In my family, there’s a running joke that there’s a transportation gene in the clan at large. Most of us who are directly related to the Ryan blood line have some fascination with modes of travel. Some love planes. Some love trains. One of us admits that boats are his passion. Family gatherings with my cousins always end up talking about trips to Shanghai, Rio and Paris as well as to San Francisco, Rochester and Providence. We type e-mails in airport codes, knowing where
MSY,
EZE and
YUL are. We are familiar with
AASHTO (American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials) and the Interstate System, and know how to navigate three-digit spurs as well as three-digit US routes. Getting there is definitely half the fun for us.
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| Yuma Quartermaster Depot State Historic Park, formerly Yuma Crossing State Historic Park, in the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area |
For me, I am energized by travel. I like taking a new road and being on an old familiar one. I am excited to get to the terminus of a route. When there’s a State Route 1, I have to know where it goes. The
101 is on my self-proclaimed songline.
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| Cactus in Arizona, near the junction of the 8 and the 10 |
After this introduction, you should understand my thought behind “Chasing the 8.” I would like to vacation and drive across Interstate 8 from Casa Grande, AZ to San Diego, CA. The 348 ¼ mile journey goes through the southern extremes of Arizona and California and the route itself has some of its own extremes, including the closest interstate to parallel the Mexican border (less than ½ mile), one of the widest medians of an Interstate (over 1.5 miles) and lowest above-ground elevation of an interstate at (52 feet below sea level)
*. There are only 3 single digit Interstates in the system (the signed Hawai’i series and the unsigned Alaska series don’t count) and I’ve been on parts of the 5 (1,381 ¼ miles) and all but about 8½ miles of Interstate 4 (132 ¼ miles). I want one that I can conquer. (I wasn’t driving on Interstate 4 or else I would have driven into Tampa to check that off my list.)
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| Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá, location along the 8 |
Not only will I conquer my own interstate, I will fill a missing piece in my US map: the link between sea to shining sea. I have driven out to Joshua Tree National Monument in California from LA as well as taken the 8 to its end in San Diego form Chargers Stadium to Sunset Cliffs Boulevard onto Nimitz Boulevard. I had trek out from Phoenix, taking the Hohokam Expressway to the 10 and onward to Dallas via Las Cruces, White Sands, Alamogordo and Roswell, NM; and Odessa, Midland and Abilene, TX. Separately, I’ve journeyed from Atlanta City to Philadelphia and Philadelphia to San Antonio – meeting my two routes the junction of Interstates 20 and 35E. I have pieced together a cross country route, but yet I’m missing my own Golden Spike.
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| A map of US counties (click to expand): pink and purple represent my current work territories & purple and blue represent counties I've actually visited - the image comes from Marty O'Brien's Interactive Counties Map |
I’ve been to the 8’s termini but never driven across. That makes my driving trip through Phoenix and Casa Grande, Sonoran Desert National Monument and Yuma, AZ; and El Centro, Cleveland National Forest, and El Cajon, CA to the end doubly enticing to me. I’ll have connected an interstate and have connected an transcontinental trip.
I know don’t know what I’ll actually see, but I’ll buy a lot of water for the voyage.
* The lowest point on the Interstate System is within the Fort McHenry Tunnel, Baltimore, Maryland, on I-95 at 107 feet below sea level.
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