Hitchhiking Journals

Morgantown to Seattle by Thumb (mostly)

February and March 1973

by Craig Mains

Morgantown to Seattle by Thumb (mostly)
February 1973

by Craig Mains

Between 1973 and 1979 I made several long-distance hitchhiking trips---mainly just because I wanted to see the country. The first trip I took was in late winter 1973. I kept a journal for that trip that begins on the day I left, February 16th. It does not, however, record anything about my motivation for the trip. I think it was just a spur-of-the-moment decision. I wasn’t in school and I didn’t have a job. I had two friends in Seattle, my good friend Jamie and his wife Peg, who I felt like visiting. So, I decided to hitchhike out and see them. I didn’t tell them I was coming.

I was not very well prepared. I had a duffle bag and a borrowed sleeping bag that was probably adequate down to about 25 degrees F, at best. I had some thermal underwear, a sweater, a navy peacoat, a wool hat, some extra clothes, a small road atlas, and $100. I didn’t know anyone between Morgantown and Seattle.

Route of 1973 Morgantown to Seattle Hitchhing Trip by Craig Mains

Route of 1973 Morgantown to Seattle Hitchhiking Trip by Craig Mains
February and March 1973 - 2778 miles, 13 states.

February 16, 1973
I left Morgantown early and caught a ride up I-79. It was cold and snowy but the salt on the highway had made it slushy. The first guy I got a ride with had a car with broken wipers. Every time someone passed, they splashed slush on the windshield and we would have to pull over and clean it off with handfuls of snow. At Washington, PA I started west on I-70. From there I got a ride to Cambridge, OH and then another ride to Columbus. Up to that point, Columbus was the farthest west I had ever been. From Columbus, I got a ride into Indianapolis about the time the sun was going down.

The temperature was supposed to go down to seven degrees that night so I wasn’t planning on sleeping out. I decided to head to a college campus to see if I could find some place to sleep inside. The only nearby college I noticed in my atlas was Butler University on the north side of the city. I had no problem getting a ride there. I found a dining hall and struck up a conversation with two girls, who I thought looked potentially sympathetic. I’d let several people go by before I decided on them. They had just finished eating and I asked them if you had to be a student to eat in the dining hall. They told me you didn’t, and they took me in to show me around.

I don’t think I could have chosen any better. The girls, Chris and Mel, showed me the line and told me to get a bowl of soup. They said non-students had to buy something to get into the dining area and soup was the cheapest item. Once we found a place to sit, they told me that, as students, they could eat as much as they wanted. They then proceeded to go back to the line to get additional food for me. I think they were having fun, seeing what was available, coming back to see if I wanted any and then getting it for me. They hung around and talked with me and some of their friends, seeing a stranger, came over and sat down as well. They seemed to be happy to have a break in their routines.

They were amazed that 1) I had decided to hitchhike cross country and 2) I had decided to do it in February. I had to admit it probably wasn’t a very well thought out decision on my part. They asked me if it was my first time in Indiana and I said it was, so they began telling me what a wonderful state Indiana was. One of the girls sang "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away" for me (both verses!). I was charmed, even though the second verse was a little sad.

Eventually I got around to asking if there was any chance of finding a place to sleep inside for the night. Chris and Mel conferred and decided my best bet was with a guy name Corbett. They told me there was no way I could stay anywhere in their dorm---the school was way too conservative. Otherwise, they said they would have let me stay in their room. They tracked Corbett down and he told me I could sleep on the floor in his dorm room, no problem. I said a grateful goodbye to Mel and Chris and headed off with Corbett.

He showed me his room and said I could leave my bag there. He then mentioned that he was going to get together with some friends and bake some cookies and invited me along. I agreed, hoping I might see Chris and Mel there. On the way over, Corbett started talking to me about Jesus. When I admitted that I wasn’t a believer he didn’t push it.

At his friends’ apartment I didn’t see any of the girls from the dining hall. I never got a good explanation about why Corbett and the others were making cookies---it must have been for a bake sale because they were making hundreds of cookies. Nobody was eating any but when the group was occupied with something else, I snuck four into my pockets for later (two chocolate chip, two peanut butter). All I remember well is that they all seemed to be at least as religious as Corbett. It must have been some school Christian club. They sang some hymns. Somebody said that they weren’t really making cookies---that it was really the Holy Spirit making cookies through their hands.

Corbett was easy to talk to, but I couldn’t relate very well to any of the other cookie makers. I was polite but I think they somehow sensed I was a not a believer. I don’t think Chris and Mel were trying to save my soul or pranking me by passing me off to Corbett. Most likely, they knew he was the person who was most likely to allow me to crash on his floor.

February 17, 1973
Corbett and I were both up early; the dining hall wasn’t even open yet. I thanked him and asked him to say goodbye and thanks to Chris and Mel for me and I hit the road. I got a few short rides to the beltway and before long was back on I-70. After some waits and a few short rides, I got a long ride with a couple who were driving to Texas from New York. The husband was driving a U-Haul and his wife was following behind in their car. He wanted me to ride with her to make sure she didn’t fall asleep at the wheel.

I don’t know how long they had been driving but she looked scarily exhausted when I got in the car. I suggested she let me drive but she said her husband would never allow it. Somehow, I kept her awake into St. Louis where they would head southwest. I hope they stopped there for the night. I wandered around downtown St. Louis for a couple hours and then headed over to Washington University to find a place to sleep. There was a lounge in one of the dorms and I just found a couch and laid down on it. It is hard to imagine being allowed to do that now but at the time it didn’t seem like a big deal. There was a student working at a reception desk in the lounge and he asked me if I was a student. I told him "No, I’m a hitchhiker." He just said, "Cool" and walked away. The couch faced away from the center of the room so people coming in and out didn’t even know I was there. Muted blues music played over the PA system most of the night---a show called Night Train.

February 18, 1973
The next morning two black janitors showed me where I could get some breakfast for free. They told me no one checked IDs before eight o’clock. "That’ll take some wrinkles out of your belly," one of them told me. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything yesterday other than two Holy Spirit cookies and a couple of apples. The janitors made sure I took some more apples and other handy food with me. They were impressed that I was able to navigate my way through big cities. I didn’t tell them I really didn’t know what I was doing and was just lucky so far.

The first ride I got messed me up. I told him I was heading west and where I was trying to get to so I could catch I-70 west. He told me he knew exactly where I needed to be. But he didn’t. Before I knew it, we were heading east on the I-70 bridge back over the Mississippi River. When I told him he was taking me in the wrong direction, he got pissed off and let me off on the middle of the bridge. I started walking back towards St. Louis. It wasn’t a bridge that was meant for pedestrians. It was windy and there were a lot of semis roaring by a little too close for comfort. But it was kind of exciting to be able to look down on the Mississippi River.

Poplar Street Bridge: completed in 1967, is a 647-foot-long (197 m) deck girder bridge across the Mississippi River between St. Louis, Missouri, and East St. Louis, Illinois. The bridge arrives on the Missouri shore line just south of the Gateway Arch.

Source: Missouri Department of Transportation

Usually referred to as the Poplar St. Bridge, this was the bridge that carried I-70 traffic over the Mississippi River in 1973. I-70 traffic is now routed over the new Stan Musial bridge. More than 100,000 vehicles a day still travel across on the original I-70 bridge though.

West of St. Louis I got a ride with a guy going to Columbia. He was a writer who travelled around interviewing people who had formerly been minor celebrities and then writing about them. He referred to them as "Where-Are-They-Now" books. He gave me some examples of people he had written about but the only person I recognized was the kid who played Timmy on the old TV show "Lassie.” (He was in college.) He offered me some money when he dropped me off, but I told him I was good.

