A Blog Along The Lincoln Highway

OK. We drive the last few blocks of California Street, heading directly west, (starting to smell the Pacific?) counting the cross streets till we get to 32nd Avenue. It’s a stately and impressive residential neighborhood. And 32nd makes a T when it gets to El Camino del Mar.

We turn left and immediately see the entrance to Lincoln Park, so we’re essentially at the end, but there’s one line in Butko’s book that makes us pull over again. He writes: “…Left at El Camino del Mar; the westernmost extant marker is hidden here in shrubbery on the southeast corner.” We have to find it. Jarrett and Bob both get out their compasses so we know for sure which corner is southeast.

There’s a beautiful home on the corner with an attractive garden, but we see no Lincoln Highway marker. I wonder if maybe the marker was removed since Brian wrote the book. We’re looking around, and I wander a few steps back up 32nd Avenue, and I happen to look into the hedge that’s there near the corner, and Eureka! there’s our marker buried deep inside the hedge! “Hidden here in shrubbery!”

Now we have to get a shot. Bob starts to unload the equipment. I suggest to Jarrett that we maybe shoot another quick video too. And as we’re starting to do that, a nice looking man comes out the front door of the house with his dog and understandably wonders what we’re doing.

We explain our quest, and the guy, whose name is Tim, says that Oh yeah, occasionally they’ll see people looking in the garden and the hedges for the old concrete marker. But yeah, he’s known it was there for quite some time.

As we continue gathering our video documentation, we meet Tim’s wife Jennifer and daughter Jessica. They’re saying goodbye to some visitors who’ve been inside, and we’re trying to explain who we are and what we’re doing. It’s a hoot.

Jennifer invites us to come in and consider shooting the spectacular view from the roof of their house, maybe even tomorrow morning if it’s clear. Bob accepts her invitation to walk up now and see what it’s like. Jarrett and I stay on the sidewalk to finish the video postcard. [See it here.]

Now the sun is fading fast. The fog is rolling in. It’s cooler right now than ever before on our trip. San Francisco, here we are. As soon as Bob gets down from the roof, we’re ready to drive to the end of the line.

We drive slowly uphill into Lincoln Park. The twilight is fading fast. It’s misty and foggy. We see people playing golf, walking in the park, we assume we’ll drive up to the top of this hill and easily find the concrete marker that proclaims this as the official end of the Lincoln Highway. The Terminus.

Let’s just say that it’s not immediately obvious. And I’m driving so I’m not scanning the Butko book for clues. We see the stately California Palace of the Legion of Honor that looks like a museum (which it is) off to the left. But we’re not tourists now, we’re a TV crew that wants to shoot the end of the road before it’s too dark to do so. Where is the blasted marker? We continue straight ahead, thinking we’ll see something that says Lincoln Highway. No such luck.

It’s a dead end. We see two young women walking out from a hiking path of some sort. Bob asks if they happened to see the marker for the end of the Lincoln Highway. “The what?”

We see two dogwalkers in a nearby parking lot and ask them too. The man says, “I’ve been walking my dog here for over ten years, and I’ve never seen anything for the Lincoln Highway.”

You get the picture. The last marker, the Terminus, the end of the cross-country journey, it’s not a major attraction here in Lincoln Park.

We drive up and turn in front of the museum of fine arts. We drive very slowly. We keep going, and soon we’re heading back down the hill surrounded by the golf course. It ain’t down here. We start back up the hill. I’m crawling along. It has to be here somewhere.

There! The marker! It’s there beside the bus stop. It’s right across from the front of Palace of the Legion of Honor, but it’s totally upstaged by a nondescript bus stop shelter.

Bob is shooting already but he says, “No. It’s a mess. There’s too much garbage all around here. I’m not shooting it like this. We have to clean up first.” He’s absolutely right. The concrete marker with the stately notice, WESTERN TERMINUS OF THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY, is surrounded by spent ketchup packets, old styrofoam burger shells, empty greasy french fry bags, sticky milkshake cups. It’s a litter magnet. Bob has put the camera down and is picking up trash. There’s an explanatory panel there too, telling interested bus riders and passersby what this Lincoln Highway marker is all about, but it’s also decorated by fast food waste. We police the whole area.

