California to Seattle, up to Canada and across back to New York
This page is different than the others. Since the hand written journal ended, all I have are some memories of the rest of the trip...and they are a bit fuzzy with time. What I've decided to do is to use the cursive font where my memories seem to be pretty good.
Where I don't have a memory, but I know from logic that I must have traveled a certain route or stopped in a particular place, I'll use this plain font.
While the journal doesn't say so, I'm pretty sure I had lost Mortimer somewhere around
Las Vegas. I think the heat was too much for him and he ran away. I remember looking for
him for a long time but eventually had to move on. This made me quite sad - we had some
good times together.
I think we found Lisa's friend that night, but it was late and I'm pretty sure I was tired, so we probably just quickly crashed for the night. I suspect we took off in the late morning the next day. I do have memories of traveling up Highway 1, but I've done that many times now. I seem to remember sleeping by the side of the road, picking up hitch hikers, and crashing at a few hippie communes. This was a totally new experience for me!
I do remember a vegetarian meal where I got introduced to fresh bean sprouts - I can still picture them growing in the kitchen window. I liked them.
We obviously cut inland somewhere, I'd guess above San Francisco, maybe as high as Hwy 128 near the town of Mendocino. I remember that Lisa and I got along together okay, but not with any friendly connection occurring - more like just a business transaction.
The Volkswagen Bug broke down outside of Yreka, California (near the very top of California). This was probably August 18th or thereabouts. We were stuck on the side of Interstate 5. I remember some other people stopping to help us out and that we had a hitch hiker with us. Eventually we figured out that we needed to get it to a mechanic. So I made a TOW sign using the journal and grease from the engine to make the letters visible.
Some kind soul must have given us a tow into Yreka to a gravel lot next to the gas station just off the Interstate. We got ahold of a mechanic, described the symptoms, and learned that the engine would have to be rebuilt.
Lisa and the hitch hiker decided to continue by hitch hiking and I arranged a tow to a local garage that could work on Volkswagens. I think the cost was a big concern.
The garage and I worked out a deal where I would help with the repair (since I did know how to work on cars and was willing to do the grunt engine work) for a discounted bill. After working on the engine, we went to the mechanics house for supper - that was nice and really needed since I was stressed out and still sick.
That night, and the remaining ~seven nights, I slept in the garage. I learned a lot working with them on the engine and they seemed to enjoy the company. I suspect they took pity on me too since I probably looked like heck.
My memory of the next part of the trip is blank. No doubt I resumed traveling up Interstate 5 to Seattle. I suspect by this time I went long distances in a day, so at most it would take two days to get there. It's also quite likely I just traveled through the night (which I like to do) since it would have been quite hot in California in August. I think I was tired of the very hot summer conditions.
So that would have put me in Seattle around August 26th. I had about 10 days to drive ~3,400 miles to get back to Long Island by September 7th. I was probably short of money. I had a lot of things on my mind. Life, how hard the world can be, how nice some people are, Christy.....
So what happened in Seattle? I don't know....I have zero memory of it. Totally blank and has never come back to me to this day. I had to have seen Christy. There's no way I would have left Seattle without seeing her.
I'll take a guess at a couple of things. I probably tried hard to get her to go to New York with me and got turned down. Hopefully I didn't pressure her too much and gracefully accepted her reasons why not. I probably also saw that the relationship we had from Kalaloch & Port Angeles was irrevocably changed and gone. Maybe we got into a big fight and were verbally nasty to each other. I just don't know.....
So I can see why I might have blanked this memory out.
Editorial from hindsight - Even at this stage, I don't think I had truly processed how young Christy was. I think I was acting as if she was a fully independent young woman, not a 17 or maybe 18 year old girl. I wish I could say I was more intelligent than that, but I don't think that thought ever crossed my mind... and certainly the significance of it was oblivious to me.
As for myself, I wonder if this is an example so well sung by Barbara Streisand in the
song “The Way We Were“:
Memories
May be beautiful and yet
What's too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So it's the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember
The way we were
Other snippets in the last pages
This page was in the journal so I obviously headed straight north to Vancouver British Columbia, Canada. I know I planned to take the Trans-Canada Highway to go back home. It had just been completed. It is known as Highway 1, the same as the lovely road along the California Coast.
Guy who jumped into the car near Vancouver, B.C.
Thom Noack
682-4964
St Paul Street. ??? Jumped into the car, how did that happen????
(Approx. spelling) Tiffenannie's - across Valley Stream (Wine, Apple, Cheese)
Monk's Inn
54 th West Side (City)
next to Le Souffle
Just before I hit the Canadian Rockies I picked up a couple of hitch hikers. After traveling through the mountains for a while, we stopped at a beautiful viewpoint. They pulled out a pipe and some hashish, which we smoked. Boy did it have a kick - like nothing I'd had before. I remember driving through this gorgeous mountain area with all my senses feeling like they were operating at the 150 percent level. Everything was extra vibrant, extra stunning. I think it was quite a few hours before I came back down.
