HOW FAR CAN YOU GO IN COMFORT?
This was the original query that we started out to answer, and second
“How long did it take you?” is the question that has been asked us more
often than any other.
Interpreting “comfort” as really meaning “luxury,” you can go, so far
as roads are concerned, only to Pueblo. So far as _high-class_ hotels
are concerned, there are two inhospitable distances. The first from
Omaha, Nebraska, to Cheyenne, Wyoming; the second between Albuquerque,
New Mexico, and Winslow, Arizona, over three hundred miles.[7] Between
Ash Fork, Arizona, and Needles, California, the distance is one hundred
and ninety-one miles, which over those roads is a long distance, but
perfectly possible to make in a day. Also it is by no means necessary
to motor across any of these sections, unless you choose to. Putting a
machine on a freight train is a very different matter from putting it
on a boat and shipping it to Europe. In the latter case, you have to
have a crate made as big and clumsy as a small house; then there are
always delays and complications about catching boats, and altogether it
is something of an ordeal. But to send a motor across our own country,
for as short or as long a distance as you please, is very simple. You
have only to drive it to the railroad station, roll it on an automobile
freight car with a door at the end, as in a small garage, take the next
passenger train yourself and skip as many or as few miles as you choose.
In America, automobile freight is wonderfully efficient, and is about as
fast as ordinary express. (At least the Santa Fé service is.)
We spent only two days at the Grand Canyon and the car arrived in Los
Angeles at the same time we did. There is only one deterrent to frequent
freight shipments: the cost. Automobiles weigh a good deal and the
freight charges are by the pound. From Winslow, Arizona, to Los Angeles—a
distance of 613 miles—costs $151.20 for a car weighing 4,000 pounds. A
2,000-pound car would cost, of course, exactly half that amount. If you
don’t want to go into the desert where hotels are great distances apart
and roads are not the smoothest in the world, a 3,000-pound car costs
$133.20 from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Barstow, California, after which
there are plenty of good hotels and beautiful California roads. The above
freight rates will be of interest to very few, as except in case of
accident or some unseen conditions no one who can help it, will want to
see their car, housed like a lonesome and abandoned dog, on a freight. If
it is a very crippled car, that is different; it is more like leaving it
in a nice cot in a hospital, where it can’t get hurt any more.
But on the subject of cross-continent freight, by which many people may
want to ship their cars home, the Transcontinental Freight Company’s
offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, etc., have a special rate
for through shipment of automobiles that is a very good thing to know
about. They ship three automobiles in one freight car, and for cars
weighing 4,500 pounds and _over_, they charge a maximum rate of $225.00,
or $5.50 a hundred pounds, from New York to San Francisco or vice versa.
A car weighing 3,000 pounds would cost $165.00.
The sole objection to this consolidated car load shipment is that they
only send out the cars when they have three auto consignments, and you
may have to wait a few days for the other two car spaces to be filled.
Also their service is only between the most important terminal points. If
you live somewhere in the middle distance between these terminal cities,
it might be cheaper, as well as more convenient, to ship by regular
railroad freight.
SOME DAY
Some day we are going back. Celia, E. M., and I have planned it. We must
have plenty of time, and take our whole families with us, so that she
will not have to hurry home to a husband, and I will not have to rush on
without pause, in order to get home to a younger son. When we go again,
we are going in two cars—one to help the other in case of need, and, if
possible, a third car to carry a camping outfit—and camp! Celia and I
both hate camping, so this proves the change that can come over you as
you go out into the West. I say “out into,” because I don’t in the least
mean being tunneled through on a limited train! The steel-walled Pullman
carefully preserves for you the attitude you started with. Plunging
into an uninhabited land is not unlike plunging into the surf. A first
shock! To which you quickly become accustomed, and find invigoratingly
delicious. Why difficulties seem to disappear; and why that magic land
leaves you afterwards with a persistent longing to go back, I can’t
explain; I only know that it is true.
The taste we had of the desert has something so appealing in the
reminiscence of its harsh immensity by day, its velvet mystery at
night—if only we might have gone further into it! We couldn’t then and
now it is lost to us, three thousand miles away!
FOOTNOTES
[1] See Map No. 1, page 285.
[2] One of the lovely white ones is the Garfield house, where the
President’s widow still lives.
[3] See Map No. 8, page 292.
[4] Since writing the above, the Union Pacific Hotel has unfortunately
burned down—and still more unfortunately for tourists, the railroad is
not building another, and will run a restaurant only.
[5] See Map No. 23, page 308.
[6] Only dinner and lunch we had in hotel.
[7] See Map No. 18. pp 302-303.
LIST OF MAPS
PAGE
Map showing the entire route by days’ runs 284
1. New York to Albany 285
2. Albany—Fort Plain—Utica—Syracuse 286
3. Syracuse to Buffalo 287
4. Buffalo—Lake Erie—Cleveland 288
5. Cleveland to Toledo 289
6. Toledo to South Bend 290
7. South Bend to Chicago 291
8. Chicago—Rochelle—Davenport 292
9. Davenport—Cedar Rapids—Des Moines 293
10. Des Moines to Omaha 294
11. Omaha to Grand Island 295
12. Grand Island to North Platte 296
13. North Platte to Cheyenne 297
14. Cheyenne to Colorado Springs 298
15. Colorado Springs to Trinidad 299
16. Trinidad to Las Vegas 300
17. Las Vegas to Albuquerque 301
18. Albuquerque to Winslow 302-303
19. Winslow to Grand Canyon 304
20. Grand Canyon to Ash Fork 305
21. Ash Fork to The Needles 306
22. The Needles to Barstow 307
23. Barstow—San Diego—Los Angeles 308
24. Los Angeles to Santa Barbara 309
25. Santa Barbara to Paso Robles 310
26. Paso Robles to Monterey 311
27. Monterey to San Francisco 312
[Illustration]
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