I met a couple guys who were hitchhiking back to school at Rockhurst College, a small Jesuit college in Kansas City. The way they both pronounced it sounded like "rockers.” All three of us got a ride with a couple in a VW van. The couple had just opened a coffee house and invited us to come by sometime. They dropped us off near the Rockhurst campus. The guys told me I could crash in their dorm. They got me into their dining hall for a free meal and I was also able to get a nice hot shower.

I hadn’t really made it all that far that day---it’s only about 250 miles between St. Louis and Kansas City. I was satisfied though. I’d had a couple long waits and the days were still short. I preferred to do my hitchhiking during the daylight hours, when possible.

February 19, 1973
The Rockers guys got me into the dining hall for breakfast and then I was back on the road. I was hoping to make it to Denver but I knew that was a long shot. I got a couple short rides to the vicinity of Topeka, where I got stuck. One of my rides had gotten off I-70 at a place where very few cars were entering the highway. In situations like that, I usually just walked out to the edge of the interstate itself and hoped to get a ride before some state cops came by. It seems strange now to think about hitchhiking from the edge of an interstate but there was a lot less traffic volume then and it was easier for a car to pull over, pick someone up, and then get back onto the highway---even on a major east-west interstate like I-70. In some states the troopers didn’t even enforce the rule against hitchhiking on the interstate.

Kansas wasn’t one of those states though. Two troopers pulled over and told me I was under arrest for hitchhiking on the interstate. The searched me and my bag, presumably looking for dope or something they could make a more substantial arrest on. Finding nothing they told me they were going to let me go with a warning, but I had to stay off the highway.

After a discouraging hour of thumbing from the entrance ramp where very few cars were entering, I decided to hitchhike into Topeka and catch a bus that would get me a little further down the road. I caught a ride into downtown Topeka on a parallel road. The guy who rode me into town told me the reason the troopers were being so tough was because they had recently stopped a guy who was hitchhiking with a sawed-off shotgun and, just that morning, they had stopped a girl who was hitchhiking with a vicious German Shepherd dog. How he knew that I had no idea.

I found the Greyhound station and got a bus ticket to Salina, about 90 miles down the road. As the bus was rolling up the entrance to I-70 I saw a girl hitchhiking with a German Shepherd puppy. I waved through the window of the bus and she waved back. I realized then that I should have just found an entrance ramp in Topeka that had better traffic flow rather than wasting money on the Greyhound. Oh well, too late. Live and learn.

At Salina, there were more hassles with law enforcement. First, some local cops stopped me for an ID check. They weren’t too bad. They said they checked all hitchhikers coming through. There weren’t many cars getting on the highway at Salina either, so I went back out onto the side of the interstate. I figured that if a trooper came by, I was far enough from Topeka that they wouldn’t know that I’d already gotten a warning ticket. That is exactly what happened. I got my second yellow warning ticket of the day.

By then it was early evening and I was back at the bottom of the entrance ramp where few cars were entering, expecting to be there a long time. Just as the stars were starting to come out, a car pulled over---not to pick me up but to let some other hitchhikers out. One of them was the girl with the German Shepherd puppy.

There was a guy with her now. They were heading to Denver. I was glad to have some company on the ramp. We took turns going to the nearby gas station to get coffee. I gave them the last two Holy Spirit cookies. The puppy was not a young puppy, but clearly not yet an adult dog and clearly not vicious. I told them the eastern half of Kansas was on high alert because of her and her dog.

After a long wait, a guy in a VW beetle stopped. He was going to Denver but could only take one person, so I had a ride. Yes! It was dark by then and there were more stars than I was used to seeing. It seemed like we were the only car on the road although there were lots of trailer trucks. The Kansas plains seemed to go on forever with just a light off in the distance here and there and an occasional town. In the early hours we rolled into Colorado. I was so clueless about the geography that I didn’t realize then that a big chunk of eastern Colorado looks pretty much like western Kansas.

Somewhere near Limon we ran out of gas. My driver, Jeff, had just recently bought the VW, which had a fuel gauge that was permanently stuck on half a tank. He knew it was broken but had miscalculated how far he could get on a tank. We were stuck on the side of the road with no heat and we weren’t sure how far it was to a gas station in either direction. We decided to wait until it got light before trying to go find a gas station. It got cold quickly. I pulled the sleeping bag out and we tried to stay as warm as we could with it draped over us. Every time a semi rolled by the car shook.

February 20, 1973
Just as it was getting light a state trooper pulled over. He gave me a ride to the closest gas station, which was several miles away. Jeff, who seemed more than a little out of it, stayed with the car. I got a small container of gas and the trooper brought me back to the car. Jeff and I returned to the gas station to return the container and fill up. Then we had a breakfast of pancakes and eggs at the Shamrock Diner.

Back on the road, Jeff left me off at the intersection of I-70 and I-25. I started heading north on I-25 toward Cheyenne, WY. I could see the Rockies for the first time, off to the west. It warmed up into the 40s, which was warmer than it had been since I left Morgantown. I was tired and sleepy, but I was getting rides, although they were mostly short. One of my rides got me pleasantly stoned.

I wasn’t ready for the change when I got out at the intersection of I-25 and I-80 in Wyoming. It was so windy that my bag blew away while I was thanking my ride. I had to chase it down. It was the first time I’d experienced wind of this nature. It wasn’t gusty---it was continuous. I had to lean into the wind about 15 degrees to stay upright. It whistled up my nose and made it hard to breathe. Not far up the road there was a sign that read, "Caution, High Wind Area.” Attached were two orange plastic flags that had been whipped into shreds.

I headed west on I-80, getting short rides. Neither Colorado nor Wyoming troopers seemed to care about people hitchhiking on the interstate. The land was semi-arid looking with low scrubby vegetation, dusted with pockets of snow where the wind couldn’t blow it away. At one place where I was thumbing, I was there for at least 15 minutes before I realized that there was a herd of about 20 pronghorn antelope grazing about 30 or 40 yards away. They blended perfectly into the Wyoming winter landscape.

I got short rides from Cheyenne to Laramie, dozing off regularly because I hadn’t slept much the night before. Outside of Laramie I got a ride with a guy named Bob, a WWII vet who was driving an old beat-up Rambler station wagon. He immediately struck me as a little odd. He was wearing one of those fur-lined winter hats with the earmuffs on the side and no visor, except he was wearing it sideways so an earmuff was flipped back over his forehead. He was short and on the stout side. What hair I could see sticking out of his hat was white.

Rambler

The Rambler Bob had "borrowed” from his neighbors was similar to this one in terms of age and exterior condition. It probably shouldn’t have been on the road.

Bob told me he’d been driving around somewhat aimlessly since his wife died a couple years back in Boise. He told me even when he aimed to go someplace specific, he didn’t always hit it. He’d been trying to look up an old army buddy in Rapid City, SD. After four days of trying, he’d given up and was now aiming to look up another army buddy in Salt Lake City. He never was very good with maps, he said. He generally just drove until he got lost, asked for directions, drove until he got lost again, and then asked for more directions. It sometimes worked he said, but he would appreciate my navigating assistance. He showed me the address of his buddy, who he had not been in touch with since the war. It looked like it was the same yellowed piece of paper it had been written on almost 30 years earlier. I wondered what the odds were that his buddy would be at the same location.

Bob didn’t quite get how interstate highways worked. We would get to a small town and he would get off the interstate, roll through town, and then get back on the interstate at the other end of the town. I told him that wasn’t necessary but I’m not sure he understood. All he knew was that the last time he drove through Wyoming he had gone through a certain town so he felt he should go through it again.

In Rawlins, Bob stopped and got a six-pack of Coors and a bottle of gin. I suggested that he let me drive and he agreed. Bob started in on the gin and fell asleep not long after. I had one of the Coors. With Bob asleep I felt like I had Wyoming and I-80 practically to myself. I’d occasionally see a vehicle on the eastbound lanes, but I had no one in front or behind me for what seemed like hundreds of miles. I was exhilarated.

