Depaul Travel

Archive for June, 2009

on a Cross Country Road Trip excites most Road Trip Planners because there’s something about the open road that beckons, promising freedom, or at least a taste of it. Finding the balance between hitting as many states as possible and “enjoying the ride” can be somewhat relative, to be sure, but even with a cross country objective, quality still trumps quantity… best to see less at a leisurely pace than to see more in a blur from the highway.

How much time you set aside for this trip greatly impacts the total mileage you’ll put on the odometer, as does the number of people in your car. Couples can drive further than families because children just get too antsy to sit still for long periods of time (DVDs & iPods notwithstanding). A group of friends can probably cover the most distance because they can drive through the night and switch drivers every four hours while others sleep (& save on hotel costs to boot).

Okay…now to the TOP 5 CROSS COUNTRY ROAD TRIPS that every Road Trip Planner should try, David Letterman style:

#5 – THE GREAT RIVER ROAD (10 states – 2300 miles): American travelers do so love nostalgia and meandering alongside the great Mississippi River from bow to stern in a manner reminiscent of Mark Twain’s riverboat days gets many road trip planners excited about all the possibilities. What’s fun is skirting along the edges of two states to follow the river. The Mississippi River is much more romanticized than the Missouri River, which is actually the longest river in the U.S. Your route could be considerably shorter (1500 miles) if you took the more direct route between the headwaters and the mouth…you decide just how closely you want to follow the river. Just make sure you don’t miss experiencing the Mississippi River from a riverboat.

#4 – SOUTHERN COMFORTS (8 states – 3000 miles): This cross country road trip allows road trip planners to blend in variety and spice to their trip! Here’s where you’ll experience the good ol’ southern hospitality in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, the Cajun flavors of Louisiana, get a taste of the Texas BBQ, the southwestern spices found in New Mexico, Arizona and the laid back atmosphere of southern California. US-80 will take you through the bulk of this trip which offers more varied cultural experiences than you’re likely to get in any other U.S. cross country trip. And the variety is not limited to the cultural differences from town to town but the surrounding landscape which rolls from one type of terrain into another. You start (or end) at the vast stretches of beach at San Diego, travel past a cacti strewn southwestern desert, cruise through seemingly endless plains and into the Deep South cotton lands and plantations. While some travelers are drawn to the green and serene found in a Northern cross-country road trip, many others revel in the South’s variegated russet-colored landscapes and straight highways stretching before them like the backbone of America disappearing into the horizon in a purple haze.

#3 – THE OREGON TRAIL (11 states – 3200 miles): This road trip is for road trip planners who want to go the distance while traveling a goodly portion along a historic route. You start (or end) out from the wild Oregon coastline, travel through increasingly diverse terrain, to – and through – dense urban populations and finish by the serene waters of Cape Cod. The Oregon Trail is known best as the migration trail pioneers embarked upon when America was young. Of course, you’re not traveling by wagon train so you don’t need to set aside four to six months just to traverse the 2,000 mile section they followed (Missouri-Kansas-Nebraska-Wyoming-Idaho-Oregon). In fact, you could comfortably do this road trip in less than 3 weeks (if you rent a car & fly back). The main route you’ll follow here is US-20 where you get to hit some truly gorgeous places like Niagara Falls and Yellowstone Park.

#2 – THE PACIFIC COAST ROAD TRIP (3 states – 1500 miles): Even though you’re traveling through only three states, you’ll be cruising the length of the West Coast from Olympia, Washington in the North, through Oregon and to San Ysidro, California, right near the Mexican Border on the South. Check out Things To Do Along The California Coastline for tips from a long-time Californian (California comprises the bulk of this Road Trip). A good Road Trip Planner can create a kaleidoscope of experiences along this route as it takes you from primitive forests, secluded hideaways, historic towns to major cities with the latest innovations, always flanked by a stunning coastline holding beaches and beach-lovers of every shape and size. Called Star Route 1, more known as Highway 1, with the California stretch called the Pacific Coast Highway, it is mesmerizing.

And the #1 CROSS COUNTRY ROAD TRIP OF ALL TIME? (8 states – 2500 miles): The mother of all highways, the most romanticized, most sung about, most appearances in a movie highway…drum roll please…ROUTE 66! It’s so popular that a Google Search for “Route 66″ yields more than 6 ½ million results! Covering eight states from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California, it is the #1 recognized Road Trip and well worth any road tripper’s attention.

So what are you waiting for? Grab your Road Trip Planner and start your engine! The open road awaits!

What happened to the bull whacker of old? With the evolution of the automobile and the truck, the “freighters” (Conestoga wagons) of Santa Fe and Oregon trail days, pulled by teams of oxen and urged on by the bull whackers, evolved into today’s eighteen wheelers. Interstate highways gradually replaced the bull whacker’s muddy, rutted trails. But that drover spirit has never died; it lives on, in the heart of today’s trucker and any kid that yanks his arm up and down coaxing a blast from the air horn of a passing big truck.

