The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

Last Thursday I departed from central New Jersey for California. Four days later, I'm now here.

The first day I drove to Effingham, IL. It was about 850 miles, which I've decided is a reasonable amount of driving to do – particularly heading west. The problem with the eastbound journey is that you lose an hour almost each of the first three days. Going west you actually get an extra one. Still, it's a bit of a stretch doing that much in the eastern states. They are slower to traverse, being both more congested and with lower speed limits. I found Pennsylvania particularly tedious. It was pretty, in a bucolic way, in central Pennsylvania with its rolling green farmland hills. But it was a deceptively huge state. Being in the Northeast it at first seemed to be small. But unlike Indiana, which is nice enough to orient itself so you get to zip across the narrow part, Pennsylvania forces transcontinental drivers to traverse its widest dimension, which is actually quite wide. And at only 55 mph, no less.

(At least West Virginia, in the 13 miles I-70 crosses, lets you go 70. Whom are they kidding, they must reason... by the time they caught up with a speeder they'd be in Ohio. So they might as well just let you go fast.)

I was taking I-70, rather than the more direct I-80, because I needed to correct a rather embarrassing geographic omission. See, though I'd been to Kosovo and Cambodia, the alliterated list of places I'd seen did not also include Colorado. I decided that should probably change, and this was my chance.

But not on the second day, which mostly entailed driving through Missouri and Kansas, two other states I'd never before visited. Missouri was ok – not remarkable – but I loved Kansas. Just west of Kansas City the road got open. At the eastern end of the state the surrounding countryside was mildly rolling – but what's really noticeable is just how big the sky got. The day I was there the leading edge of a cold front was right over the highway, brewing into a storm. It was just a lot of rain and wind (no tornadoes) but really dramatic. The land was so open – you could see for so many miles in every direction – that you could see everyone else's weather just as well as your own. The people to the left were getting very wet, but those to the right were still basking in sunlight.

Eventually Kansas got flat, but not until I was about halfway to two-thirds through it. But near the western edge, just as the sun was setting, I could see the tops of the Rockies silhouetted on the horizon. It was dark by the time I got into Colorado, but I just went in a little ways until Limon, where I spent the night.

The next day I finally saw what I came for: the Rockies. It was actually a little stressful driving – my car did not like accelerating at 10,000 feet, which it had to do several times. But after Vail Pass it was essentially all downhill into Utah. As I went west the landscape got drier and drier, although it seems to have been a wet spring because even the desert was verdant (particularly in Nevada). Shortly after Green River in Utah I cut off the interstate, taking US 6 up to meet I-15 in Provo. It seemed like a shortcut, and it was, but it was still about 150 miles of non-interstate road. The first part was two lanes, crossing the desert valleys. Then up over a ridge, suddenly there was a lush canyon. Things stayed fairly green up until I-15, at which point things seemed to get drier. I bypassed Salt Lake City, hooking up with I-80 to head for Nevada. As I drove past the lake and the salt flats yet another storm was brewing over the Nevada hills. Ribbons of lightning snaked to the ground in front of me, and the setting sun silhouetted wisps of rain falling from the clouds. The storm had passed by the time I got to West Wendover, just over the border in Nevada, where I spent the night.

Wendover is actually an interesting phenomenon. There are two towns, one in Utah and one in Nevada. The one in Utah has a salt-flat racetrack, but not much else. Just over the border West Wendover is practically the Wild West, with all the vices one is deprived of in Utah on offer in Nevada.

The next day – yesterday – I finished my journey. First I crossed Nevada. It was about 410 miles, but they rolled away quickly. This is partly because out west (after Kansas City) the speed limits tend to be 75. So you don't have to be speeding to go fast. And Nevada is a series of valleys and basins stretched out before you. As you descend into one valley you can see up ahead, 15-30 miles, to the little ridge at the end, separating it from the next one. Once you cross that crest, a new valley appears, offering a completely different view. Also along the way are tiny towns, offering food and fuel, and breaking up the monotony of the drive. I ended up veering off into Wells, a former stop along the railroad, and saw some of its dusty history reflected in its old buildings. It was too early to go into it, but there was also an information center describing the journeys taken by the westward settlers. It took me three days to go from Independence, MO, to California. What it must have been like for the horse-drawn wagons, crossing interminable and inhospitable landscape, with no Burger Kings and gas stations to alight their route...

The border town on the other side of the state is Verdi, where I also stopped. Whereas Wendover is more of a hardscrabble, blue collar oasis in the desert, Verdi, on the edge of the Sierras with its well-healed Lake Tahoe-vacationing Californian and Reno suburbanite clientele, has a much different feel to it. Continuing on just a bit I-80 climbs to Donner Pass, and then descends through the gold-laden reddish Sierra foothills into the Sacramento Valley. The road by then gets very wide, with many lanes of urban drivers, and continues that way until its end. Once over the ridge between Fairfield and Vallejo, I caught my first glimpse of the Bay Area: its shimmering waters sparkling in the sunset, Mount Tamalpais' tree-lined hair draping down Marin, the suburban sprawl creeping up the region's hillsides. I kept going, over the new Zampa Bridge, around the Albany curve into Berkeley, where now I could finally see the ocean waving to me from under the Golden Gate.