I-80 through Wyoming was not especially scenic. There were no big mountains. It was mainly long gently sloping rises followed by equally gentle downslopes. There was not a lot of vegetation. Occasionally I’d see a herd of antelope or a Union Pacific train off to the side. I found a radio station I liked that kept fading in and out. I was playing hide and seek with the sun---it would be out of sight as I climbed one of the long hills, only to reappear at the crest. In places there were red rocks that were lit up in the setting sun. Even if it wasn’t all that scenic, it was very western and I was enjoying it.

Sometimes the whole thing had a dream-like quality. In certain spots along I-80, the Highway Department had installed some type of weird sodium vapor lights that emitted an odd orange-pink light. It was the first time I’d seen that type of lighting. At one spot, there was a closed truck weighing station that was bathed in the eerie pink glow from the lights. On the interstate, covering both westbound lanes, huddled tightly together in the pink light was a large herd of pronghorn antelopes. There must have been four or five dozen. I had to slow way down and creep through them. They separated just enough to let me through and then regrouped behind me. They must have been taking advantage of some warmth that the road surface had absorbed during the day. Between the pink light, the antelope, and Bob softly snoring, it all seemed unreal. I was unexplainably euphoric. I told myself it was almost like I wasn’t really driving---as if the Holy Spirit was using my arms to drive the car.

I-80 in Wyoming

Source: Flickr Creative Commons/Tom Kelly

Most of the scenery along I-80 in Wyoming looked like this only with a lot fewer trucks.

Bob woke up as we were approaching Salt Lake City. He was surprised and a little disconcerted at how different the city looked from the last time he was there, which was more than 20 years earlier. We had not gotten far into the city before I was pulled over for running a red light. I still don’t know how much of it was my fault. After spending the last four or five hours driving across Wyoming at 80 miles per hour (at least on the downhills) I was going a little faster than I should have been. I was, as they said in Driver’s Ed., velocitized. However, I noticed that the light seemed like it was yellow for only a split second and one of the police appeared to be manually controlling the light from a pole-mounted box of some sort. I think they saw me coming. When I saw the yellow light, I tapped the brakes only to fully realize for the first time that the Rambler’s braking capacity was somewhat limited. Continuing forward seemed like the best decision at that moment.

They ran a check on us and found that Bob was wanted by the Idaho State Police for unspecified charges and the car had been reported as stolen. Even though Bob was the one who was wanted, I was the one who the pair of city police treated as dangerous---enough so that I was cuffed and Bob wasn’t, at least not immediately. At one point one of the cops even unholstered his gun, which I found a little unnerving. Both cops appeared to be younger than me and nervous, which made me nervous too. I think they thought we were on some sort of an interstate crime spree when they found out the car was stolen and Bob was wanted in Idaho. I told them I was a hitchhiker, but they didn’t seem inclined to believe me until they found my hitchhiking sign while they were searching the car. After that they were somewhat less nervous. I was still charged with driving a stolen vehicle, driving an unregistered vehicle, driving a faulty vehicle, and running a red light.

Bob and I were taken to the county jail and booked. On the way to the jail, Bob told me the car belonged to his neighbors in Boise, that they never used it, and that they must have forgotten that they told him he could borrow it. I told him I was sorry for the trouble we were now in. We ended up getting separated and thrown into different holding cells. Guys were coming and going from the cell I was in most of the night. After all the drama of the arrest my bail was somehow set at only $15. But I only had $10 in cash. Although I left Morgantown with $100, most of it was in travelers’ checks, which the county wouldn’t accept.

I struck up a conversation with one of my fellow detainees and when he learned that I was five dollars shy of bailing myself out he offered to help bail me out. He told me his wife was coming shortly to bail him out and he would get me out then as well and I could spend the night at their place. It was, however, hours later when the guards finally came to tell me I could get out on bail because someone had left an additional five dollars for me at the desk. Although he left me the fiver, he obviously had gotten tired of waiting and went home. I didn’t see much sense in getting bailed out late at night (by that time) and then having to find a place to stay when I already had one. I elected to spend the night in jail. Despite it being noisy and bright, I slept well. It had been a long day.

February 21, 1973
My fellow detainees were impressed that I ate almost my entire breakfast. I realized I hadn’t had anything to eat since the Shamrock Café in Limon, which was more than 24 hours earlier. It had been noisy for much of the night because there was a bunch of very drunk Indians in another holding cell close to where I was and they sang most of the night. I was aware of them but I was so tired they didn’t keep me awake for long. The other guys were debating what tribe they were part of. The consensus seemed to be either Paiute or Shoshone.

After lunch, I was told that I was going to be going upstairs for a hearing before the judge. Three other guys and I were pulled from the cell. Bob was not one of us. First, we were taken to another cell and put in with a bunch of other guys, then we were taken to another cell and put in with a bunch of other guys. Finally, the four of us were taken to the court room.

When it was my turn, the judge asked me how I wanted to plead and I said I would plead guilty to running the red light but not guilty to the other charges. One of the other guys had told me earlier that the purpose of the hearing was only to plead guilty or innocent and a trial, if there was one, would then be scheduled later. The judge, however, let me explain the situation, which he didn’t have to. I told him I was a hitchhiker and had no knowledge that the car was stolen and unregistered. The judge said he had a list of materials that had been entered into evidence and it included a piece of cardboard that had ‘Seattle’ written on one side and ‘Denver’ on the other. That was enough to convince him that I was indeed a hitchhiker and not responsible for stealing the car. This trip was one of only a few times I bothered making a sign but I think it helped get me out of jail. The judge threw out the three charges and told me the penalty for running the red light was $15 or a night in jail. Since I’d already spent a night in jail, he said I could be released.

After all four of us had our hearings they took us back downstairs in a process similar to how we were brought up. We were thrown into one cell with a bunch of other guys where we sat around for a while and then into another cell where we sat around and finally into the cell where we started from. Shortly after that they pulled the three guys I went up with and released them. I asked one of the guards why I wasn’t being released and he said no papers had come down from the court telling them to release me. I told him the judge said I was to be released as well. He looked at me with an expression that conveyed he didn’t care.

Instead, I got pulled from the cell and they started to process me as if I was going to be there for a while. Up to this point I was still in my street clothes, including my shoes (minus the laces). Now, for some reason, I was being issued jail clothes. I was thrown in with about 10 other guys, one of whom was Bob, and we were all told to take off our street clothes and take a shower. After the shower, we were told to line up, still naked. When, in turn, we got to a small opening in the wall at about crotch level, we were instructed to turn to the right with our toes touching a piece of tape on the floor. Then a puff of damp white powder shot out of a nozzle, coating our formerly private parts with some white substance. I was told it was a delousing powder. If so, I remember thinking it couldn’t be all that effective since anyone who had lice would probably also have them in their scalp. Also, the nozzle was at a fixed height and if a person was either very tall or very short it was likely to result in a shot that was off-target.

We were then issued Salt Lake County jail clothes consisting of underwear, jeans, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes. The shoes were too big but everything else fit OK. It was a mixed group of people---including a couple cowboys, an Indian, an elderly Japanese guy (supposedly a frequent exhibitionist), a couple hippies, and a young black kid. One of the cowboys was complaining to the Indian about all the noise the Indians made the night before as though he were somehow responsible. The whole time the Indian was ignoring the cowboy and acted like he wasn’t listening but he finally turned and told the cowboy he wasn’t part of the group so shut the fuck up. I thought there was going to be a scuffle but the guards quickly intervened. The black kid, who told me he was 14, was visibly scared, actually trembling, and refused to take a shower. The guards didn’t push it. Bob was looking a little ragged from going without alcohol. I told him again I was sorry I got him into trouble. He told me the warrant in Idaho was for passing some bad checks.