Bob is pissed. “We didn’t drive all this way to have to deal with crap from stupid fast-food eaters. Morons.” When we get it reasonably clean, “red up” as we’d say in Pittsburgh, then Bob starts to get some shots. Jarrett is totally impressed by the Palace across the way and says we should be shooting that, but it’s not our story. I suggest that Jarrrett and I work together on a final video postcard for this journey of ours. Bob is shooting the Terminus from all possible angles in the last seconds of dull gray light. The fog makes it misty too, and for the first time, I put on a jacket that I’ve had in the van. It’s cool up here.

I guess there’s a certain relief, but a real sadness too, not just because the trash was so disconcerting, but also because the journey is over. This leg of it anyway. “Terminus” is so final a word. I wouldn’t mind if the drive continued for several more days.

I set up my camera on Bob’s tripod, set the timer, and we take a couple of pictures of the three of us, the Three Musketeers, standing at the Terminus marker. It’s taken us eleven days.

As we climb back into the van to head to our motel, I hear something off to one side of the van, and then I see a big raccoon walking toward me. “Get in,” says Bob. “Don’t let him get close. There may be something wrong with him if he’ll approach you like that.” OK. Good thinking. The raccoon skuttles off toward the Terminus. Jarrett says, “He’s probably living on the trash left by people at the bus stop.” Yeah. And he’s not cleaning up after himself. Old Rocky Raccoon.

We had booked rooms for tonight in the Pacific Heights Inn, a convenient non-chain old-style motel on Union Street where we’d stayed in San Francisco twelve years ago while making our first two PBS programs: “An Ice Cream Show” and “Shore Things.” Bob had written it down because it was so unusual to find such a motel (where you could back the van right up to the door of the room) in a big city. It worked out well again.

The two guys who ran it back on our earlier trip were not around. There were still friendly boxes of donuts and a coffee pot in the little office, and the young Asian man behind the desk said we’d have no trouble walking to a nice dinner. We said we were thinking about seafood. “Just walk down Union Street, stay on this side, and you’ll come to several excellent seafood places, one of them is Chinese, about 5 or 6 blocks down.”

“What about Italian?” asks Bob.

“You’ll pass three or four Italian places before you get to the seafood places. All are good. I recommend any of them.”

We wander that way. One of the first places we come to is a small Italian place called Capannina, and we pause. We’re looking for a menu. There’s a guy leaning on the parking meter across fro the door. “You guys looking for a good dinner?” he asks. “Yes we are,” says Mr. Bob. “Well, you’ll be very happy here. The food is excellent, the service is superb.” “Oh yeah,” says Bob, “and who are you? The owner?” The guy laughs and says, “Well, actually I am.”

We think all the signs and unexpected pushes are friendly and good. We go in. There’s one tall slim ebullient waiter with an Italian accent taking everyone’s orders, and there are many other waiters delivering all the plates. It’s crowded and bustling but that usually makes for an exciting and interesting dinner. We order. Bob gets the tuna. Jarrett goes for the cioppino. And I get the special, braised veal shanks, some sort of osso bucco.

Have I mentioned that I realized at the motel that I’m zonked? I’m exhausted. I didn’t even bring my camera to dinner. Maybe the end of the trip has just allowed my eleven days of exhilarating travel and heightened sensory intake (everything we’re seeing and doing seems so bright and exciting) to catch up with me. I am happy to be here in the restaurant, but I’m looking forward to sleep.

The food is excellent. Jarrett may have made the best choice: his cioppino is a bowl full of seafood in and out of shells, a delicious looking tomato-y broth and a bright red lobster on top. My veal is very good, and Bob shares bites of his tuna, but next time I will seriously consider the cioppino.

We like the Capannina very much. And we find it amazing that we stumbled onto two wonderful places in one day. It must be California.

Bob is still buzzing on wild energy, and he decides to go for a postprandial stroll. Jarrett and I are going to head back to the motel. We all agree to meet for breakfast at 8, and then we’ll head for home. Jarrett is very eager to be back in Pittsburgh. Homesick? Lovesick? Whatever. He says he’ll work on the video postcards before he goes to sleep.

I need sleep now.

I meet Bob and Jarrett at 8 am, and it’s still a bit foggy outside. I explain that I’m going to skip breakfast, maybe grab a donut and coffee in the office, and work in my room for a while on this blog. Blogging is a new job on the road, and I’m trying to figure out how to catch up, keep up and shut up when necessary.By 10, we’re packed and pulling out of the Pacific Heights Inn. We know we can’t go back across the Bay Bridge because it’s closed for the weekend, but we’re not far from the Golden Gate, so we’ll head for the beautiful bridge and drive north for a few miles before turning eastbound for Pittsburgh.

