Between September 8 and September 17, I set out on a road trip from Las Vegas to Kentucky for my sister’s wedding. This report is really about the travels and thoughts and experiences I had along the way. It was a beautiful trip that had me reflecting on the history of the US in some particular ways. I look forward to doing more of such trips in the future again.
4,365 words, 23 minute read time.
Introduction
Ultimately, this post is about this road trip I did, but I wanted to provide some background for my own future reference in what has happened since my last post as well.
After starting to get on the road a bit, I took some time to secure a small studio in Las Vegas. I have been saying since first starting this next nomad-centric part of my life that I might include a small, cheap studio somewhere strategic. It provides a more reliable means of getting a shower and the like, while also giving me somewhere to escape and rest, which is important to me. Ultimately, just staying in an apartment all the time feels like the opposite of rest to me, so the intent is just a basecamp to travel from. Additionally, this gives me somewhere to store my collection of books, and add to it, which I am finding increasingly important for me. I suppose I continue to seek out a proper synthesis of all my interests, as difficult and impossible as it may prove to be.
Additionally, an actual studio helps me solve legal issues requiring permanent residency. For example, my car has had California plates since I bought it, so finally getting Nevada plates makes me a bit more comfortable traveling. In states with especially propagandized police, California plates attract them like moths to a lamp on a moonless night. It is easier to get new plates when your address doesn’t get flagged as a PO Box. I initially got my drivers license in Nevada with my traveling mailbox, but it has since been flagged as a PO Box, unfortunately. This affects the licensure and all that, but it also affects banking issues and the like as well, as many banks will flag it as a PO Box and require another physical address. The whole thing is incredibly anti-unhoused all around, and I find it oppressively ridiculous.
Anyway, it took over a week to get through the application process and get into an apartment, and I was left with very little time to get ready for a planned road trip to Kentucky. As such, the next adventure to report is the road trip to Kentucky!
Interestingly, concerning the Nevada plates, when I first got into Las Vegas, I discovered that Nevada’s systems had been facing a cybersecurity threat, prompting everything to be closed. So, for a while, I was pretty scared I was just gonna end up with California plates anyway. Thankfully, the last week I had, the DMV opened back up. I was able to log onto the website and get an appointment for the following day easily, which resulted in getting the Nevada plates.
The primary motivator for this road trip was to attend my sister’s wedding. A lot of people would just fly out and rent a car, but I decided driving out sounded a lot more fun. I also just do not flying all that much, but I love driving, so it is just kind of obvious to me. I have been doing road trips instead of flying forever! The cost would prove about the same, of course.
Out Day 1: To Fremont Indian State Park
I ended up thankful that I booked a night just a few hours away at Fremont Indian State Park in Utah for my first night. I ordered a few items of clothes for the wedding online, and all of them arrived except for the pants. The pants ended up coming the very day I was setting off, so I was able to get it before I set off and have new, clean pants.
The drive from Las Vegas to Fremont Indian State Park along I-15 was essentially uneventful. I always love this part of I-15, and one of these days I am going to camp inside the spectacular Virgin River section that it passes through. North from St George to I-70, it basically straddles the mountains Great Basin valleys below the mountains transitioning to the Colorado Plateau. As a result, I have long found this just a beautiful drive with really great views.
Fremont Indian State Park is right up in the mountains at the start of I-70. I reserved a campsite at Castle Rocks Campground for just one night. This is a cool campground I hope to revisit enough to check out the rock formations and trails around the area. I enjoyed the time there that I did have, but did not have the chance to go hiking around. I arrived late enough that the offices were already closed for check-in, so I just pulled in to camp and hung out for the night.
Out Day 2: To Denver
For the next night, I reserved a campsite at the campground at Cherry Creek Start Park in the Denver area. This meant an entire day devoted to just my favorite section of I-70, and one of my favorite sections of freeway I have driven on.
Shortly after leaving the mountains at the start of the drive, I-70 goes up and down the San Rafael Swell. A lot of this is public lands, mostly managed by BLM, and no particular protection. Nonetheless, it is rough unaccepting land for much development purposes, leaving it largely open nonetheless. Roadside plaques describe how Mormon settlers were warned by the indigenous people that the water here was bad. This was true enough that there is still only limited development to this day.
After the San Rafael Swell, it is just a solid bit of desert leading to the Rocky Mountains, but the Rockies section includes Glenwood Canyon, which has always also been another favorite of mine. I was uncomfortably confronted with the memory that a large fire burned through the canyon in 2020, leaving a burn scar that continues to heal today. I am glad I got to enjoy so much of it prior to the fire in past trips. Nonetheless, the Colorado River cutting through large canyon walls is always impressive.
Finally, coming over the mountains, I pulled into Cherry Creek State Park and found my campsite. This is a large campsite with rangers overseeing it but all of the reservations and such handled by a third party.
