Two Potential Road Trip Routes

In pursuit of reaching all 50 states before I’m 30 (as I promised I would do when I was 20; seven to go), here are some road trip itineraries.  Not that they go to that many states, but I want to go everywhere.

S.F. – Carson City/Reno – Boise – Bend, OR – Crater Lake – S.F. At 1500 miles, this would take 28 hours of driving.  Which means you would do it in five days, six if you stayed in Crater Lake an extra day.  (Bend is where the Thomas Beatie, the Pregnant Man lives.  He had the baby and is pregnant again.  I would like to drive there and tell him how I support his radically normal agenda.)

S. F. – Yosemite – Kings Canyon/Sequoia Nat’l Parks – Death Valley – Las Vegas – Joshua Tree – Coastline – S. F. This one would be way longer.  It’s 1600 miles plus adventures within the national parks, but a lot of it is windy backroads.  Especially the last leg, going up the coast on 1.  It wouldn’t be quite as terrifying to do that drive at night as it is to come south, because the Pacific isn’t right below you heading north, but it would take an eternity.  An amazing eternity.  And by going to Death Valley one simply must visit the Amargosa Opera House in Death Valley Junction.  Not that I have yet.

Idaho is O’Boisterous

When we got there it was closed, but it really exists:

Blackfoot, Idaho. September 2008.

It reminds me, then as now, of O’Boisies, whose tagline was “O’Boisies Are O’Boisterous.”  Seemed like it was tough to fail with a campaign that merges memories of the Irish potato famine with the spud-studded home of the Aryan Nation — plus a healthy dose of inane hyperbole.  But they’re gone, along with Keebler’s Tater Skins, which I remember being pretty thick.  Almost like salty Milano.

Did the two chips poach each other’s demographic?  Fall victim to the public’s burgeoning lust for kettle chips?  Or did people feel insulted that Keebler felt the need to insert an extra i into O’Boisies so that consumers wouldn’t feel intimidated by the pronunciation?  (Which is still wrong, since Boise is “BOY-cee.”)

I think people were asking for the “oh-BWAZ-es” during the beta test, torpedoing the entire campaign.

Behold, the Atom [No Vacancy]

Atomic City, Idaho is a profoundly scary place two miles off the highway.  With at most 25 people in it and no open stores, it really couldn’t be less of a city.  We drove around it, took a Polaroid and got the hell out before something ate us, because it’s probably been the home of giant mutated ants since 1956.

However, Arco, which is a sizeable and picturesque town at the foot of the mountains, seems to be thriving.  If it were to experience some soil subsidence and just sink by 40 feet, it could elbow Denver out of the way and be the New Mile High City.  I especially love that City Hall has a sign that could be for a motel: