and a snappy city slogan?

Walk-in wedding chapels are still along the side of the street in what was once known as the divorce capital of America. It’s a sad paradise of mostly broken dreams which makes for a strange place to celebrate your anniversary at the end of a road trip. But that’s what we did, having steaks and ice cold vodka martinis in a casino steakhouse, happy to be with someone who thinks this is just as perfect as you do.

[ontheroadtrip]

Nothing says the end of the road like Reno.

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Happy anniversary!

In all the many miles of road I’ve covered on these trips, I have never been pulled over by the cops and given a ticket for speeding, passing in a turnout lane or other infraction.

I still haven’t.

[ontheroadtrip]

Just when you thought you were back on this planet, you discover the tufa at Mono Lake. Another natural phenomenon (like the Artist’s Palette at Death Valley below) getting a little chemically enhanced.

Needless to say, we both took tons of photos of the lake and the tufa. The top shots are with a digital Ricoh GR. The bottom ones were taken with a film camera using Fuji Velvia 100 film that was cross-processed in developing. Because everything can benefit from a little chemical enhancement from time to time.

[ontheroadtrip]

Now it’s a road trip!

From Manzanar I floored it for an hour and half, most of that with the sun glaring directly into my eyes. We wanted to get to our motel in Lee Vining in time for the sunset. As you can see, mission accomplished.

The Lakeview Lodge across the road from Mono Lake was the perfect place to end a day that started at the bottom of the earth in Death Valley and saw us go halfway up Mt. Whitney.

We sat in old-style lawn chairs on the walkway outside our second-floor room, poured white wine into plastic cups and shivered as the temperature plummeted into the 50s. Fortunately our room with those groovy bedspreads was nice and toasty and even had a microwave for heating up leftover chicken wings (to go with our red wine).

No - we did not touch that phone!