To quickly write down our itinerary, it had gone something like this:
-- North Jersey north to NY Lake Ontario
-- NY into Canada then Algonquin Park in Canada followed by a personal visit on a lake
-- West Across Canada from Ontario to Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies, stays in Manitoba, Alberta
-- Some days in British Columbia
-- South into United States, coast of Washington State, south through Washington and Oregon coasts, then northern California Coast
-- East into central northern California
-- South to Berkeley and San Francisco
-- South and east across desert, stayed in California desert
-- East and North through Arizona desert to Grand Canyon, stay in Grand Canyon and Mesa Verde
-- North into southwest Colorado, stay in southwest Colorado
-- North to Denver, stay outside of Denver/Boulder
-- East to NYC/NJ brief stays in Illinois and Ohio.
There were many strange and wonderful things that happened on this trip for a 19-year-old, and of course it was a great and memorable time.
After eastern Canada we decided to separate from the three ladies we'd been traveling with because they didn't want to camp, and the guys couldn't afford motels every night and we wanted to camp anyway, and there was some but little sexual interest with some members of the caravan, but certainly not enough to derail our plans. The guys didn't want to travel to Hollywood and see movie stars homes. It was an amicable parting.
In Canada we watched "Easy Rider" at a local barn (had seen it several times already). We were the only long-hairs and the locals (in the spirit of the movie's finale) began pelting us with food and soda cans and ran us out of town.
Also in Canada (which was a bit culturally behind US at this point especially in rural areas), we were turned away from a campground in British Columbia because of our long hair and beards.
Hung out in Berkeley, hung out in Big Sur, Monterey, Redwoods the entire Route 1 Pacific Coast Highway to about San Luis-Obispo where we cut off and went through Needles and spent a day and night in the desert.
I remember seeing my first Navajo dances in Mesa Verde Colorado. It was amazing and inspiring. I remember a group of young Navajo men at a souvenir/gas station laughing hysterically over our Siberian husky's name ("Benny").
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://theurbanian.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/beard_jim_morrison-431x300.jpg&imgrefurl=http://theurbanian.com/tag/jim-morrison/&usg=__2CxxC2iMGuVmxP6PIOnKNRFilRQ=&h=300&w=431&sz=33&hl=en&start=39&sig2=P48cZhEPzSCydL5pdexv8A&zoom=1&tbnid=wfb57Y6_LzWYkM:&tbnh=144&tbnw=192&ei=RQi6TJP-N4bGlQeiqqiSDQ&prev=/images%3Fq%3Djim%2Bmorrison%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D923%26bih%3D481%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C1465&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=338&vpy=187&dur=3235&hovh=187&hovw=269&tx=120&ty=215&oei=3Ae6TO4Og7SVB5WIqLQK&esq=6&page=5&ndsp=9&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:39&biw=923&bih=481
While camping on the beach in Washington State, my friends and I first got news about the death of Jim Morrison in Paris. We hadn't even seen a paper or especially looked at a TV in many days, weeks even. Seemed very cut off from what was happening in "The World"
But one of the most significant memories and events of this 7-week two-way trans-continental trek was the day of the drawing for the Selective Service Draft Lottery. The date was early August, maybe around the 8th or 9th, and my friends and I were swimming in north central California, in one of those gorges where you can leap off a 30-foot-high stone ledge and land in deep icy water, and then bake a while in the California sun, and then swim again. However, at some point during the afternoon, someone remembered that the draft lottery had been drawn, and we left off swimming and drove to the nearest food market, bought a newspaper, and proceeded to spread the paper out to the page with numbers and birth dates right on the sidewalk next to the food market, oblivious to its patrons who were slightly vexed at the sight of four loitering hippies. Of the four of us, my number was the lowest -- 109. Selective Service had drafted up to 120 the previous year. I felt sick to my stomach.
Only half of us who traveled in that '56 Plymouth Savoy are still alive. James owned the Savoy. I maintained contact with him throughout our 20s when we both lived out West, even sharing a trailer with him in the Colorado foothills for a week or two, and also Jackson-Hole Wyoming, and hanging out together in Portland Oregon in the late 70s. James had a long-running problem with substance addiction and was found on a New York City subway dead of a heroin overdose. He was 46 years old . . . Tim had spent most of his adult life drinking himself to death and died in his early 50s. I maintained a lifelong friendship with Colin, except for a hiatus of about a decade. Four years after this journey we hitch-hiked across country and later picked apples in Hood River and Washington State for a month-and-a-half. Back East, during the 19080s, we worked on a film and some writing projects together, were married in the same year to much younger women, and our 2 oldest sons were born one week apart. We spent a few summers in Maine (two with families) and a couple Thanksgiving weekends with our families in Upstate New York building bonfires and pressing apple cider. Colin and I have since both divorced and our oldest sons are now 23 and all our kids are doing well. He mostly lives in California.
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