From there we were split into different cells. Bob and I were put into a cell with about eight other guys. One was a guy who had escaped from a prison in Ohio. Every day, he said, he was taken to the prison farm where his assignment was to pull teeth from baby pigs. One day he just got tired of all the baby pigs squealing and walked off the farm, which wasn’t as tightly guarded as the prison. He went home to get his wife and son and realized there was a cop waiting for him in his house. He figured out when the cop was using the bathroom, ran into the house, and locked him in. He and his family made it as far as Utah before getting caught. At least that was his story.

Around 11:00 pm the guards finally came to tell me I was being released. No one could tell me why it had taken so long or why they bothered to issue me jail clothes. They said it was just some kind of a paperwork screw-up that had no explanation. They couldn’t give me my bag since that unit was closed for the night. I would have to come by and get it in the morning. On the positive side, I came out of jail ahead because of the fiver the one guy left for me. I had no idea where to go to spend the night in Salt Lake City. One of the guards suggested the Salvation Army mission. When I got there just before midnight, they told me I was in luck---there was one bed left.

February 22, 1973
Breakfast at the Salvation Army was depressing. I couldn’t see many of the others last night as the lights were out when I came in. I could hear them all night though, hacking, wheezing, snoring, farting, plus other bodily noises that defied categorization. In the morning, the poor souls looked as bad as they sounded. There was only one other young guy there and he struck up a conversation with me at breakfast. He was hitchhiking to Tacoma and, when he found out I was headed to Seattle, asked if I minded if we hitched together. I told him I was OK with that but had to go by the county jail and pick up my gear. His name was Glenn and he was a couple years younger than me. To kill some time until I could get my bag, we went through the part of the Tabernacle that was open to non-Mormons.

After reclaiming my bag, we headed north on I-15, which was still under construction in places. We weren’t having much luck. It took us a big chunk of the day just to get to Ogden. We stopped for lunch there at a Sambo’s restaurant, which was similar to Denny’s only with a questionable racial motif. I bought us lunch with the five that was left to me at the jail. After lunch, we got a short ride and then were stuck again for a while.

At one point, Glenn went into a nearby funeral home to, he said, change clothes. It seemed like he’d been inside a long time so I poked my head in to see what was taking so long. Two large guys from the funeral home were practically apoplectic because he had tracked mud into the funeral home and they had a memorial service that was about to begin. I think they would have roughed him up if the family of the deceased wasn’t just then arriving. I didn’t see where there was anything I could do to improve the situation so I ducked back out before Glenn or either of the funeral home guys saw me. I don’t know why Glenn didn’t change clothes when we were at Sambo’s. I began to wonder if Glenn was going to be more trouble than company.

Outside of Ogden we got a ride with three young girls with a baby going to Brigham City. The driver, Janet, gave us her address and said if we didn’t get a ride before dark that we would be welcome to stay at her place. Not long after, Glenn suggested we just hang out for a while and then go to Janet’s. I told him he could if he wanted but I really wanted to get a little further up the road. He decided to stick with me.

At one point we stopped into a gas station to get some water. Glenn started chatting up two very pretty, but young, American Indian girls. For some reason the whole town seemed to be full of pretty girls, many of them Indian. I happened to notice a very large Indian guy, who I assumed was the girls’ father, watching them. He was wiping grease off his hands with a shop rag and he had a look on his face as if, as soon as he was done wiping his hands, he was going to strangle Glenn. I grabbed Glenn by the arm and pulled him out of the gas station before things could get worse.

Glenn proposed that if we didn’t get a ride as far as Boise before 4:30 that we walk back to Janet’s place. I agreed with mixed feelings. We had gotten a late start but we had still only made about 60 miles for the day. By 4:30 no one had offered us a ride anywhere, much less to Boise, so we headed back to Janet’s. It was easy to find. Most, if not all, towns in Utah are arranged on a grid with two numbers, a north/south number and an east/west number. Her address was 440 South 1 West. The apartment was on the second floor of an old house with outside stairs leading to the door. She met us at the door and asked us to come back in about an hour because the local cops were paying her a visit.

When we returned an hour later, she explained that the city police had busted her a few weeks earlier because she had a roach clip on her. Since then, they had been threatening to take away her baby and throw her in jail if she didn’t provide names of other local people who smoked marijuana, which she, so far, had refused to do. Janet believed anyone in Brigham City who did not belong to the local Mormon temple was subject to harassment by the local cops.

The two other girls who had been in the car were at the house. I estimated they were both about 15 years old and learned that both still lived with their parents. They hung around for a while but both eventually went home. Janet probably was no older than 17 or 18. Two guys came by, one named Mark and a Native American guy named Leroy. They didn’t stay long and didn’t seem even slightly curious about who Glenn and I were or why we were there. I mentioned that there seemed to be a lot of Indians in Brigham City and Janet said it was because there was a big boarding school for Indian kids in the city that went from K to 12. She said she thought a lot of the parents moved to Brigham City while their kids were in school so they could see them more often.

Janet fixed Glenn and me a simple dinner. Afterwards, while Janet tended her baby, I cleaned up her kitchen for her. I conscripted Glenn to help but he wasn’t much help. We, but mostly me, washed and dried the dishes and cleaned the counters, sink, table, and stove surfaces. I managed to get Glenn to take out the garbage. Janet was appreciative---I got the feeling it was the first time in a long time that anyone had done anything for her. Janet told us we were welcome to take baths if we wanted; she didn’t have a shower. I took her up on it. I still had a bunch of probably toxic louse powder in my crotch that I was eager to wash off.

While I was enjoying a bath, Glenn spread his sleeping bag out on the living room floor and had already fallen asleep. Janet was still up and we sat down in the kitchen. She needed someone to talk to. We talked about where I was coming from and going to and how desperately she wanted to get out of Brigham City. The guy Mark was, until recently, her boyfriend. He was not the father of her baby, who was no longer in the picture. I’m not sure what she was living on. Her parents had pretty much disowned her for getting pregnant. Mark and Leroy were local small-time pot dealers but she wasn’t about to turn either of them in. The cop pressure was really getting to her though---they came by to bug her on a regular basis. She talked about leaving with Glenn and me. We both acknowledged there was no way she could hitchhike with a baby, who wasn’t even one---probably anytime, much less in February. I asked about the car she had picked us up in. She said it was Mark’s and she couldn’t take it. I didn’t know what I could do to help her.

We tried to turn the conversation to more pleasant topics. She asked me if I had a girlfriend and I told her I did. I realized when she asked though that I hadn’t spent a whole lot of time thinking about Vickie since I had left Morgantown. We didn’t stay up too late. I spread my bag out on the living room floor and I did my best to get some sleep.

February 23, 1973
We were up fairly early. Janet gave us breakfast and a send-off hug. I felt bad leaving her. We got a ride with a girl from Texas, who now lived in Utah. Glenn and I both liked her. She was about 27 and had a good sense of humor. The road split north of Logan, Utah, with I-15 continuing north and I-80N heading northwest toward Portland. (The interstate numbering system has changed since and what was then 80N is now I-84.) The girl from Texas got us as far as Burley, Idaho. After that for most of the day we had long waits for short rides and hassles with the Idaho highway patrol.

We finally got our ride to Boise with a guy named Tom and his father, who were returning from some temporary job they had been working on together. His father was driving a Dodge Club pickup with jump seats in the back. Tom was four or five years older than me, probably about 25 or 26. He told us he had lived for three years in Greenwich Village and a little over a year ago had hitchhiked back to Idaho from New York City. Since then, he never passed a hitchhiker so he told his father to give us a lift. I was envious of the easy-going relationship he seemed to have with his father.

By the time we got to Boise it was getting dark and Tom invited us to stay at his place. We went by his father’s place first so Tom could get his truck, a 1934 Chevy pickup that Tom had restored himself, with some help from his dad. We transferred our bags from the bed of one truck to the other and squeezed into the much smaller cab of Tom’s truck, which was a deep forest green color.

