Absolutely nothing beats windshield time , a road trip and good conversation in the car . Welcome to another episode of Dan the Roadtrip Guy , where we have entertaining conversations about cars and road trips , life lessons and maybe , every now and then , a little advice . I'm your host , dan Neal Roadtrip Extraordinaire . And now buckle up and enjoy the show .
Well , it's just me , again on a solo road trip , taking a look back at a great memory for myself , and hopefully it brings to mind some memories for you . This past July it had been 20 years since I took a very memorable road trip . The trip should have been me , my dad and my brother .
My brother and his wife had just brought young David into this world 20 years ago , so I had to turn to a good friend of mine who had done a lot of crazy things with me up until that point , so this one didn't seem too farfetched . My brother did play a part because in April of 2003 , he helped me purchase a 1983 BMW 320i in San Jose , california .
Now someone might wonder why I purchased the car across the country . I had this crazy notion I wanted to drive it across the country on US Route 50 , so my brother was successful in bidding for me on eBay because I was traveling at the time . He won the auction .
The seller was kind enough to hold on to the car for a few months until I could make plans to get to California and drive it back across the country . My dad , my good friend John , and I set off on a Thursday . We flew to San Jose . We made our way I guess by taxi , I can't really remember that detail Over to this guy's workplace .
We picked up the car , gave it a once over Again . The car was 20 years old at that point , peered to be in pretty good condition and we set out . Our hope was to go up one side of the San Francisco Bay , but we ended up on the wrong side and we were stuck in bumper to bumper traffic for what seemed like hours .
Dad did take a look at the tires and said boys , I think this car could use some tires . So we ran by . I remember we ran by a Sears . No , they did not have 13 inch tires , that were on this BMW 320 . We kind of all looked at each other and said , well , let's go . And so we set out on that journey Again .
We made our way up the wrong side of the San Francisco Bay stuck in traffic . We did finally make it to Sacramento where we would pick up US Route 50 and head east towards Cincinnati , ohio . We were all pretty tired at that point . Having flown on the flight out to California , I remember I drove up the .
I drove up to Sacramento and then I remember John took over and drove through the evening through Lake Tahoe . We decided we would spend the night , so we stopped in Carson City . We thought one good night's rest we should get before we hit the road out , travel back east .
Got up the next morning we actually had breakfast , kind of hung out and just got our senses about us , and we headed out on what we thought was US Route 50 . Shortly we ended up in a city which was not on the map . Oh , by the way , we didn't really have a map .
I had a map in my head of where we were going , but we thought we've got a trucker who spent 40 years in a truck traveling the US , so why do we need a map ? And this is sort of pre-GPS days in 2003 . So we show up in this city and we're kind of like where are we ? We stop , there's this guy painting a building .
I always remember we stop and we were like where are we ? And he looked at us and he said you're in Reno , nevada , and we're like that is not where we want it to be . At that point we decided let's buy a road atlas . So we pulled into a bookstore , we bought a road atlas , found our way to I-80 , which led us back to US Route 50 .
So we were only on the interstate for a short time . We made our way back to US 50 and we made our way through Nevada and Utah . And if you've never driven that stretch of road US Route 50 there it's called the loneliest road in America and that's for good reason . There is not much on that road , I believe we saw that day very few cars .
We saw what looked like some military exercises going on in the middle of nowhere , but we pushed on . I'll always remember dad always regretted not buying a t-shirt at this little gas station we stopped at . It had an imprint on the front that said Loneliest Road in America and he brought that up numerous times after the trip .
At that point we set out oh , I should say that after one night's stay in a hotel motel , dad the truck driver of 40 years looked at both of us and said boys , we're headed home , that's the last night we spend in a hotel . That's what we did .
We drove non-stop from Carson City , nevada or Reno at that point back to Livio , kentucky , where John picked up a car and he drove back to Cincinnati and I drove dad home to Kentucky . We made it through some beautiful parts of Nevada and Utah but we came through Colorado in the middle of the night and I remember that little car .
It was breathing pretty hard going up into those altitudes , trying to make it up those hills , but we got through . And then we drove through Kansas in the middle of the day , which in July it's pretty warm in the state of Kansas , and we saw lots of cornfields , flatland and that's pretty much it . We did jump back on the interstate .
We ran that the rest of the way home on interstate 70 . Dad would comment on that trip for years to come about the memories he had on that trip . Oddly enough , the guy who had spent 40 years traveling the roads of America never wanted to get behind the wheel of the car . He left that to John and I and he rode shotgun the whole way home .
He told us story after story and how . I wish I'd recorded those stories . That was kind of pre-cell phone days , so you didn't have that little recorder to kick on and just really didn't think about a recorder . But it was many , many stories and he just talked about that trip and talked about that trip for years .
I would encourage you if you got memories , write them down , tell them to somebody . If you want to make some memories , then jump in the car , take a trip . That trip wasn't about the destination . That trip was about the journey .
It took us much longer than it probably should have , but we enjoyed every mile of the way and I would do that trip all over again today if dad were still around and wanted to take another road trip across the country . That's about all I got to say on that memory . Create your own , share them with somebody and remember .
Keep having conversations , keep on driving . Until we meet up again . You can find me on the internet at dantheroadtripguycom . I hope you will follow this podcast so that you don't miss any upcoming episodes , and share it with your family and friends so they can enjoy the stories of my guests also .
Until we meet again on a future episode , keep having conversations with each other and keep driving .