This picture is from my 2011 Lincoln Highway Conference trip. It’s a trip that was in doubt almost to the day it started. Dad’s health was not good and I worried about traveling for any length of time. I apparently decided I could probably at least dash to and from the conference and sent in my registration just ahead of the deadline. Dad’s health took a bad turn near the end of May and I cut short a St. Louis trip to hurry back. He improved a bit but never really recovered. He died on June 2. When I eventually returned to thinking about the trip, my initial thoughts were to cancel it. Then I realized there was no reason. There was nothing for me to do after the funeral and long solo drives sounded much more useful than sitting at home.

With no reason to dash, I may have gone overboard. I left home on June 9 and drove the full length of US-36. I camped — in a tent! — in Rocky Mountain NP for a couple of nights.I picked up the Lincoln Highway in Utah and drove the unpaved stretch around Dugway to Ibapah. I met a group in Fallon, NV, for a pre-conference caravan. I hooked up with two groups for two different post-conference outings. One was my first visit to Donner Summit and the second an aborted attempt to drive Kings Canyon. Of course there was the conference in Tahoe with a bus tour west into California and another east into Nevada. When all that was over, I followed the Pioneer Trail alignment of the Lincoln Highway on to San Francisco and a visit with my oldest son. Then it was down the coast on the Pacific Coast Highway to Los Angeles. I’d have gone on to visit my younger son in San Diego but I knew he was at sea with his Navy buddies. I had actually visited him and his family in January. I headed home from LA but took in assorted pieces of Route 66 on the way. I reached home on July 3.

And the picture? It’s from the California conference tour. At our stop in Clarksville, a group of local Ford Model A owners provided rides on the 1914 Lincoln Highway Pavement. The picture was taken from inside a 1928 “leather back”.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full sized photo and the associated trip journal.