This campground was frustrating for me. When I arrived at the campsite, I learned that the code I was given for the bathrooms was just not the right one. One old guy let me in to use the bathrooms but would not give me the code, just laughing at me for having the wrong code. The facility also included a laundry room and some vending machines, so I ended up just sitting inside. The rangers were off duty so no number to call worked. I ended up sending a pretty distraught and upset email that it is bogus to give a code that does not work as part of the reservation, especially if arriving at 8pm means no chance to get the code either. Eventually, a few old drunk people walked in, and I was able to sweet talk the code out of them. It was really just an awful experience for an extremely developed campsite.
Out Day 3: To Kansas City
During the drive up to this point, I had been finishing re-reading/listening to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit on audiobook. I had read it earlier in the year, but then I embarked on a whole re-reading from Descartes to Kant, and well, Hegel again, too. It’s Hegel. However, with nothing really to look at in Kansas, I decided to spend the day listening to some music instead. It is kind of an old tradition to listen to Pink Floyd’s The Wall all the way through somewhere during a long road trip. I ended up listening to a whole collection of concept albums I enjoy over the following driving days, including by Anathema and Ayreon, notably. I also just threw in some other albums I enjoy.
Kansas is an honestly boring drive and there is not much to say. The skies were clear. I guess that is notable for Kansas. Traffic was not much. It was quite easy driving.
For the night, I had reserved a campsite at Blue Springs Lake Campground outside of the Missouri side of Kansas City. Everything was cool getting in, but I ended up sitting at the gate waiting for the host to come out for over half an hour. Meanwhile, other campers were arriving and telling me they all were wondering where the guy at the gate was, feeling he was not really doing his job. I ended up calling the rangers, who contacted him and got him to let me in. Otherwise, it was a comfortable stay for me, however.
Out Day 4: To Kentucky
I-70 in Missouri stays well enough North of the Ozarks, but there are still big, rolling hills most of the state. I learned quickly that my cruise control did not really like this kind of driving much. A few times while trying to pass someone, as it turned downhill, the cruise control would start braking significantly. I do not use cruise control a lot, but I was leaning into it quite a bit on this trip to handle the long drives. Having the adaptive cruise control, this was mostly pretty successful, even when a little traffic showed up. I turned it off regularly up and down the mountains previously, but I learned it just really did not like Missouri’s hills much, either.
I am sure I have driven through this all before as well, but I do not recall. My first impression of Missouri between Kansas City and St Louis this time was that it is not far off from being one big metropolitan area, in the same way that Southern California often feels like it is just one big metropolitan area.
After St Louis, the feeling of being just steps away from civilization lessened a bit. Southern Illinois felt mostly empty and boring, like Kansas. Southern Indiana was also quite empty, but with sections of Hoosier National Forest, there was a lot more beautiful scenery, in my opinion. However, there never really seemed to be anywhere effective to stop and look or take significant pictures.
During this drive, I started listening to Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, where he describes the political and social systems throughout America as he saw it through his travels in the early 19th century, before the Mexican-American and Civil Wars. I only just really started it before arriving in Kentucky.
Finally, I drove through Louisville and headed to the hotel I booked for the weekend.
In Kentucky
I am not really here to write about my sister’s wedding, which is basically what took up the weekend. It was a really beautiful experience, and I had a lot of fun hanging out with everyone.
I had a little too much fun on my last planned night and ended up deciding to hang out an extra day with the family. I cannot really regret it, as it was great to have some time with everyone.
Back Day 1: To Kansas City
For the way back, I reserved campsites at the same places again. Thus, the first day back meant once again driving through Southern Indiana, Southern Illinois, and Missouri. This time, the rural nature of the middle of Missouri, and especially more so on the Kansas City side stuck out to me a bit more. It is really a beautiful part of the country in its own right. My cruise control still hated it, but I did not mind it so much.
When I arrived at the Blue Springs Lake Campground, it only took about 5 minutes for the host to come out this time, and I had a pleasant, quiet evening in camp.
Back Day 2: To Denver
Driving through Kansas again. Boring again. Once again, there just really is not much to report.
I did stop at a couple of rest areas with some interesting historical markers and such. I enjoyed reading about Henry Ward Beecher and his “Bibles”, which were just rifles. The union deciding to let Bloody Kansas explode into violence rather than decide clearly on slavery was one factor eventually leading to the civil war. Beecher was a preacher during this time, but he said the rifles he handed out had more justice for the slaveholders than the actual bibles he handed out as well. So the rifles became known as “Beecher Bibles.”