Tom’s small house was interestingly decorated with concert posters and hippie artwork. He told us to eat whatever we wanted and that we would go out and drink some beer later. He saw me looking at his posters and told me about all the music he had heard in the village. He lived on MacDougal Street and worked at some of the coffee shops and folk clubs. He said he heard performers such as Van Morrison, Pete Seeger, Linda Ronstadt, Odetta, John Lee Hooker, and Joni Mitchell, all in small clubs that only seated about a hundred people. He also had posters of shows he saw at the Fillmore East including Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Frank Zappa. He had a street sign for Bleecker St. mounted on the wall. He couldn’t believe I’d never been to New York City and encouraged me to go.

Later, he took us to a bar where we drank beer and shot eight-ball with a friend of Tom’s for most of the night. I usually play just well enough to not embarrass myself, but I shot a little better than usual that night leaving everyone with the impression that I was a better pool player than I actually was. We all got pretty drunk but Glenn got sloppy, sentimental drunk and, on the way back to Tom’s house, kept blubbering about how he and I were brothers forever. I had to confirm our eternal brotherhood to cut it short. Back at Tom’s house we smoked some hashish. Tom called some girls he knew and invited them over. They said they would come over but they never showed up.


Photo source: American Dream Cars

Tom’s restored ‘34 Chevy looked like this except it was a dark green color.


Photo source: Google Maps Street View

Tom’s little house at 1211 O’Farrell Street in Boise, taken from Google Maps Street View. It still looks much like I remember it. Tom was an interesting and generous person and I regret that I didn’t keep in touch with him.

February 24, 1973
Nobody was up until about noon. Tom offered that we could stay another night if we wanted. Glenn wanted to stay but I was afraid that we’d just go out and get drunk again and then wake up at noon again tomorrow. I said I wanted to keep moving so Brother Glenn reluctantly came along. It was 2 o’clock before Tom dropped us off at a good location.

We only made it as far as Ontario, Oregon before it started getting dark, probably not much more than 60 miles from Boise. To get out of the cold while we tried to figure out what to do next, we went into a restaurant called the Charolais. We ordered a meal so the management would be less irritated about us lingering. There was a banquet for the local wrestling team and I talked to some of the kids for a while. Glenn and I hung out there for hours drinking coffee. Finally, we noticed a guy, a little older than us, who looked potentially sympathetic and asked him if he knew of any place nearby where we could stay. He told us that he worked at the Moore Hotel and they had pretty cheap rooms but, if we were short on cash, he could arrange for us to get a voucher so we could stay for free. Glenn immediately said we needed a voucher.

We had another cup of coffee while our benefactor finished his dinner and then he took us to the Moore Hotel. It looked like it was built around 1910 or so and had once been a respectable, but not fancy hotel, but whose heyday was long past. They gave us one room with a double bed. I noticed they had some stationary in the end table so I wrote Vickie a letter, the first communication I’d had with her since I left, letting her know I was OK and everything had gone smoothly so far. Glenn watched TV in the lobby. There were women hanging out in the lobby who looked like prostitutes. They must have thought we were too scruffy looking to be worth their time and gave us looks of disdain.


Photo source: eBay

An old photo of the Moore Hotel in Ontario, Oregon. Except for the cars, it looked about the same. The lobby contained a huge stone fireplace that had a lot of fossilized stones cemented into it. The hotel burned down in 1995 after sitting empty for 10 years. Ontario is on the Snake River, which in that area is the border between Oregon and Idaho, so we had only just barely made it out of Idaho.

February 25, 1973
The day started slowly. We were trying to get a ride out to the interstate when a local cop stopped and told us we could not hitchhike in town---we could only walk and it had to be on the opposite side facing oncoming traffic. Somehow, we still managed to get a ride out to the interstate with a little old lady and her dog.

After a long wait, we got a ride with a guy named Carl driving a big old Cadillac. He proceeded to tell us all about Seventh Day Adventism. He asked Glenn to open Carl’s Bible, which was sitting on the front seat. Glenn randomly opened it to Revelations, arguably the weirdest book in the Bible. This led to a lecture on how the Pope is the beast because if you add all the Roman numerals on the Pope’s hat it adds up to 666, the mark of the beast. This is all because the Catholics changed the calendar centuries ago, which changed the day of worship from Saturday (the true Sabbath) to Sunday. There was a lot more but I tuned most of it out.

He took us as far as La Grande, where he generously offered to buy us lunch at an all-you-can-eat buffet. He then proceeded to tell us all the wrong foods we were eating. I never knew Seventh Day Adventists weren’t allowed to eat pepper. He was nice enough to drop us off at the highway, where we didn’t have to wait long to get another ride.

First one car pulled over on the shoulder, then another, until there were six cars pulled over. Then people started getting out of the cars. They were all dark-haired people with light brown skin. The females, including the little girls, all wore red, mid-calf length skirts with many narrow pleats and large hoop earrings. The older women wore head scarves. There were about nine adults and about a dozen kids of various ages. I remember thinking they looked like a bunch of gypsies.

The leader of the group was a guy named John and he told Glenn and me that they were from Spokane, had gone to Oakland, CA where they had bought some used cars, which they were now driving back to Spokane. He would pay Glenn and me to drive two of the cars to Spokane in order to spell some of the drivers who were getting tired. We agreed, although I was aware that going through Spokane was not the most direct route to Seattle.

I was asked to ride with a guy named Paul in a black ‘68 Ford Mustang. I took over driving for Paul and asked him who these people were. He told me I was right---they were American gypsies or Rom and they were used car dealers in Spokane. John and his family were leading the convoy in a Ford Torino, followed by John’s brother’s family in a yellow Oldsmobile station wagon, followed by John’s son’s family in a blue Pontiac Catalina. Those were the nicer vehicles.

The other three cars were driven by non-family members, all hitchhikers. A couple from New York were driving another Mustang. Glenn was assigned to drive a brown ‘63 Impala and Paul and I were in the ‘68 Mustang. Paul and the couple from New York were also dark-haired so I had initially mistakenly assumed they were part of the family. Glenn and I were the oddballs with reddish hair.

Paul told me there was a strict order to the convoy and to be sure not to pass anyone. Our Mustang was the last in line and we were to follow Glenn. Paul started to nod off but just before he fell into a deep sleep, he told me that, by the way, the car was a piece of shit. As long as it’s not stolen, I told him. It had decent power but it pulled strongly to the right. It seemed to pull even more strongly when I applied the brakes. That wasn’t much of an issue while we were still on the interstate, but at Pendleton, Oregon we got onto US 395 towards Spokane. 395 at the time was a two-lane, a lot curvier, and required more braking. I sometimes found myself falling behind the group because of the steering issue. I would try to make it up on the straight stretches but sometimes there weren’t many.

Another problem was that Paul had practically fallen into a coma and he kept leaning into either me or the gear shift on the console. It had a manual transmission, and if I needed to shift, I usually had to push him off the gear shift first. Or sometimes he ended up leaning against my shoulder. No matter how hard I pushed him away he never woke up. A couple times I pushed him hard enough to lean him up against the passenger door, which helped, but he always seemed to end up back against me or the gear shift.

Paul, to my relief, woke up about a half hour out of Spokane. He told me he was from Palo Alto but John had hired him to work on his used car lot so he was moving to Spokane. His real goal though was to put together a band. He said he was a drummer (I had noticed that he kept a pair of drum sticks in his belt loops.). He told me he had been in many bands and pulled out a stack of business cards with the names of all the bands he had been in. There must have been 20 or 25. It made me think of a friend of mine (also a drummer) who told me about how when he was just starting, he was with a group that was so bad they had to continuously change their name so they could get gigs.

