NOTR and PPOO Part 1
Day 1
NOTR Sample
Day 2
A Golden Start and Finish
Day 3
No Bridge for You
Day 4
A Two Goof Day
Day 5
The Ends Are Near
Day 6
Eastern NOTR Wrap
Day 7
A Lazy Day
Day 8
Immigrants and Liberty
Day 9
A Random Photo Day
Day 10
From Kisses to Geese
Day 11
Back in Ohio
Day 12
Center of the Heart
Day 13
An Early End
August 21, 2024 (day 13)
I was talked into ending the trip slightly early by a bit of road debris.
Unfortunate but not a disaster. I will finish this bit with the trip's
part 2 in October.
August 20, 2024 (day 12)
I visited the site of an early day of infamy, crossed the same river three
(or more) times, stopped at a fountain of dogs, and made it just beyond
the center of the heart of it all.
August 19, 2024 (day 11)
I finished off Pennsylvania, zipped through West Virginia, and got a start
on Ohio.
August 18, 2024 (day 10)
I started out in a town with kiss shaped street lights then moved on to a
town filled with decorated geese.
August 17, 2024 (day 9)
Today it became pretty clear to me that visual evidence that I was
traveling the Pike's Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway was going to be hard to
find.
August 16, 2024 (day 8)
Today was the day I got ferried to two of the most important islands in
the country. And it is also the day I started heading west.
August 15, 2024 (day 7)
A day of mostly hanging around the hotel bracketed by breakfast and dinner
with my son.
August 14, 2024 (day 6)
For the third day in a row, I reached a National Old Trails terminus but
it would be the last for me on this trip. I then headed north to visit my
son and his family.
August 13, 2024 (day 5)
I made it to another of the NOTR's eastern ends and resigned myself to
dealing with east coast traffic for a while.
August 12, 2024 (day 4)
I could have seen a new marker and revisited a cool town if I had just not
been so lazy.
August 11, 2024 (day 3)
I finished off Ohio then West Virginia and Pennsylvania, too. This is not
a good time to be a bridge.
August 10, 2024 (day 2)
A full day of driving and I still have a quarter of Ohio to go. I mostly
photographed stuff that was around when the NOTR was in full swing but
a few modern things -- like dancing cars -- did slip in.
August 9, 2024 (day 1)
Today was mostly about staging but I did drive the westernmost half mile
of the target road.
Prelude 2 - July 22, 2024
Less than a week after I posted plans to replace a trip to the Society for
Commercial Archeology Conference with this coast-to-coast drive, my name
popped off the top of the SCA wait list and my resolve to let the
conference slide melted. I snapped up the newly opened slot which put this
trip in danger since the July-August window I had previously considered
had just closed. Rather than put it off to next year or later this year
when non-heat related weather issues could be a problem, I've decided to
split it into two parts. The National Old Trails Road and the Pikes Peak
Ocean to Ocean Highway both cross the Indiana-Ohio border within a hundred
miles of my home so I'll split the trip there and drive the eastern
portion in August and the remainder after the SCA conference in September.
Prelude 1 - July 17, 2024
The National Old Trails Road and the Pikes Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway
have been on my "to do" list for a long long time. I have driven
good sized chunks of both in the past but those drives were under some
other name. The National Road and Boone's Lick Road, which I have driven,
contributed to the route of the NOTR. The NOTR, in turn, contributed to
US-66 and US-40 just as the PPOO contributed to US-36. I've driven US-66
and US-36 end-to-end and intentionally traced a couple sections of the
PPOO but have never followed either of these named auto trails for their
full lengths.
I suppose I could blame my lack of action in following the PP-OO on a lack of knowledge. There is not much modern documentation on the highway and the few period guidebooks that I saw being sold went for more than I cared to pay. I was finally able to plot a route when top-tier map and postcard collector Mike Ward shared a copy of 1926 guide in his possession. I already had the NOTR route plotted from a photocopy of a 1925 NOTR guide I've had for some time.
With a route in place, I turned to deciding "when". I wanted to do it in the spring but there just was not room for a trip of this length. The last half of July and first half of August looked like the only calendar gap that could accommodate a month long outing so I mentally placed it on my schedule but never got around to making a "Fixed Leads" entry for it. Then a funny thing happened on the way to Nashville. Nashville, TN, is where the 2024 Society for Commercial Archeology conference takes place and I had every intention of attending. It sold out quickly, however, and I was too slow. I put my name on a waiting list but have since decided to make my miss an opportunity. I am going to use the opening to move the NOTR-PPOO trip to September when the temperature should be a bit more welcoming than in July. The cover page for the SCA Conference that previously occupied this slot on the "Fixed Leads" list can now be seen here.
Like the Yellowstone Trail and US-20 that I followed in 2021, the National Old Trails Road and Pike's Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway form a great pair of routes for crossing the country in both directions. An added bonus is that I will be able to visit a son near both the eastern and western extremes of the drive. Of course, just like that 2021 trip, I have to deal with the fact that I do not live near either end of either of the targeted highways. My solution is to drive the NOTR eastbound and the PPOO westbound. My reasoning is that I have driven te NOTR more than the PPOO and most of that driving has been westbound so this will give me the most "newness". Weak I know but better than nothing. This means that, in a manner similar to what I did on the YT and US-20 trip, I will be starting and ending on the NOTR with the PPOO drive in between.