This experience scared me a bit so after that I drew the line - smoking weed was okay, everything else was past my limit of what I'd try.
I think I took them to Revelstoke British Columbia and maybe picked up another hitch hiker. I know the Volkswagen was packed when we got to a campground in Revelstoke. We set up camp, ate dinner, and then a group of us decided to go into town. We had met some Canadians and were having a good time with them, joshing back and forth about Americans and Canadians.
We ended up at a tavern. Pretty soon we all had some nice beers...and then some more. And then it got turned into a drinking contest between the Yanks and the Canucks. Unknownst to us, they had the advantage - Canadian beer is stronger than the beer we were used to. Never the less, we held our own.
Eventually they closed the bar on us - I remember the table was literally covered with beer bottles. We were feeling no pain.
There were more of us heading back to the camp than I had brought down, but we all piled into the Volkswagen anyway - as I recall it was a very tight fit - sort of like the clown car with the endless supply of clowns coming out of it. I still laugh about that part!
Amazingly I drove us back to the campground without hitting anything or getting pulled over. Given that it was probably about 3 a.m., and that I probably never got out of 2 nd gear, I supposed we at least had a chance of making it back alive.
I don't know how, but I remember that the camp did not look the same when we got back to it. We drove around a bit trying to find our tents but couldn't. Finally I gave up, just pulled over near the one thing I did recognize - the restrooms (of which we had a need of by that time). I stopped and parked. We then proceeded to literally fall out of the car.
Some of us headed off into the darkness. I tried to walk, but it wasn't working too well for me, so I started crawling. A bunch of us figured we'd just sleep in the restroom for the night till we could see in the daylight next morning. So we did.
That is, we crawled into the Women's restroom, not knowing it was the closest one - I doubt we could read at that point. We promptly fell asleep (okay, more likely passed out).
Much hilarity ensured the next morning when we were woken up by women from the camp wanting to use their facilities. I think they used buckets of freezing cold water to wake us up. They weren't too annoyed from the way they were laughing so much.
That's where my memory of this “adventure“ ends. It's been tucked away in my head as one of life's lessons learned - a) don't get into drinking contests with Canadians, and b) getting this drunk is NOT a good thing.
Lake Louise, Banff National Park
Canada's Banff National Park is 850 kilometers (528 miles) from Vancouver, BC. It is Canada's first National Park, and the third National Park in the world. All I knew at the time was that it was an absolutely gorgeous place. Not so great for an underpowered and probably overloaded Volkswagen Bug to be going up huge mountain passes, but beautiful to see.
In some ways it was good that we just chugged along since it gave us more time to enjoy the scenery we were passing through. I know that for the first time on my great adventure, I was starting to feel the pressure of actually having to be somewhere at a specific time. Previously I could just pick up and go where I felt like, as evidenced by my somewhat erratic journey.
So while going through these mountains, we suddenly came upon Lake Louise. I still have a picture in my mind of Lake Louise, in the middle of this beautiful park. It was so gorgeous that I stopped there for several hours, went walking around a bit, and sat on the lakeshore just letting my mind soak in the lovely blue colors.
Its a place told myself I should come back to. I guess I was probably adding “when I have the time and the money“. I didn't spend anything there, just enjoyed the nature, but it looked like a fairly ritzy ($$$$$) place to me. I don't think I would have dared to go into the Chateau looking like I was.
I think I must have been a bit sad to be moving on. I knew my journey was coming to a close, and after these mountains, the “nature“ element would not be as spectacular. So far I had come 130 miles from Seattle to Vancouver, BC and then 528 miles more to Banff National Park, so I had 2,742 miles to go to get home. My time on the road was running out.
I don't think I knew the exact numbers at the time - I would not have wanted to dig into details like that. But I think I intuitively knew them roughly.
The next big town we hit after that was Calgary.
I remember Calgary impressed me in a strange way. It was an old time cattle/cowboy town that was in the midst of a huge oil boom. It was a dynamic place with a feeling that a hard working person could really make a great living here. But it was also such a redneck atmosphere. I did not feel welcome, probably because by now I had longish hair was looking a bit like a hippie.
There was something disturbing about the town for me - perhaps too close to getting back into “the rat race“ instead of the life of freedom that I'd recently been experiencing.
This was probably around August 28th, about 9 days left to get to Long Island.
The next part of Canada was much like the USA midwest - long stretches of pretty flat land, few houses or towns. The journal has this entry from some time while traveling across the that part of Canada. I know I kept picking up hitch hikers. This entry looks like I was getting information about how to keep traveling like this in the future.
