One-hundred six days out I have finally come to the beginning of my adventure.
Some years ago I read a Stephen Ambrose book called Nothing Like It in the World – The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad. In the book he says:
Nearly a full century later . . . when the surveyors flying in airplanes and helicopters and equipped with modern implements and maps laid out a line for Interstate 80, they followed almost exactly the route laid out by the original surveyors [of the Transcontinental Railroad].
That sounded to me like a call for a road trip. Follow the tracks of the first Transcontinental Railroad from Sacramento to Omaha. The idea got expanded a little over the years. First I thought I’d fly to Vegas – as at that time I’d never been – then do the Fear and Loathing tour across the California desert to Los Angeles, then go up to Sacramento and back east. Then I had Phoenix recommended to me as a starting point. Then I decided, hell, why not take the opportunity to check out the places down south you might like to live? And finally, if I’m doing all of that why not just go the whole way ’round and see the country.
And here we are, one-hundred five days later, with a little over three weeks to make it back to the States, in Sacramento ready to get started on the original trip and make the final turn to the east on the trip as it is. Unreal.
Tomorrow I’ll walk to the spot on K St. in Sacramento where the great road begins and after that (in reverse) it’s
. . . ten spikes to a rail, four hundred rails to a mile, eighteen hundred miles to San Francisco.