Paul then asked me if I wanted to be in his band, which was called the Midnight Reign. He made sure I knew it was spelled R-E-I-G-N, not R-A-I-N. He said I looked like a lead guitarist (Ha!). Our conversation went something like this:

Me: Sorry, man, but I don’t play guitar or any other instrument.
Paul: You sing?
Me: No, I’m terrible.
Paul: Well, we could use someone with a good head on their shoulders. You can be our manager.
Me: I don’t think I’d be very good at that either. I’ve got my hands full just managing myself. Besides, I’m not staying in Spokane---I’m on my way to visit friends in Seattle.
Paul: You can come back after you’re done visiting.
Me: I appreciate the offer, man. I can’t see it working that well for either of us, but it was nice of you to offer.

I thought that would be the end of it, but it wasn’t.

When we reached Spokane, we followed John to his house where he was going to pay us. His house was one of those small tract homes that was built right after World War II. He took us inside and served us some very sweet, very strong black coffee. There was no asking how people liked their coffee---everyone got the same. The rooms in the house were small and all the ones I could see, except for one, were painted red. We were crowded around in the living room, which was paneled with mirrors on one wall in an attempt to make it look bigger. There was a large chandelier hanging from the ceiling but, because the ceiling was low, people had to walk around it since it was too low to walk under. I was trying to check out the house without being obvious, but John noticed. He looked at me with a faint smile on his face and said, “As you can see, my friend, we like the color red.” I told him it was also my favorite color, which he seemed to appreciate. The one room that I was able to see that was not red was the kitchen, which was purple. I later learned there was a large Rom community in Spokane.

Glenn and I were only paid five dollars each, which was OK with me. The ride had actually taken us a little out of our way because Spokane was northeast of where they had picked us up. But, because I-90 connected Spokane and Seattle, I felt like we had a straight shot into Seattle and should be able to make it in one more day. The other three hitchhikers, Paul and the couple from New York, were paid $50 since they had driven all the way from Oakland.

John had his son drop all the hitchhikers off at the Otis Hotel since it was getting dark by then. Glenn, Paul, and I shared a room for five dollars. The Otis was like the Moore Hotel in Ontario---it had seen better days. It still, however, had its own restaurant, where the three of us went to get something to eat. I never even saw them talking, but Paul had somehow already recruited Glenn for his band as a harmonica player. Paul started chatting up one of the waiters, telling him that he was putting a band together and asked if he knew anyone who was interested. The waiter said he did and brought someone out of the kitchen.

Paul introduced himself as the band leader and drummer, me as the lead guitarist/song writer/vocalist (Ha!), and Glenn as playing a mean blues harp. Paul said he was looking for a bass player and an organist. Paul told him the name of the band, emphasizing again that it was ‘Reign,’ not ‘Rain.’ The guy from the kitchen asked what kind of music we played and Paul told him we played rock, pop, blues, jazz, soul, country western, and classical. I thought that was pretty impressive for a band that only had a name and a pair of drum sticks. I kept trying to figure out whether Paul was living in a fantasy world or whether he was trying to work some kind of a scam. I think he was mostly living in a fantasy world but the scam part was a distinct possibility.

Later, Glenn and I were in the room while Paul was off on his own somewhere and I tried to tactfully clue Glenn in that Paul might not be 100 percent reliable. Glenn wasn’t having it. He said the band was the kind of opportunity he was looking for and that I was just jealous because I couldn’t play anything. I felt like I’d given him a heads up and that he could take it from there. I thought it was odd that Glenn was so into the blues harp but that he didn’t even have one on him. Maybe they would make a good pair after all. I rolled my sleeping bag out on the floor and went to sleep. I let Paul and Glenn share the bed.


Photo source: Unknown

The entrance to the Otis Hotel, Spokane, Washington. This shot was taken some time after I was there during a period when the hotel was empty, but the exterior condition was about the same in 1973


Photo source: Etsy/Beth Carsrud

Another shot of the Otis Hotel, Spokane, Washington. For same reason I enjoy staying in old run-down hotels more than new ones. Even back in 1973 I remember thinking that the Otis looked like it could be the subject of an Edward Hopper painting. The Otis Hotel sat empty for some time but then underwent a major renovation and is now a Hotel Indigo, which is a chain of “boutique” hotels.

February 26, 1973
I was up early but Paul was already out and about. I didn’t even hear him get up. Glenn was still asleep so I left him a note saying that it was nice travelling with him and good luck with the band. I repossessed a sweater I had lent him on the way out. As I was leaving the hotel, Paul was coming down the sidewalk. He asked for an address in Seattle where he could contact me because he really wanted to have me in his band. I gave him a phony address and we said goodbye. He gave me a hug and told me he’d be in touch.

It was only a few blocks to a ramp to I-90. There were a few other people already there trying to get a ride. There was a couple going to Portland and a girl named Anna also trying to get to Seattle. Anna and I talked and she asked if it was OK if we hitched together because guys would sometimes come on to her or just act weird when she was hitching by herself. I told her sure. The couple going to Portland got a ride before us. Anna told me she had grown up in Spokane but now lived in Seattle. She hitchhiked back and forth occasionally to visit her family. She worked in a restaurant in Seattle and didn’t have the money to take a bus.

Right on cue, the first guy who gave us a ride kept was creepy. Anna was sitting in the back seat and he kept turning around to ogle her, even after I asked him to keep his eyes on the road. Anna scooted over so she was sitting directly behind him and that put an end to it. It was a short ride and after he dropped us off, I told Anna, I see what you mean. I told her I was sorry, but it didn’t seem like my presence was intimidating enough to discourage him from eyeing her. She laughed and said she was just glad she wasn’t alone in the car with him.

Our next ride was with an older hippie named Howard who was headed to Portland. He was planning to take US 395 southwest and catch I-80N in Oregon-- the reverse of the way I had come yesterday. I was checking out my atlas and noticed that if he continued west on I-90 he could head southwest on US 97 through Yakima. It was practically the same distance for him and would get Anna and me about 100 miles closer to Seattle. I asked Howard if he would consider it and after thinking about it, he agreed. We stopped and shared what food we had for lunch at the petrified ginkgo forest after crossing the Columbia River.


Photo source: Ted Warren, Associated Press

The I-90 bridge over the Columbia River. This view is looking south with the east side of the river in the foreground. The river is impounded in this section to form Lake Wanapum.

Howard let us off at Ellensburg, where he headed south while we continued west. For some reason he left us off right along the interstate. At Anna’s suggestion we had been thumbing from the ramps all day so it wasn’t where we wanted to be. Before we could get off the highway a Washington State trooper pulled over. He immediately started writing us a ticket until Anna convinced him that we were just trying to get off the interstate. He put his ticket pad away and instead gave us a fatherly lecture. I suspect I would not have gotten that courtesy had Anna not been there.

Our next ride took us all the way to Seattle. The guy who stopped for us, Steve, had a breakdown the week before in Cle Elum and had left his car there to be repaired. He had returned alone to retrieve his repaired car in a car he borrowed from a friend. Now he was looking for someone to follow him back to Seattle in one of the cars. Steve had been driving up and down I-90 looking for a hitchhiker to help him and was glad to find us. We all rode together to Cle Elum in his friend’s car, from where I followed Steve and Anna to Seattle in his car. We crested the Cascades at Snoqualmie Pass, which would have been scenic except it was foggy and raining and I was lucky just to be able to see the road.

Once in Seattle, we dropped the friend’s car off. While Steve took the keys up to his friend’s apartment, Anna told me on the way from Cle Elum she had convinced him to drop both of us off at our final destinations, which was great because it was now raining hard. Over the course of the day, Anna and I had become buddies. We got rides together quicker than when I was on my own and much faster than when I was with Glenn. She felt at least marginally safer than when she was on her own and we got along well.

Steve dropped Anna off first. I got out and gave her a hug in the rain and told her I enjoyed travelling with her. She put her head on my shoulder for a second and thanked me. I had grown fond of her over the course of the day and still have a clear memory of her turning around and waving as Steve and I drove off. Then, Steve dropped me off at Jamie and Peg’s apartment on NE 42nd St. near the University of Washington campus.

