My Big Road Trip, Day 1

click for bigger map
Originally uploaded by squidpants.

So I went on a big road trip to California a little while ago. I'm gonna do a little series here about the trip, so stay tuned.

As you can see by the map, we were driving the northern route, stopping it St. Louis where Adam and Liz are from (my co-travelers, Adam was my roommate after college, and Liz is his sister), then to Omaha for a night, then the Badlands, Rushmore, Custer State Park, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Reno, and finally Berkeley and San Francisco. We went a little different route actually, through Salt Lake City and across the salt flats. Unfortunately I lost my camera in California, so I am going to yoink other people's photos from Flickr and use them to illustrate as best I can.

The first day we got started late (about noon) due to some Star Wars Battlefront 2 videogame action. It was just me and Adam, we were picking up Liz in St. Louis. The plan was to drive straight to St. Louis, about 16 hours, through the long part of Maryland, up to PA for a bit and back down through WV, then through Columbus and Indianapolis. I wasn't expecting anything too interesting on this part of the trip, but I was surprised by Cumberland, MD, which Adam recommended stopping at (for those that know the Adams, this is Adam L from Boston College, not Adam B from GW).

Downtown Cumberland
Originally uploaded by amgrosmark

Cumberland is a pretty nice little town. Not related to the Cumberland Gap, which is in TN/VA, Cumberland used to be the second biggest town in Maryland, and it obviously used to be pretty wealthy, as there are a lot of nice, old buildings. They're pretty tall too, some were 7 or 8 stories - almost DC size. The town was the terminus for the C&O Canal too, which I used to work at in Georgetown. The downtown has a nice pedestrian mall with cafes and art galleries and a neat little museum I stopped in. There's also some pretty impressive buildings, like the courthouse and a big, sort of Italianate bank. The museum also used to be a bank, one of the exhibits is the original bank vault.

There was also some pretty neat geological formations in PA (or maybe WV) along the way. The rest of that leg of the trip was pretty uneventful that I can remember. I was hoping we could stop for chili in Cincinnati, but that was pretty far out of the way. We got to St. Louis about 3 am.

Here's another picture of Cumberland, from dmolsen on Flickr



Here's the next part of my road trip.