With all of the fascism and ridiculous, hollow discussions of political violence today, I find this history a refreshing wake up. Of course a killing of some christofascist bastard I don’t care to name happened while I was taking this trip, and even the liberal side of the media was going around condemning “political violence.” Even though it was basically just some internet-pilled, incoherently angry boy with a gun acting out yet again. Fascist bastards don’t deserve my grief, but it was refreshing to remember what political violence has actually meant in the history of this nation so directly as a historical marker for Beecher Bibles. It was a nice contrast against the incoherent absolute-anti-violence-except-white-supremacy bullshit that is the norm for everyone to squawk everywhere today.
Finally, at the end of this day, I ended up back at Cherry Creek State Park. I had a pretty miserable time with the whole bathroom code the first time, and this time was not better. When I arrived, someone was already in my campsite that my reservation showed, so I went up to the office and asked if I could just get a different campsite or something. Being so tired after the drive, I was about to just take a different site, but figured I should ask in the office first. Instead of just getting a different site, I ended up having to wait for a ranger to come and kick out the guys already there with a nasty fine–speaking of actual political violence in this nation. It ruined my whole night. I completely wish I had just gone up to the people in my campsite and talked to them about sharing the site instead of trying to get a different campsite.
No matter how abolitionist I may be, dealing with bureaucracy at campsites is kind of the name of the game. Sometimes, these campgrounds are so bureaucratized that they create entirely new problems and then make it everyone’s loss instead of just helping to actually solve existing problems. That is basically the entire story of my experience at Cherry Creek. I am sure some people will take the, “Tough shit,” attitude about someone getting kicked out of a campsite and fined for not supposed to be there or whatever, but I did not win anything out of this. I see no reason to be pissed at people who just screwed up the dates on their camping plans or whatever. The whole thing was just shit for me, and punishing them didn’t do a single damn thing for me, exactly as punishment never does. I just wanted another campsite to setup and eat dinner before it got dark. Instead, I didn’t even get into my campsite until it was dark, and my appetite was thoroughly ruined.
Shortly after I actually got into campsite, a thunderstorm came through anyway. I got about 20 minutes of burning the firewood I bought before hiding in the car and in the bathhouse. I was able to get a load of laundry done, giving me a good excuse to stretch out in the bathhouse instead of cramp in my car.
Back Day 3: Home
I had meant to reserve another campsite at Fremont Indian State Park, but I realized that I never completed the form until it was past the window. I did not really want to deal with showing up on a first-come-first-serve basis, so I ended up taking one really large day to drive from Denver to Las Vegas to finish the trip.
Of course, the drive meant once again stopping through Glenwood Canyon, which I actually took pictures of this time.
I always particularly liked the East-to-West approach at the San Rafael Reef, in particular. It looks like a massive wave of rock rising out of the ground, and the highway just drives right into it. Semis look like little toys driving into and out of it.
I got really into Tocqueville on this drive. Although it has been like 200 years, the Frenchman still describes an America I recognize. Some of what he recognized is the best of the America I love. Some of it is a good description of the little fascisms that have always been breading in American society. His description of how Anglo-Americans colonize the land around them is extremely adept, and I think it is quite clear in implications stretching into current border and immigration debates. He describes how Anglo-Americans will create peace with a people and then increasingly settle along their borders until it sparks hostility, at which point their government will come in and break treaties to defend them, thereby expanding their territory against the natives who preceded them. We do less of this, physically, since we have a strong border, but some of the basis of how the US so regularly puts off domestic instability into foreign wars lies in the attitudes Tocqueville clearly identified. (Something about political violence in this nation, again.) There are a bunch of other interesting things he had to say that I think remain really relevant today.
It was about 13 hours of driving on the last day before I arrived back at my apartment in Las Vegas. A long day through some of my favorite interstates. Notably, I would love to do US-6 between Tonopah and Denver some day instead. This basically overlaps or parallels I-70 and then turns North at I-15 instead of South, before heading back Southwest through Nevada to Tonopah. I tend to like the old US highways more than the interstates, but the highways have even less maintenance where they separate, especially through the really remote countries. Of course the US-6 route would also be even longer in time, so it would definitely need to be more than one day!
Statistics
I have a degree in math now, and I did a lot of statistics, especially when you add in the extra stats classes in my psychology major as well. So I have to include a basic table of stats for the adventure and a little analysis.
I also got an oil change just before I set off on this trip, so my the built-in stats on my car were all cleared out. This does mean some driving around town in Las Vegas getting ready for the trip is polluting these stats. Since this is just for fun, I am fine with it.
In just under 4000 miles and under an estimated 65 hours driving time, I bought about 180 gallons of gas at an average cost of $3.42 per gallon and an average $0.16 per mile. I averaged 21.9 mpg. All of this was 87 octane fuel, or sometimes 88 octane when standard was 86, with ethanol and detergents. I spent $304.80 on gas on the way out, and $313.86 on the way back. In total, that is $618.16 for gas. This is not an accurate representation of the amount of fuel that I burned to get there and back, as another about half tank of gas would need to be added. Rather, this is the fuel I bought while on the trip.