Neither of them was home but I talked with their landlady, who lived upstairs, and she let me into their small basement apartment to wait for them. After all the time it took to get there, it suddenly struck me as unreal that I was actually there. The entire time I was traveling, there was a part of me that doubted that I was going to be able to pull the whole thing off. I kept thinking that I’d get stuck somewhere, or I’d get thrown in jail (for more than a day), or that when I got there Jamie and Peg would have already moved on to somewhere else.

Peg got home from work first and she couldn’t believe I’d hitchhiked all the way from Morgantown. I told her that I did take a bus for about 90 miles in Kansas. When Jamie got home, he didn’t seem surprised at all and acted almost like he’d been expecting me.

I was lucky I got there when I did though. Jamie and Peg were leaving Seattle on March 4th and had I arrived a week later they would have been gone. Peg, who was a Registered Nurse, had been working in a nursing home, but it was closing at the end of the month, so she was going to be out of a job. Jamie had been working in a pasta factory but he didn’t like the job, so it seemed like a good time for them to leave Seattle. About a year ago, they had modified an old GMC delivery step van into a camper and were touring the country, stopping to work here and there. They had been in Seattle for a few months and were in the process of loading up the camper to head somewhere else.

I had known Jamie for about three and a half years. We met in the dormitory during my first year at WVU and became good friends. We had a lot in common, including that neither of us really knew what we wanted to get out of being in college and we both eventually dropped out. He grew up in the Harrisonburg, VA in the Shenandoah Valley. His parents had divorced and his father, a retired Air Force lifer, raised cattle in Pendleton County, WV on the family farm. When his mother and his older sister were killed in a car crash, Jamie and his two older brothers lived on their own in Harrisonburg rather than going to live with their father, who later remarried.

Jamie and Peg’s apartment was so small that the only place for me to sleep was in the part of the basement that belonged to the upstairs people who own the house. They seem to be quite fond of Jamie and Peg and had no problem with me sleeping in their laundry room.

February 27 and 28, 1973
I helped Jamie clean up the van and load it with stuff they would be taking with them. I also helped him get rid of some stuff they had accumulated since they were in Seattle, including some kittens. We had time to wander around Seattle a bit. Peg still had to work but after work she was cooking and baking to use up excess food.

Vickie and I talked on the phone and because she would be on WVU spring break she wanted to know if she could meet me in Seattle and visit with Jamie and Peg for a bit as well. She had tentatively arranged a ride to Denver and would fly from Denver to Seattle. We didn’t have a good conversation. The connection was bad but there was more to it than that although I couldn’t say what it was. Partly, I think it was because one of the reasons I decided to hitchhike to Seattle was that I felt like I was in a rut in Morgantown. Talking to Vickie I think reminded me of the rut I felt I was in. I told her I would have to run it all by Jamie and Peg, who later said they were OK with it if the timing worked out. They had already committed to being out of their apartment on the fourth and couldn’t push that back.

It was good to catch up with Jamie. He has been taking flute lessons. He has also been seeing a psychiatrist. Like me, he was part of the age cohort that was subjected to the draft lottery. I drew what was considered a “safe” number (130). Jamie, however, drew a low number and had since been trying to build a case to make himself appear unsuitable for military service. He began seeing a psychiatrist intending to further build his case. The only problem, he told me laughing, was that his psychiatrist had convinced him that he really did need a psychiatrist. Anything other than a medical deferment would have created a rift between Jamie and his father, as well as his two older brothers who were both in the Air Force.

March 1 to March 3, 1973
It worked out for Vickie to arrive on the first. She had a ride to Denver with a guy named Walt, who I knew, but not very well. He dropped her off at the Denver airport and her flight left almost immediately. Jamie and I picked her up at SeaTac airport although it took a while to find her. She did in one day what it took me 11 days to do. She was worn out though from the drive to Denver.

Now that Vickie was there, I was glad she had made it. We were getting along well. Somehow things seemed to go better for us when we were with Jamie and Peg. We spent some time finalizing the van for leaving but we also had time to walk around Seattle, sometimes with Jamie and Peg, sometimes just Vickie and me. We would only be traveling with Jamie and Peg for a few days. It was never in my plans to do much more than pay them a visit, plus Vickie would need to return to Morgantown by the end of her break.

Jamie had bought the step van from a turkey farm in Harrisonburg. It still said “Wampler’s Pedigreed Poults” on the sides. Someone had, in small letters, painted “Ol’ Barney” on the driver’s door. The body was made of aluminum so, although it was tarnished and faded, there was no rust. It ran fine but was not very good on hills. Jamie and Peg had done a good job of finishing the inside with a bed across the back and a little kitchen and dining area. Jamie was both handy and artistic so the inside a had natural flair. The handles on the cabinet doors had a bit of an art nouveau style to them.


Photo source: Flickr/bballchico

This may not be the exact year and model as Jamie and Peg’s step van but it is very close to what “Ol’ Barney” looked like, minus the turkey-related lettering on the sides and back doors.

March 4, 1973
The plan was that we would spend a few days driving around the Olympic Peninsula and then Vickie and I would head back to Denver (how, we weren’t quite sure yet) for a ride back to Morgantown. Jamie and Peg would continue driving down the west coast in Barney with no particular destination in mind.

We took the ferry across the Puget Sound to Bremerton. Vickie and I stowed away in the storage area under the built-in bed so we didn’t have to buy a ticket. Later, we came out and joined Jamie and Peg on deck. That night we camped at Fort Flagler State Park. We were the only people staying there.

The park was located on the site of an old military base that was one of three bases built in the 1890s to protect the entrance to the Puget Sound. There were still numerous fortifications that were built for cannons. It hadn’t been used by the military since the Korean War and had been turned over to the State of Washington. The park was on the tip of Marrowsone Island in the Puget Sound, connected by bridge to the Olympic Peninsula.

March 5, 1973
We continued around the peninsula on US 101. 101, which runs the entire length of the west coast, forms a big arc on the Olympic peninsula, running first north from the western side of the Puget Sound, then west along the northern part of the peninsula, and then turning south along the Pacific Coast. We drove through the northern part of Olympic National Park, which is part of the temperate rainforest. Of course, it was raining. Not just outside but inside the van as well, where moisture from the air and from four people breathing was condensing on the metal ceiling of the van and dripping off.


Map source: University of Washington

The precipitation map of Washington State shows how much rain and snow parts of the Olympic Peninsula get in one year, between 100 and 140 inches a year at La Push. We did not get to the heart of the rainforest. The map also shows the striking difference in precipitation between the western and the eastern parts of the state.

In the afternoon we took a narrow road off 101 that dead ended at the village of La Push on the ocean. It was the first time I’d seen any ocean---I’d never even seen the Atlantic. What an amazing place to see the ocean for the first time. The beach was littered with the trunks of huge trees, some of them two or three feet in diameter. Most of the branches had been abraded by the surf but some still had large roots attached. They were strewn like jackstraws just above where the surf was crashing. The clouds were the darkest and lowest I have ever seen up to then. Haystack islands were visible offshore in the fog. I was awestruck.


Photo source: Unknown

A view of the beach at La Push. The day we were there, there were a lot more driftwood logs and they were much bigger. The sky was full of dark, low clouds and it was cold and windy. I had never seen such a dark sky during the day and haven’t since.

Years later, some of the scenes from the popular movie series “Twilight,” which features teenagers and vampires, were set in La Push and the nearby town of Forks. In true cinema fashion however, most of the filming was done elsewhere. Nevertheless, the movies have generated some Twilight-related tourism for the area.


Photo source: Wikimedia Commons

An aerial view of La Push looking north showing the mouth of the Quillayute River and the many sea stacks offshore. We followed a road that came out on the beach north of the river. The town of La Push, on the south shore of the river, is part of the Quileute Indian Reservation.

