Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 15:36:54 -0600
Reply-To: joel walker <jwalker17@EARTHLINK.NET>
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From: joel walker <jwalker17@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject: Frydaye Phollies: road trip - part 1 :)
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from an old magazine ...
Driver’s Roads
Roads that put eternal dibs on your thrill-seeking soul.
by Larry Griffin
Car and Driver
January 1990
Robert Louis Stevenson was on the right track when he wrote,
“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake.
The great affair is to move.”
Finding the right track takes a map and a suggestion or two …
Or ten. It’s been four years since we last revealed ten roads that
Survived Car and Driver’s incursions, but we still maintain a
Chapter of Mapaholics Anonymous. We have changed from Rand McNally
to Mobil (its new travel guide, published by Simon & Schuster’s
Prentice Hall division, having bettered the standard).
Welcome to our own hot-off-the-asphalt tips for great driving.
Our roads are like fast cars: fun to run, dicey to trifle with.
They lead to more than insights about cars and driving, and count
for more than miles and smiles. They open up the countryside,
its inhabitants, the breadth of its variety. The best roads are
out there hiding, waiting for seekers. The seeking is the thing.
If you think you hear maps rustling, it’s only aftersound hanging
in the dust of our departure, mapped and ready for the open road.
----- Arkansas 16 -----
Arkansas 16 kicks off in the northwest corner of the state, near
Siloam Springs,
and takes the rugged Ozarks to the mat. The pavement runs
east-southeast,
rassling the ridges and runnels across two-thirds of Arkansas, to
Searcy.
The road cross-stitches routes 23 and 7, two low-flying byways that
have
also come home to roost in C/D’s all-time asphalt aviary. Anybody
from
gentler country will find more than enough fine driving to send them
home
with a happy heart, a panting engine, and whimpering tires. The
experts
with the carbon-dating equipment or the wetted-thumbs-to-the-wind or
whatever
they use to gauge the ages of the earth’s geological features claim
the Ozarks
are the oldest mountains in the country. Despite their age, they
hardly rank
in altitude with, say, Mount Everest or K2 or their Tibetan brethren.
But for
driving, the Ozarks provide a better backdrop and a far better
foreground.
Better means you’d better by-God pay attention to your driving. Turn
your
back on the roller-coaster Ozarks, or get caught out sideways, and
these
hills will do you dirt. Do them proud and they’ll prove good as gold
and
rich in rewards. For diversion, look for the Ozark Mountain
Smokehouse
(dandy meats, sandwiches, preserves, and natural fixings) in Siloam
Springs,
the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, tiny burgs such as Deer
and
Ben Hur and Tilly set in the hollows and axe-cut clearings, and more
driving satisfaction than ninety percent of the nation could give if
all its back roads were pooled. You won’t find high society
hereabouts,
but you won’t miss it.
<from Siloam Springs in the west, through Fayetteville, along the
White River
to Brashears, over the Boston Mountains to Deer, Pelsor, Ben Hur,
Tilly,
Clinton, across Greers Ferry Lake, by Heber Springs, to Searcy>
----- California 25 -----
This one has remained a secret, so let’s keep it among the four
million of us,
okay? Normally we’d tell you to slip out to the start of any great
road early
in the morning or late in the afternoon. Most places, that’s the best
way to
make an unfettered run. California 25 only comes unfettered; its
best leg
runs 55 files without interruption. You get off US 101 between
Salinas and
San Jose and take Route 25 twelve miles to Hollister. The road warms
up with
a half-dozen miles to Tres Pinos to get you in the mood, then sets off
through
the Hollister Hills and along the San Benito River like a runaway
riptide
ricocheting through a storm sewer. Except this is no sewer. The
hills are
heavenly, the valley is divine, and the road revises any
preconceptions
about what Zeus’s driveway ought to be like. A clean run through the
funnel
of fun will make mortals pine for road-god immortality, for this road
never
grows old. It’s perfectly positioned and deftly cut to make the most
of the
opportunities that lay in its path. It parallels 101 and Interstate
5,
wiggling between them, a live wire between insular freeways,
electrifying
the basin and crackling between natural contours and lonely reaches of
pasture. We once paced a trio of low-sweeping ultralights, weaving
and
bobbing beneath them as they swooped the valley from wall to wall.
California 25 ends at Route 198. Jog left, then south onto an obscure
ravel of pavement. Often thinning to one blind lane, it skewers 28
miles
to San Miguel. You may breathe a sigh of relief. But you’ll be back.
<from Gilroy on U.S. 101, south through Hollister, Tres Pinos,
along the San Benito River, to San Miguel back on U.S. 101>
----- “Going-to-the-Sun” Road, Montana -----
Whatever your ideas of heaven on earth, Glacier National Park can
rearrange them.
It straddles the Continental Divide and butts up against Canada near
Calgary and
Banff. Indians, cowhands, mountain men, and fellow nature lovers
reckon that
God build the park’s Rocky Mountains as his heavenly hideaway. The
Great Spirit
does nothing to tell them otherwise, certainly not the Blackfeet and
Flathead
tribes. Their reservations look toward the park’s rises of forest and
its
treeless crags. The peaks may be wreathed in clouds or laced in
snows, but
the tribes know the roof in Big Sky country will swing high to splash
its
wonders in sunshine. The best way to reach this lifelight runs up the
road
they call “Going-to-the-Sun.”
Though the thin air breathes easily in turbos, this is not a road for
thrashing
nor for reaching for every rev. This is a road for getting next to
godly grandeur.
For stopping amid the might of creation and the strength of evolution.
For hiking
among softly needled trees. Brushing finger tips over shards of
slate. Idling
through tunnels and wending alongside wildflowers casting off snow,
clawing past
rock, and carpeting meadows floors like throw rugs tie-dyed in
rainbows.
