Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

2. 8-ounce top sirloin, Big Texan Steak Ranch, Amarillo, Texas (July 17)

The Big Texan Steak Ranch is a Route 66 landmark. It’s the home of the 72-ounce steak challenge — but the fine print is, you have to eat the rest of the meal that comes with it. Mortal men and women are allowed one hour for the meal; Molly Schuyler pounded down five of them in two visits in an combined 35 minutes. I did not take the challenge. There was also a strolling singer.

(Don’t tell them I said this, but the rolls are better by miles at Texas Roadhouse … a chain that is headquartered in Louisville. And TXRH doesn’t make me assemble my baked potato while dining in.)

Mountain Time Zone trip OUT: 15 new counties, 2 atomic bomb pair replicas, 5 Route 66 hot spots, 1 new state capitol, 1 previously visited state capitol photographed, 1 Oklahoma State Extension cap, 2 state US route clinches (MO US 54, TX US 60), 1 construction-imposed non-clinch (OK US 60)

Starting about the Cadillac Ranch on the west side of Amarillo, I-40 was untraveled territory to me. Empty cans of spray paint are embedded into the ground all around.

In lieu of the trip reports I have not prepared for publishing, I shall spend the next few days regaling you of my adventures in gastronomy (well, adventures to me, anyway). They will serve as a shorthand of where I went and what I did in 2019. There were four major trips, each with a different time zone focus, touching 16 states total, but only 7 had unvisited counties reached.

I am a simple traveler of simple tastes. My road food typically falls under “Casey’s pizza”, “fast chain” or a newer option, “I have a microwave and a grocery store within reasonable distance.” These, in chronological order, fell outside that norm.

1. Hot chocolate from Starbucks #1/Wood Shop BBQ food truck, Seattle, Washington (Feb. 2)

I don’t do coffee, but I had a thank-you-for-your-business gift card. I was about to walk TWENTY THOUSAND STEPS for the grand opening of Seattle’s Route 99 Tunnel and grand closing of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, and decided that this would be an ideal way to have my first ever visit to a Starbucks. The first store in the chain is right by Seattle’s famous Pike Place Market, and there was a line out the door — but then, there’s not much room for the line to be inside the door. At the market, beside the fresh fish, I suppose that in days of yore, having a stack of the new day’s East Coast papers to pick through in the morning was a sign of cosmopolitanality.

The food vendors for the “99 Step Forward” event were at the south side of the tunnel entrance, near the stadiums. Then after the ceremony shuttle buses took you to the north side to walk southbound back to that location.

Pacific Time Zone trip: 20 new counties, 2 major clinched highways (I-82 and US 730, the highest-numbered US route in the country), 2½ horrendous traffic jams*, 1 26-hour day, 1 international peace park, 1 state capitol.

February 4 2019: Peace Arch Historical State Park, US-Canada border, Blaine WA/Surrey BC; also the terminus of I-5 and, before that, US 99

Weather note: After two major outlying exceptions, Seattle’s third-snowiest winter is less than Waterloo’s snowiest February (this year, BTW).

*Turns out that, like “24” in Los Angeles, the least believable part of “Stumptown” is that anyone can get anywhere in Portland in a reasonable amount of time!