We walked on the beach for a few hours and then retraced our route back out to 101 and continued south. There is a strip of Olympic National Park along the coast and we camped at a park campground near Queets that was about 50 yards from the ocean. The campground was unstaffed so we camped for free. We could hear the surf crashing all night.

March 6, 1973
Our last day with Jamie and Peg. We continued on 101 as far as Aberdeen where we parted. They invited us to continue with them, which could have been a good trip, but Vickie had to go back to school and I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. It would have been nice to have been able to travel longer with them but I think Vickie and I would have eventually worn out our welcome in such a small space.

Jamie and Peg continued south on 101 and Vickie and I started hitchhiking east on US 12. Our goal was to get back to Denver where Vickie had a return ride arranged for us with Walt. We very briefly considered hitchhiking to Denver but it soon became clear that wouldn’t work. I had asked Vickie to pack light, but she had still brought too much stuff with her---enough that it made it hard to hitchhike. Plus, there was no guarantee we’d be able to get to Denver in three days to catch the ride back.

We decided to hitchhike to Portland and then reconsider the situation once we were there. We caught a couple short rides and then we caught a ride with a Moog synthesizer salesman who was heading to Sacramento. He could take us as far as Portland, but he wanted to make a stop at Olympia to tour the brewery there. The Moog-man, Vickie and I agreed, exhibited some signs of mental illness. Either that or he was high on something. He would occasionally make some statements that just didn’t make sense. We took the brewery tour with him, though neither Vickie nor I could sample any of the free beer. I was 12 days short of being 21.

We stuck with the Moog-man into Portland. He seemed to be able to drive competently and, after he drank a couple beers, he seemed a little more tuned into reality. Once in Portland, Vickie and I found a cheap motel called the Coliseum Motel. We discussed the cheapest way to get to Denver. Vickie made some phone calls and got prices for the Greyhound ($56), train ($80 by way of Oakland, CA), and plane ($50, with youth fares). So, it was settled, we’d fly from Portland to Denver.

It was a good thing I had hardly spent any money between Morgantown and Seattle. I had spent less than $20, not counting the five dollars I got in jail and the five dollars the gypsies paid me, some of which I spent on a lunch for Glenn. Between the motel and the plane ticket I spent most of the rest of what I had started with. I would have to borrow some money from Vickie to pay my share of the gas from Denver to Morgantown.

March 6 and March 7, 1973
Vickie and I took a bus to the airport. We barely made our flight on time—we were the last to board. It looked as though everyone on the plane besides us were businessmen. It was the first time I’d ever flown. I was disappointed because I had a window seat but there was cloud cover from Portland to Denver so I couldn’t see much.

Vickie had a number in Denver for Walt. He was staying at a friend’s house but he had told Vickie we were welcome to stay there. Vickie called four or five times but no one answered. She said Walt had warned her it might be hard to get through because the woman he was staying with was a nurse and worked odd hours. We ended up staying at a motel near the airport.

The next day we took a bus into town and found the house where Walt was staying on Cherry St. He took us for a quick tour of Denver---first to the old town and then later we drove out to Lookout Mountain. He said on a clear night the lights of the city reached to the horizon and faded into the stars. We weren’t there at night and it wasn’t clear. At the time, Denver often had a noticeable layer of brown smog and it was evident while we were there. Most cities had smog problems in those days before there were any emission controls on cars. Denver seemed to be worse than other cities---I'd noticed the distinct brown layer when I came through in February. It had something to do with Denver’s location at the foot of the Front Range and frequent air inversions.

We made plans to leave the next day. We were waiting for one other person for the return trip---a guy named Mike. I got along well with Walt. He was a tall guy with a big beard and long hair. He usually braided his hair and, even braided, it reached the center of his back. He was an almost dead ringer for the musician Garth Hudson, who played with The Band. Walt occasionally talked to himself and sometimes laughed to himself. Vickie told me that sometimes bothered people because they thought he was laughing at them. It didn’t bother me. After I got to know him better, I realized he usually was laughing at people.

March 8 and 9, 1973
I don’t recall what the reason was---we may have been waiting for Mike to arrive---but we didn’t get underway for the drive back to Morgantown until well into the afternoon. Walt was in something of a bad mood. He had enjoyed his stay in Denver and was not eager to have to return to Morgantown.

Walt drove first. Around Limon (near where Jeff and I had run out of gas) Walt got on the wrong road. It was easy to do because I-70 was still under construction around Limon and was still a two-lane road. There was a poorly marked split at Limon and Walt took the wrong one. None of us noticed and we just kept going. By the time we reached a little town called Kit Carson we knew we were off track. Walt’s bad mood worsened. He got in the back seat and told us to wake him up when we got to Morgantown. Consulting the atlas, I realized we weren’t all that far off track. We were about 40 miles south of I-70 on US 40, which roughly parallels I-70. If we stayed on US 40 heading east it would eventually reconnect us with I-70.

I took over driving. Vickie had warned me that Mike was not a very good driver and we wanted to limit his time behind the wheel. With Walt out that didn’t leave very many people. The car was, I think, a 1964 Plymouth Belvedere. It was like driving a boat---there was a lot of play in the steering wheel, but it was nowhere near as bad as the Mustang I drove for the gypsies.

I drove through the night. We stopped only to get gas and pee, maybe grab a snack or some coffee, then right back on the highway. I drove through four tank fill-ups. Walt and Mike were both asleep most of the time. Vickie sat up front with me and we talked until she fell asleep as well and then it was just me and the road. The stretch from Denver to Morgantown was, except for the detour through Kit Carson, almost exactly the same route I had taken on the way out. It felt weird to be retracing in hours what had taken me days to cover. It felt like something that had slowly unspooled was being rewound too fast.

Around dawn---we’d just crossed the banks of the Wabash River---I told Vickie I couldn’t safely drive any further, so she took over at Terre Haute. I’d driven about 870 miles straight through from Kit Carson. Vickie drove us across Indiana and part way into Ohio. Mike drove for a while through Ohio. Vickie was right---he was a lousy driver---I just tried not to look. Somewhere east of Columbus, Walt had emerged from his funk and took over driving the rest of the way back to Morgantown.

Walt had brought a trunk full of cases of Coors and Olympia beer and he gave Vickie and me a few cans. (Hard to believe now, but back then, Coors beer was available only in Colorado and western Kansas and had something of a cult following outside of Colorado. When Coors went national the mystique disappeared and almost overnight it became just another mass market beer.) Walt said something about a party he was going to have with the beer and getting in touch with us, but he never did. About a year and half later though I would end up living in a house on Elmina Street with Walt and his girlfriend Bridgette, and a couple other people.

I was glad to be back in Morgantown. But I also wanted to get back on the road again. Before hitchhiking to Seattle, I had always considered traveling to be a luxury. Now that I knew I could do it without spending a lot of money, I wanted to do some more.


The house on Pennsylvania Avenue in Morgantown that I left from and returned to after the trip to Seattle. I lived here from August 1971 to about May 1973 with a regularly changing group of housemates. The outside looks about the same in this photo as it did in 1973, except there were no steps up the side then, only a muddy path. At the time, the house rented for $150 per month, which was split by three or four people. More recently, I’ve been told the house has been abandoned and homeless people were squatting in it.

September 2020.

 

Route of 1973 Morgantown to Seattle Hitchhing Trip by Craig Mains

Route of 1973 Morgantown to Seattle Hitchhiking Trip by Craig Mains
February and March 1973 - 2778 miles, 13 states.

 

All of my hitchhiking journals (minus a couple that are missing).
The bottom photo shows the interior of two, showing that some have been water damaged over the years.

 Covers of Hitchhiking Trip Journals of Craig Mains
Pages of Hitchhiking Trip Journals of Craig Mains

 

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