It’s so foggy we can’t see much of the bridge at all, but there are lots of people out walking across it. Bob says that it was so foggy when he got up that he knew it would be pointless to go back to get a rooftop shot from the house of the people who have the last marker hidden in their hedge. We thank them for the offer nonetheless.

The Golden Gate Bridge is the southern end of what’s called the Redwood Highway, so it’s nice to be starting our journey on a highway with a name as well as a number, US 101. We stay on the Redwood till Novato, where we take the exit to California Route 37 that skirts around the northern edge of San Pablo Bay. Just after we cross the Napa River, we begin our quickie superhighway journey eastbound.

We get on Interstate 80, intending to make some time. Eat up some miles. I’m hoping that we’ll still consider stopping or getting off on the Lincoln Highway for a while if it seems interesting or we just need to find somewhere non-chain-y to eat.

Jarrett is driving. And he’s eager to get home. Before we know it, we are in Sacramento, through Sacramento, and on our way back up into the Sierra Nevada mountains. On 80, you don’t get the up-close contact with the Donner Pass, but there’s a Scenic View pull off where we stop to get some shots looking back to the west at the pass and the cool old concrete arch bridge where we paused on our slow journey westward. It’s odd to realize that was just yesterday morning.

We consider lunch in Reno, thinking we’ll watch the billboards and just pull off at a casino, grab a quick bite in a buffet and continue on our way. We actually give it a try at one of the big casinos in Sparks, NV, and suddenly we’re stopped dead in our tracks. Labor-Day-weekend traffic on the exit ramp is clogging everything. We aren’t even trying to get in at this casino. We stay in the far right lane, trying to slip around the massive bottleneck as the other three lanes squeeze into casino registration and check-in lanes. It’s midday Saturday on a long holiday weekend, and lots of people are heading for the casinos.

We drive another 30 or so miles to Fernley, Nevada, where there’s a little casino, Chukar’s, just off I-80. We have no trouble finding a good parking space in this lot. Lunch is not memorable, but I’m puzzled again by the obviously addictive nature of the slot machines jingling and coughing, beeping and squeaking all around us in the subdued lighting. In this small town casino, cool and inviting in the desert, otherwise normal-looking people are pouring quarters into “slots,” slot machines that have themes often based on kiddie movies, comic books and cutsey pop culture. It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon. I don’t get it.

We get back on the highway.

All afternoon Jarrett does a lot of the driving. Driving fast.

When you’re flying down the interstate, you’re removed from almost all that’s interesting, all that’s everyday, all that’s unique and personal and wonderfully funky about America, except the glorious landscapes. And we’re still out west, so it’s not too ordinary for us Pennsylvanians. We’re still looking out the windows (that aren’t blocked by the stupid branding stickers), but now we’re playing CDs, looking at newspapers, and Bob starts working the New York Times Crossword puzzle.

When Bob is ready to give up, he starts asking for assistance. Some clues I can help figure out. Five letters, “First name in Israeli politics”: GOLDA. Seven letters for “Steve Martin romantic comedy”: LASTORY. Then I hit the Safari web browser button on my iPhone to help with some of the rest. “Lorre’s role in Casablanca.” Six letters. IMDB says UGARTE. The “Minnesota state tree” is REDPINE. And “Teahouse mat” is a crossword puzzle word: TATAMI.

The miles and the Nevada desert zoom by.

We look the map and decide that West Wendover, Nevada, looks like the logical place to stop for the night. It’s right at the border with Utah, and the salt flats to the east will greet us when we get back on the road in the morning. We hadn’t paused in West Wendover on our way westward, but we remember it because of all the casinos, a big neon cowboy, and it was at West Wendover that we got off Interstate 80, turning south on the beautiful two-lane to Ely. It’s one of those weird too brightly lit oasis towns, neon, flashing lights, billboards for cheap buffets and C-list celebrities, and we figure we’ll get a room in a casino probably.

No such luck. The town and all its parking lots are full. There are campers and RVs and thousands of cars everywhere. At the one casino where we stopped, the woman at the desk says she doesn’t know if there is a room left in town. “I’d go over to Utah,” she says. “You might find something there.”