I got small fill ups on gas more often than larger ones. The average cost per fill up was $21.32, the median $18.50, and the standard deviation $8.44. Of 29 fill ups, 18 were below average and only 11 above. While the most expensive fill up was the first one in Las Vegas at $44.59, the least expensive fill up on the way out in Colorado was only $12.60, or rounded to the nearest dollar, $13. Rounding all fill up costs to the nearest dollar, the mode was also $13. There were 4 fill ups that round to the mode, including the least expensive one, supporting frequent, small fill ups. This can further be supported with the fact that I would stop every hour or so, and often enough, a gas station was a good place to stop and filling up a good excuse to stretch.
For the most part, I was simply driving, even with hourly stops. I drove an average speed of 61 mph over the course of the trip, which is not surprising given the amount of interstate with speed limits of 70 to 80 mph that I was driving on. I did not drive a lot with my car while staying in Kentucky, which shows up in a pretty low difference in gas cost between getting out there and coming back. The auto-stop feature on my car engaged for a total of only 26 minutes and 9 seconds, saving only 0.238 gallons of gas.
I have not included lodging cost because I got into a group block and paid relatively low rates. I spent very little on food while I was on the road, packing and eating what I had versus pay for it, typically. As such, I did not bother recording every expense in these regards.
| Description | Value | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Total miles | 3953.3 mi | Whole trip Includes some non-travel miles |
| Total gas price to Kentucky | $304.80 | Mixed 87/88 octane gas the whole way |
| Total gas price in Kentucky and return | $313.36 | Did minimal driving while in Kentucky, but includes some |
| Total gas price | $618.16 | |
| Average gas price per mile | $0.16 | |
| Average cost of gas fill up | $21.32 | |
| Median cost of gas fill up | $18.50 | |
| Mode cost of gas fill up | $13 | Each fill up rounded to the nearest whole dollar and mode taken from there |
| Standard Deviation | $8.44 | |
| Most expensive gas fill up | $44.59 | The first tank of gas counted, filling from low in Las Vegas |
| Least expensive gas fill up | $12.60 | On the way out, in Colorado |
| Average cost per gallon | $3.42 / gal | |
| Total gallons bought | 180.5 gal | |
| Total number of fill ups | 29 | |
| Number of fill ups below average cost | 18 | Fill ups costing below $21.32 |
| Number of fill ups above average cost | 11 | Fill ups costing above $21.32 |
| Number of fill ups at the mode | 4 | That is, the number of fill ups that the cost rounds to $13 |
| Average miles per gallon | 21.9mpg | As reported on car dash |
| Time stopped with engine auto-stopped | 26 min 9 sec | As reported on car dash |
| Gas not burned because of engine auto-stop | 0.238 gal | As reported on car dash |
| Average speed | 61 mph | As reported on car dash |
| Estimated time driving | 64 hours 48.5 minutes | Based on average speed and mileage Includes some non-travel time |
Final Word
Immediately after finishing Tocqueville after I got back to Las Vegas, I picked up a collection of Lincoln’s speeches and writings. It is interesting how he argued that the slaveholders were working to enforce slavery on the free states, and he was strongly opposed to the move. He was quite clearly against any secessionist movement from early in his career as well. It is kind of terrifying to find comfort in Tocqueville and Lincoln in the context of accelerating fascism and an ongoing movement toward resegregation forced on the whole nation federally. I found myself thinking about this as I read all of these historical markers along the way, and it was kind of an underlining element of the whole trip for me, to the point that I said something about a family member voting for a fascist, to their face. We basically ended that conversation immediately, but it was just one part of a larger experience for me on this trip.
I think it will always be difficult for me to travel the lands covered by this nation without connecting to its history, especially that riddled with white supremacy. In many ways, traveling has taught me more about the topic than any book could. To play off of Henry Ward Beech, maybe the road has more justice for me than a hundred books ever could.
I will be taking some time to tend to having a small studio and moving all of my books and things from storage to the studio, so that will likely impact how much I travel in the short term. Additionally, holiday season will be approaching before long. I will hope to get a good camping trip in or two again before the end of the year and write it up here.
My goals for the future include a lot more nomadic travels. The studio will serve as a jumping off base and a place for me to synthesize my journeys through knowledge, ideas, and fantasies with my journeys through the physical world. It makes some legal things easier as well.
This road trip was a really great time with family and with the road. Being that I have family out East now, I will have to start doing a lot more Eastward travels in the future as well. In addition, I really want to explore more of Nevada and some more remote places in the West that I didn’t get to spend significant time with due to lack of cell service in my initial travels. I may look to do some planned trips such as this and work out statistics and a whole report of the trip like this. I kind of like this. This was a great trip for a time when I’m getting back to the nomadism again.