Road Trips


We simply love to travel about in our great country, preferably in our Alfas, but substitutions are occasionally called for.

Our journey to the 2009 AROC National Convention in Portland was documented in the AlfaBB thread Transcontinental Redux.

I recently read a wonderful article in the September, 2009 issue of the Smithsonian magazine, titled The Long Way Home by Paul Theroux. This chronicled his journey from LA to Cape Cod with very poetic words, as befits his 40 years of world travel as a writer. He summed up his first transcontinental trip as follows:

A trip abroad, any trip, ends like a movie—the curtain drops and then you're home, shut off. But this was different from any trip I'd ever taken. In the 3,380 miles I'd driven, in all that wonder, there wasn't a moment when I felt I didn't belong; not a day when I didn't rejoice in the knowledge that I was part of this beauty; not a moment of alienation or danger, no roadblocks, no sign of officialdom, never a second of feeling I was somewhere distant—but always the reassurance that I was home, where I belonged, in the most beautiful country I'd ever seen.

The story can be viewed on line at The Smithsonian Web Site.


2008 Seattle to Connecticut Road Trip


Our trip from Seattle to Connecticut in June of 2008 is documented in several places.
- The AlfaBB’s Picture Room Forum thread, Alfetta Recovery
- The NY-AROC Chapter Website Article

Here is a teaser, from our 2008 trip:



In this photo, we have just cleared Chinook Pass on Highway 410, east of Mt Rainier. West of the pass, the entire coast was blanketed with low clouds. They can be seen spilling over the pass in the background. If we had a vantage point 500 ft above this spot, rainier would likely have been sitting above the clouds in all its glory. The Google earth graphic below shows what we missed. Our trip west for the Portland convention was motivated by a desire to visit an un-shrouded Rainier.




2009 Connecticut to Oregon Road Trip


Our journey to the 2009 AROC National Convention in Portland was documented in the AlfaBB thread Transcontinental Redux.

In June of 2008, Kathy and I drove a newly-acquired Alfetta GTV from Seattle back home to Connecticut. The experience was documented in a BB thread alfetta trans-continental recovery.

A year later, the itch to set out on a transcontinental road trip once again took hold on us. The result was a journey from Connecticut westward to the AROC Convention in Portland, OR.

The Beartooth Highway in Montana/Wyoming was a major objective of our trip west. . After spending the night in Red Lodge, we left very early to beat the “traffic”, which we did. Just a mile from the summit pass, we stopped and took some photos. First is one of our Spider, resting after the dash up the hill. This is at 10,700 ft elevation, well above the tree line .

Link to high resolution version


And here is a Google Earth graphic of the area, showing the location of the photo.