It’s our twelfth night on the road, and the first time we’ve been stung by no reservations in advance. We just haven’t known where we’ll stop. So we drive into Wendover, Utah, just across the invisible state line, and we lose an hour by doing so. We cross back into Mountain Time in Utah, and as sweet as the extra hours were on the way west, this loss of an hour is one more downer on a night when things seem bleak. It’s dark on this side of the border. No casinos, no bright lights.

Bob and I don’t want to drive to Salt Lake City. It’s another 120 miles, so at least two more hours and here it’s already after 10 PM. Jarrett says he’ll do it, but we think it’s crazy.

After several stops at fleabag motels, including one with no AC where the rooms were still $100 for the night, we find three rooms at a rundown, dark old mom-and-pop motel where there’s just a boy at the desk, maybe 8 or 9 years old. “My father will be right back,” he says. There’s a hand-written sign on the counter: “All Rooms Cash Only.” We check out the one that’s open. The room is OK. The doorknobs and locks seem flimsy. The beds are lumpy. But there is an AC unit in the window and and a TV. And the boy tells me, “And you get free breakfast at the Days Inn next door.” Apparently this is the overflow motel for the Days Inn, probably used only on holiday weekends like this. We take the 3 rooms before they get gobbled up by the next car pulling in.

There’s a small Mexican restaurant across the highway from the motel, and we decide to see if we might still get a bite of dinner. Jarrett says he’d just like a beer, but they don’t sell beer at this restaurant, and so he goes off in search of a six-pack. Bob and I start to order because it looks as if they were ready to close, and Jarrett comes back with no cervezas because all the local store had was ordinary American beers and Jarrett wanted something more than Bud. He says he’s going to bed. No food. I get a little angry and snap at him about his fast-lane pace and insane let’s-get-back-as-fast-as-we-can attitude. He doesn’t care. And I soon regret it because Hey, he’s a big boy, and he can decide when he wants to eat and when he wants to skip a meal. It’s late. The long day, the desert and the search for rooms have made us all a little testy.

Bob and I decide to eat some rice and beans, drink some Jarritos pop and try to relax.

We’re up early. Bob and Jarrett have the van packed and ready for my suitcase by the time I open my motel door. We all want out of here. But first we walk over to the Days Inn for the low-rent free breakfast. We each eat a bowl of cereal and vow to stop for decent coffee first chance we get.

Then we’re back onto the Salt Flats. It’s smooth effortless driving. We notice that every time there’s an occasional cross road, it usually passes overhead on an overpass, and Bob says that the terrain is so flat that even that little rise might give us a bit of view, and we ought to stop to grab a few shots.

So we stop. We get out the tripod and shoot both ways, east and west. You can see our shadows in the photo. Who knows if we’ll use this stuff, but it’s stark and weirdly beautiful.

As on the trip west, I really like the road signs that say DROWSY DRIVERS PULL OVER IF NECESSARY. The sentiment seems so civilized and considerate, so unlike a Department of Motor Vehicles directive. I guess when you’re on this relatively narrow, flat and straight causeway-like path across the salt flats, you might wonder, “If I’m sleepy, what should I do?” The answer is on the sign.

We nonchalantly wave at Tooele, Saltair, Magna and Salt Lake City as we pass. We decide it’s too early for lunch at Park City and we zip across Utah in a flash.

Wyoming is next. We remember a great Mexican lunch in Green River and decide to see if we can find another restaurant there that looks worth a try. We drive through town and like the slightly goofy style at the Buckaroo Family Restaurant, so we pull into the lot.

It’s afternoon but Bob decides to get breakfast (that cereal this morning just didn’t make it, and hey, breakfast is good 24 hours a day), Jarrett gets a salad, and I get the soup du jour, bean with bacon. It’s buckaroo.

The three waitresses are attentive and fun, and there are few customers here on this Sunday afternoon. We listen to the waitresses’ chatter as they take care of various chores around the restaurant, and one of them mentions the Steelers. Bob says Yeah, Go Steelers! and we find out the one waitress, Kara, is from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and she moved out here with her mom, but she really misses western Pennsylvania. “There’s nothing like the Steelers out here. People think I’m crazy to be such a fan.” She also confesses she’s really not from Johnstown but from the small town of Tanneryville, PA.

