Sunday - August 6, 2006

Morning came early for the Wood family as the star-filled heavens gradually gave way to pale silver before offering a generous blue sky. We awoke in high spirits, particularly Jenny and I who saw this free lodging as another chance to lighten our travel budget by fifty or sixty bucks. Even Vienna commented that we'd once more "beaten the system" as we returned to the road and reentered town.

Austin is often called a chance to time travel back to an age when small towns would perch themselves precariously on mountainsides, waiting for hungry travelers to pass through with news of the outside world, offering a place to rest, recuperate, and prepare for the journey beyond. Even though we hadn't found our own place of rest in Austin, we were happy to visit the International Cafe and Saloon. I'm sure there are other nice spots to grab a meal in Austin, but I wouldn't know them. Each time I've come here, I've stopped at this cafe, and I've never had a bad meal or unhappy chat. This is an ancient building - their 1890s photo of the place with horses tethered to hitching posts showed an already old place that had been shipped here from Virginia City. Before you leave, check out the saloon and its dozens of signed dollar bills affixed to the walls.

Hitting the road, we could easily remember why they call this highway the Loneliest Road. Aside from some cross-country bicyclists pumping their legs all the way to Fallon and an occasional car, we had US-50 largely to ourselves and the rabbits that sometimes stood as sentries along the edge of the road. A few miles past Cold Springs, we stopped at the famed Shoe Tree and I awakened my family. I was delighted to tell the story of this site where, as the legend goes, two newlyweds began to fight until one threw the other's shoes into the tree. I could almost hear the cry: "You're not going anywhere!" Now the tree is packed with hanging shoes. Jenny, often complaining that her shoes were pretty much used up, gleefully tossed her pair (after a few tries). Later on, we stopped for a photo of the Loneliest Phone Booth on the Loneliest Road; we're suckers for this sort of thing.

Before long we crossed through Fallon (a much sadder town in my opinion with the recent loss of the Lariat Motel and its animated neon cowboy). Then we returned to the interstate and began our climb over the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range into California, past the agricultural inspection station that, once again, was closed. We've made this journey many times (once amid the skidding cars and snow chains of a bitter winter day). Because of its familiarity, I suppose, we found ourselves no longer in vacation mode. The accustomed and expected traffic and signs of our home state seemed only to emphasize that our quest was coming to an end. We made a brief detour to the Jelly Belly Factory, one last attempt to wring fun out of this day, I guess. But the lure of home and our kitties drew us onward. By three-thirty we turned onto our home street and pulled into the garage. There was unpacking to accomplish, letters to sift, and cats to pet. We were tired and happy and relieved.

While Jenny and Vienna hold that last year's travels to Australia mark our best vacation, we agree that this trip was easily in the top two. For me, there's no contest. This vacation is my favorite. Over three weeks, we traveled 10,050 miles both east and west - touring cosmopolitan cities, poking through charming towns, seeing the transformation of the land from urban metropolis to farming country to towering mountain ranges to vast desert to rich farmland and teeming cities once more. We traveled as a team of father and daughter for two weeks and as our complete family for a third - on a happy travail to places we may never see again. Now we sort through souvenirs and digital photos and fading memories (even now, it's hard to recall some of those inside jokes we told hundreds of times). But we can still recite the Gettysburg Address, we can still see that towering Delicate Arch, and we can still hear the sound of night traffic passing the car where we slept from time to time. And, of course, we will start soon to plan the next adventure.