Weekend Driver San Diego

Hard to believe it’s been a year since I had one of my all-time great vacations… a trip up Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner and Coast Starlight to Seattle, then a driving tour from one end of Washington to the other. Hope you enjoy this video of the Coast Starlight running through the mountain snows in Oregon. [...]

A few years back I spent a several weeks working in Moorhead, Minn., and as things go in the interstate twin cities of Fargo, ND and Moorhead, my budget-priced hotel was across the Red River in Fargo. Wandering around one Sunday afternoon, I headed west to where Fargo runs out and Interstate 94 makes one [...]

Fatigue is setting in and you’ve been motoring eastbound (or north-, south- or west-bound) all day on Interstate Whatever. Up ahead at Exit 134 is a major-brand motel and, even though you find the parking lot choked with Family Trucksters, the somewhat worn out desk clerk says they’ve got a room. Sure, there are a [...]

A friend’s upcoming visit to Washington, D.C. brought back memories of my six weeks there back in 2001. Yes, that 2001, it was when I was working for FEMA and was called to headquarters after the September 11 attacks. The city was pretty quiet when I got there shortly after the FAA decided that airline [...]

Nothing like a DC-3, probably built a few miles from here. Well worth a visit: Go to Lyon Air Museum

Here’s another video from the Coast Starlight, tunnel to tunnel in the Cascades. From Feb. 9, 2011.

Here’s a blog entry from my Starlight 2011 trip that I forgot to post. Enjoy. Thursday, Feb. 10, Seattle I awoke in Seattle on Feb. 10 to a spectacularly clear day. One of those where the locals run to the Space Needle for lunch, where I was headed. The waiter, before serving my entree of [...]

From my Starlight trip, a blog entry I wrote but didn’t post. Enjoy… Around Mt. Shasta, Feb. 10 After a decent night’s sleep, those of us on the Coast Starlight today awoke to blue skies as we looped around Mt. Shasta. The big rock is covered with snow and glistened in the morning sun. I [...]

Since this is finishing my first round-trip up the West Coast and I’m not a weatherman, I don’t know how fast or big storms are.All I can say is that it started raining and snowing on Monday in Cle Elum, Wash., and here it is Thursday on the train in Paso Robles, Calif., and it’s [...]