It would have taken about two days to get across this stretch. I was probably getting pretty tired of driving, and it likely would have been relatively hot again.
May 20th
Pulpwood factory
$3.50 an hour for summer
Till September
190 miles east of Thunder Bay
Town was extremely nice.
Marathon, Canada, Ontario
$2,500 for the summer. Good for financing future trips
no dope.
Nice woodsy area.
On Lake Superior
Another Canadian entry
Fire Fighting
Revelstoke, British Columbia
$150 a week, 5 days
Very interesting
easy work
I don't know where this is from, but it had to be a hitch hiker I picked up.
Mark Brundage
53 Brooks Ave
Burlington, Vermont
Blonde, blue eyes, small beard. “Merlin“-like, the Hitcher from Vermont
This page in the journal says Durrell put us up for several days. I think I probably needed to do some maintenance on the Volkswagen (change the oil, tune it up, etc) and probably needed a break from driving. Sault Sainte Marie was 960 miles from Amityville, and I had about a week left before September 7th, so I knew I'd make it home in time to register for classes.
I can't say I really remember, but I think I also was having some great conversations with Durrell about religion. And August 29th was a Sunday, so maybe I attended Church Services also. I had gone to Mass only one other time that summer, so I probably was emotionally missing that.
I might also have taken the time to call or write home to let them know I was coming. From the notes it looks like my Mom wanted me to pick up my sister Diane at Penn State and bring her home. It looks like I took notes from a phone call to my older sister Joan. I don't remember doing picking Diane up and logistically I don't see how she could put her stuff in the Volkswagen. But maybe it was just a short intersession break.
This is the entry in the journal
Joan's number
Area Code 716 753-7505
Have to pick up Diane at Penn State. 150 miles from Joan. Don't take big Hwy. Sept 13
Joan knows when Diane has to leave to College. Give a call to check date.
Joan's address on Chappaqua Lake, Mayville, New York
Westlake Road
753-2131
Right
sign on right
Flag farm
From a letter my Mom wrote me on June 24th and sent to me in Clearwater Washington, she told me that registration at Farmingdale College was September 7th and classes start September 15th. So that would have set a timeframe for when I had to get back to Long Island. And if I was in Washington at the time I got the letter, I was about 3,000 miles from Long Island... and planning to go south to California.
So I think I left Sault Sainte Marie on August 31st heading towards Toronto and then the Canadian/USA border. I remember going to Niagara Falls, seeing the Canadian side for first time. I walked all along that side, stopped in at the gift shops, reading all the plaques, and watching the ever changing falls. I spent quite a bit of time there.
Niagara Falls is an amazing and impressive sight. The water going over the Canadian side is more powerful, thundering, and dramatic than the American side. I stayed long enough to see them light it up at night. It was kinda fun the way they used the multi-colored lights.
I remember being somewhat apprehensive about going through the US border Customs Checkpoint. The inside of my car was a mess, I think I looked like a hippie, and over many miles I had people with drugs sitting in the back seats...what if some stuff was dropped?
Sure enough the Customs people took a bit more time with me and my car, but it was fairly painless. I was back in New York! I think I just found a side street somewhere to sleep in the car for the night.
I'm pretty sure it just took me the next day to drive the rest of the way back home. While the dates don't quite match up, I thought I arrived home just the day or maybe two days before registration - I cut it just about as close as possible.
Thus this portion of my journey ended.
There is one last item in the journal that I'll include here and then get back to this story, which hasn't ended quite yet. This was stuck in the journal - it was obviously written by me later, but I obviously considered it some part of this journal.
Written on an envelope from Washington State University, dated November 24th , 1971, sent to me in Amityville. I think this probably held my acceptance to WSU letter. Classes would have started the 2nd week in January, 1972. Which is partly why I so vividly remember the stewardess telling us that the outside temperature was 20 below zero at the Spokane Airport and me not believing it was possible until I got out to walk across the tarmac to the airport terminal....almost freezing to death.
I am lost. I want to find myself again. Must take off and go traveling again. Read “The Greening of America“. I was so close to attaining Consciousness III. Now I'm back at I. Goodbye. I'll get in contact. It brought tears to my eyes.
From “The Greening of America“ Wikipedia article, it says:
“The book's argument rests on three separate types of consciousness.
"Consciousness I" applies to the world-view of rural farmers and small businesspeople
that arose and was dominant in nineteenth century America. "Consciousness II" represents
a viewpoint of "an organizational society", featuring meritocracy and improvement
through various large institutions; it dominated the New Deal, World War II and 1950s
generations. "Consciousness III" represents the worldview of the 1960s counterculture,
focusing on personal freedom, egalitarianism, and recreational drugs.“