CHAPTER XXXI
TO THOSE WHO THINK OF FOLLOWING IN OUR TIRE TRACKS
For the benefit of those who are planning such a trip and in answer to the many questions that have been asked us since our return, we have compiled the following pages:
The subject of car equipment, driving suggestions, garage and road notes, I have left to E. M., who has written a part of this chapter.
At the end of the book is a small outline map of the United States and the route we took marked on it with divisions, each indicating a day’s run. On separate pages are enlarged, detailed diagrams of these divisions, drawn to uniform scale, giving general road surfaces, points of historical or topographical interest along the road, and thumbnail outlines that suggest the types and relative sizes of the hotels they represent. Each little symbol means a modernly, even a luxuriously equipped house; good food, good rooms and private baths. The mileage between all these best hotels is clearly indicated, so that a tourist can plan the distance he likes to run at a glance.
East of the Mississippi there are plenty of high-class hotels, and although fine ones are building in every state of our country, in many sections of the West those dependent upon luxuries will still have to go occasionally long distances a day to get them.
From New York to San Francisco, by way of the Rocky Mountains and Los Angeles, is about 4,250 miles; which divides itself into about four weeks’ straight running, including the side trips to the Grand Canyon, to San Diego and Monterey, but not including extra days to stop over. To make it in less would be pretty strenuous, but perfectly feasible. Allowing no time out for sightseeing, accidents or weather delays, we arrived in San Francisco in four weeks’ running time, including the run to San Diego (two days), but we skipped a stretch of Arizona and Southeastern California, a distance that would have taken about three days, which would have made our own entire distance time twenty-nine days.
Some days we drove thirteen or fourteen hours, others we drove only three or four. We never ran on schedule, but went on further or stayed where we were as we happened to feel like it, excepting, of course, our one breakdown and the two times we were held over by rain. When roads were good and the country deserted, we went fast, but the highest the speedometer ever went for any length of time in the most uninhabited stretches was fifty miles an hour. At others it fell to six! For long, long distances, on account of the speed laws or road surfaces, we traveled at eighteen to twenty. Between thirty-five and forty is the car’s easiest pace where surface and traffic conditions allow. East of Omaha we were never many hours a day on the road. Between Omaha and Cheyenne, and again between Albuquerque and Winslow, finding no stopping places that tempted, we drove on very long and far.
TO THE MAN WHO DRIVES
By E. M. Post, Jr.