However brisk your trip, leave time to go slow enough that you could
measure
your crossing of the park with a Going-to-the-Sun dial. But there’s
yet
another splendid thing about driving up here: The vast Montana beyond
the
park, we hear, takes a frontier view of drivers who fudge on road
speed
without flaunting it, extracting a mere five-buck fine and no
demerits.
No wonder the Big Speeder in the Sky favors this place.
<from West Glacier east, past Lake McDonald, near Heavens Peak,
through Logan Pass, down by St. Mary Lake, to St. Mary at the eastern
end>
----- Missouri 7 -----
Interstate 44 makes like a snake west of Saint Louis but sags into
Oklahoma
as if it didn’t want to go into Kansas. That may be because the
get-squinty
roads north of Arkansas show their stuff only in the Missouri Ozarks.
Missouri 7 can’t compare with the rich variety and views on fabled
Arkansas 7,
which ranks as a must-drive in any national ranking. But the early
legs of
Missouri 7 deliver the tautness of a tightly bent logger’s saw. The
road’s
wooded periphery can suck a beginning backwoodsman into an impromptu
shot
at shearing off saplings.
Highway 7 gets underway in the pastoral neighborhood of Waynesville,
Missouri,
then snugs you tight before you reach the hamlet of Montreal. Try
Missouri 7
after dark behind dimbulb headlights and you’ll think you’re riding
the
bullwhip to hell. Stop, pray for sunrise, detour up to doze and
touristy
Osage Beach. Morning offers a chance to get back in the groove at the
Nurburgring of go-kart tracks, which writhes along U.S. 54 on the way
back to Route 7. Head west. Pass Climax Springs, do not collect
$200.
Do not look for the author’s landholdings overlooking Lake of the
Ozarks.
(There’s no cedar manse yet, and besides, nobody can find the place
even with directions.) See to your driving; Route 7 doesn’t calm
itself until it spits you out near Warsaw and meanders off past
Harry Truman Dam toward Kansas City, miffed that it didn’t hump
you back where the going was tougher. Double back a fair distance
east
from Osage Beach and you can go rodeoing on hellions such as
Highways 17, 19, and 21. They’re longer than 7, X-rated for
road fiends, and less likely to whipcrack you into the underbrush.
<from Clinton east by Harry Truman Dam, to Warsaw, Climax Springs,
across the Lake of the Ozarks, to I-44 at the edge of the Mark Twain
National Forest>
----- Ohio 26 ----
When candidates for Ten Best Roads grew thicker than radials on rubber
trees,
we required a minimum length of 100 miles (certifiable by magnifying
glass
applied to a map from any major oil company). Alas, our tally of
hundred-mile
hopefuls has thinned out over the years. However, after recent bouts
with
shorter but even tougher byways, and after reducing our distance rule
to
suitable vagueness, the ranks of road aspirants are again full to
overrunning.
The road that drove home the point was an old sparring partner, Ohio
26.
Though a pugilistic piece of work, it’s also a road for those of us
who
worship daily in the Church of Driving.
The road stalks the Marietta bottomlands of the Ohio River and into
the highlands.
It stands tougher than Tyson for the heavyweight title of the universe
but moves
faster than Flojo going for the gold in Seoul. And that was only the
fifty miles
to Woodsfield that we knew and loved. We’re just back from battling a
further
forty miles, and it’s a revelation, and alternately lyrical and
vicious kicker
that qualifies as a black-belt ballerina.
On 26, you face corners that never feint the same way twice, landscape
that
varies from gracious to spiteful, and … tamped into every cranny …
patchwork
paving that does its best to deal with sinkholing creek banks,
galloping
tree roots, and the capriciousness of southeastern Ohio’s
roadbuilders.
It looks as if they were out for a good laugh. But if you apply
common
sense, a shot of driving talent, and a potent and agile car with
enduring
brakes, the last laugh … and a real hoot it will be … can be all
yours.
<from Marietta northward through the Wayne National Forest, to
Woodsfield,
and ending near Speidel>
----- U.S. 221, North Carolina -----
Just as water flows downhill, moonshine from mountain stills once
flowed
from the hollow-cheeked foothills of North Carolina. After
Prohibition,
the shine hit the road in fast, plain cars that also kept to the path
of
least resistance. The bootleggers hustled discreetly over the
wickerlike
pattern of back roads, which carved through the thickets by main
force.
Making and running white liquor became a cottage industry in the best
sense. Operating out of barns and natural lairs, the “lickuh bidness”
fermented from corn mash, traveled on hi-test, and depended on
hot-rodded
sixes and flathead V-8s to get to market. The “bidness” made
backroads
its business, and drivers almost never drove the few major routes.
Those thoroughfares drew traffic during the day and made it easier
for revenue agents to give chase at night.
The route now designated U.S. 221 long remained a venue where the
locals
could take it slow and tight before they had to play it fast and loose
to go belting from sight. The road still clings to shadowed hollows
and hooks up with tiny two-tracks. It honors a longtime toughness,
bears a history of memorable encounters, and remains much as it was,
albeit paved today. A good car can still have its way with the road
without caterwauling to the law what’s afoot. Most sightseers keep
to the Blue Ridge Parkway. It shadows 221 through a half-dozen
counties.
The unbroken Parkway, though lovely, fails to reflect 221’s fitful
weaving
through time-frozen towns and its riveting swirls through upcountry
Carolina.
Try the road with the number and it’ll soon have yours.
<From Spartanburg, South Carolina, north to Spindale, North Carolina,
to Blowing Rock and Boone and Grandfather’s Mountain, to Deep Gap and
Twin Oaks, and still northward into Virginia>
to be continued ...
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