Zen and the art of Route Planning

Heading west from Moab towards the Pacific, the idea was to follow the "loneliest road in America", the US50, A.K.A. the backbone of America. It snakes its way across what would have been the orginal frontier of the Wild West through prospecting boom and bust towns, classic plains and mountain ranges emerging into suburban California.

Leave the baggage behind

 

The original plan was to go uni-bag, take hand luggage only to avoid baggage handling hassles and waiting around. Okay, so I caved and ended up with two bags, but technically one of them counts as a handbag (BA allows a handbag or laptop bag up to 45cm x 36xm x 20cm in addition to carry-on hand luggage of 56cm x 45cm x 24cm).

My tesselation skills (which are astounding, nay almost magical in their application) resulted in a nicely pared down basic kit:

The map is not the territory

So where to begin a 4,500 mile road trip? I thought about doing the straight East West route following US-20 from New York to Portland but thanks to the magic of google maps and street view, you can get a pretty good picture of what the scenery might be like and unless you're a (modern) history buff or dig the East Coast scene, it's kind of short on the spectacular for my taste.

To go chasing mountains and landscape you have to head West to the North American parts of the American Cordillera (read all about it in the riveting Lithotectonic terrain map of the North American Cordillera by Silberling, N.J. et al. 1992) , comprising the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada, Cascades and Coast ranges of Oregon, Washington and California.