So, we’re in the middle of Wyoming, the landscape around this town is extraordinary (see my blog entry titled “Geology. Yesterday was Day 8″ from August 28) and we’re in Buckaroo’s, a family restaurant with a cowboy theme. Who do I think of? Fred Rogers. Mister Rogers. We all knew him for years at WQED in Pittsburgh, and I got to interview him once for a couple of hours. I remember asking him about his early work at NBC in New York when he worked with people like Kate Smith and Gabby Hayes.

FRED: Oh well, I floor-managed his program every once in a while. Gabby Hayes would introduce western films, and then we’d go into the film, and we’d have lots of time to talk in between.

GABBY: Well, howdy, buckaroos! It’s your old pal Gabby Hayes, comin’ at you with another one of them rip-roarin’ western yarns. Ha! Ye’re darn tootin’! Yessiree, Bob.

FRED And so one day I said, “Mr. Hayes, what do you think of when you look at the camera, and you know there are so many people watching you?” And he said, “Freddie, I just think of one little buckaroo.” And I thought that was superb advice for anybody who would ever be thinking of television. He evidently thought of one child. Now I don’t think of any one particular child, but I think of the children I know and many of the aspects of life that they’re dealing with. And I don’t think of a whole lot of people when I look at the television camera. It’s a very, very personal medium.

So, out in Wyoming, at Buckaroos, I’m thinking of Fred and Gabby and their advice for on-camera personalities.

We get back on I-80 after lunch in Green River, and we eat the miles as fast as we can.

There are lots of fences along the grassy hills of Wyoming. And lots of giant alternative-energy propellers turning in the wind. Not a lot of people. But plenty of fences and wind and propellers.

Bob gets all excited as he was shooting out the right side of the car. “I think I saw an antelope! It was this odd animal on that last hill. Not a deer. It must have been an antelope!”

Somewhere between Rawlins and Laramie, we have to stop for gas. We exit at Arlington, and pull into the small independent station. The woman behind the counter has seen it all. She has been asked all the questions. She has a great jaded sense of humor. And she doesn’t really have to talk. She can just point to the sign on the wall and all is explained.

We didn’t see this stetch of I-80 on the way west because we took the Lincoln Highway route north through Medicine Bow. But Brian Butko has alerted me to the fact that as we head east after Laramie, if we get off at the exit for the Lincoln statue rest area, we can get on an old section of 30 south of I-80 and at the top of the first hill, we can get a shot of Lincoln from a distance. Why not? We grab the wide shot from the hillside opposite the statue. The sky seems to match the cloudy dull sky we had on the way west. OK. We get the shot and head east on old Lincoln Highway till we have to get back on I-80.

The rest of the afternoon and evening roll by smoothly, and we’re in Nebraska sooner than we expected. The countryside is not so exotically “western” anymore. We’re back on the plains.

When it’s time to stop, we realize Ogallala is a logical location. We go back to the same chain motel we’d stayed at on the way west. Same guy behind the counter. We’re becoming regulars. He recognizes us and recommends we grab our late supper at the sports bar next door.

Just east of Ogallala, we will lose the hour that we were so delighted to gain on the way west. And Jarrett is jumping to get back on the four-lane. Bob and I decide to grab a quick bite of breakfast because who knows where we’ll stop next? But it’s Labor Day and the only place we can find that’s open is a chain eatery that’s packed, and service is amazingly slow. Frustration omelets.

When we finally hit the road, I ask if we can stop, maybe just for a few minutes at the Kearney Arch, the odd interstate roadside attraction that’s just a big bridge-like arch across I-80 near Kearney. Jack Nicholson goes there in the film “About Schmitt.” To climb into the arch, you have to get off I-80 and wind your way along the access roads beside the highway to find the parking lots.

There’s a transportation museum in the arch, and I thought I might want to check this out, but the place is fast-food charmless and blandly commercial. It’s an intriguing structure, big and goofy but it has no real purpose other than trapping tourists. We decide against the museum, don’t even consider getting out the camera, and figure we ought to check out the souvenir shop just because it’s here and you don’t have to pay to get into that part of the experience.

Bob and I get back to the car before Jarrett. Now we’re jumping to get back on the road. Let’s see if we can make some time across the rest of Nebraska! Nonetheless Bob grabs a shot from his front seat as we zip under the archway back on the interstate. Bob can’t stop shooting everything.  That’s OK.