What is it that makes you abandon some hum-drum factory job…or a job flipping burgers that’s insidiously sealing you into a greasy cloud of desperation? It’s the same thing that drew the bull whacker to the trail – a simple, pulsing call of adventure – the call of new places; the “Call of The Wild,” the WEST! Ah, the West…

Until you have experienced the sights and scents of the vast prairie, the endless midwest cornfields, soybeans, and, further west, sorghums and wheat…the fields of southern cotton…you haven’t sensed what America is all about! Then there are the Rockies, appearing first as a thin purple ridge line in the distance – gigantic as you reach the base of each front range. The high prairie of Wyoming; the great basin, Salt Lake, Nevada; and then another climb over the Sierras and down into California. No, you haven’t lived until you’ve covered each and every route back and forth – time and time again.

Most of us at home are too busy to bother thinking about trucks and truckers. They are simply there, jamming up our roads; threatening us with their speed and bulk. Deliver your goods we demand! But don’t block our path to the mall; don’t you kiss my car with that truck of yours and tear the “Born to shop!…” sticker off my bumper.

For one minute, totally put away your desire for more “things.” Lean back in that Barka-lounger of yours and dream…just what would it be like to close up the house, kiss the kids good-bye (maybe shuffling them off to the grandparents) to settle in (with your old lady) behind the wheel of a big rig. For a year or so, imagine the both of you…miles flying behind you in your California flat mirrors, endless Interstate ahead-beckoning you on and onward…

Boring..? Never! On each trip, watching the light fall differently over the same countryside, changing each remembered scene to something never before viewed; moonlight…sunlight…dawn to dusk, every time a different mood.

And the easy comradery of the CB – voices out of the blue (some you recognize, but mostly new) jocular banter – good-natured America on the move. A lot like army humor; repeated jokes, catch-phrases; sometimes lines stolen from TV shows and ads; yet much of it original – invented humor – the active mind of the trucker conjuring up anything to get a response out of the CB and make the miles fly even faster. Yes, and sometimes grim: warnings of a “bear” on the prowl; or some “local-yokel taking pictures” (a county cop with a hand-held radar gun); and even grimmer, the occasional accident (they can be bloody). It’s all laid out for you…weather too. Awesome at times.

Truck stops: oases that would make the old timer blush – and not from shame: they’re no longer “Grapes of Wrath” vintage. Truck stop managers have struck gold with the drover of today. We, all of us – like it or not – are trained consumers; not even the modern bull whacker is immune.

Inside a typical truck stop “store,” a pricey array of merchandise seems doomed to sit on the shelf. But hang around for a while: watch an inquiring hand poke through a pile of something or other; and watch it shrink (the pile of goods, not the hand). CBs; cell phones and accessories; maps and books of all imaginable kinds; tire-billies; boxes of snack food; electric coolers; chrome gew-gaws to dress up the truck; outsize, rubber mud flaps; all kind of clothing.

Okay, while we’re on the subject of clothing…let me get something off my chest. You know that guy you’ve seen leaning against a down-at-the ears fleet truck that’s taking up nine car spaces and part of one lane in your local mall – the guy dressed to the nines in a spotless Zorro outfit and an outlandish floppy western hat? Right…that guy. Well he’s on my list, bud! Just out of trucking school, and he’s yet to make his first delivery on time (and if it’s not trucking school, make it the State funny farm).

Now the jerk is standing on his truck steps admiring himself in the flat mirror, with not the slightest desire to slip behind the wheel and do some real driving. I give that bobble-head one more week with the stupid outfit that hired him and he’s down the road-hoofing it.

Let’s go back inside, where we’ll probably find a lavish buffet. The food is likely to be healthy, not the greasy slop the film studio fed to Clint Eastwood and his monkey co-driver. In fact, in most truck stop restaurants you have to make a special point of ordering up unhealthy stuff like biscuits and gravy. Some habits die hard.

Then there’s the always pinging, banging, binging electronic game room; and after that big meal of steak and ‘taters and salad and berry pie ala mode, there’s hot showers and a quiet, protected truck lot in which to sleep it all off. The truck stop of today is the modern bull whacker’s anticipated bit of heaven at the end of a long day’s rig wrangling.

All this and more, hand… America awaits you!

roughly understand the process of conducting “real” criminal records background checks it is necessary to have a rudimentary understanding of the structure of the court system in the state where the search is conducted, especially with respect to consolidated courts and how criminal records are kept and dispersed.

The very simple definition (by me) of a consolidated court is one where the Superior or District or Circuit court clerk’s office keeps and disperses records of that court and all related courts in that county (and only that county or district). What this means is that, for the purposes of searching for criminal records, one has to search in only one place per county. Prior to consolidation of the courts if someone wanted to search for criminal records of a person and they did not know where specifically to search, the researcher would have to search all lesser or outlying courts in a particular county or judicial district for those records.

For example: By my count, Los Angeles County has 40+ courts from Catalina Island to Pomona and from Santa Clarita to Long Beach. Prior to court consolidation you could get felony case information at the superior court in downtown Los Angeles, but if you wanted misdemeanor or infraction information you had to either guess which lower court to check or check them all, and that would involve physically going to each court to conduct the search. As you can imagine very few misdemeanor and infraction records are discovered in a system such as that.

However, since the courts were consolidated in 2000 a court researcher looking for criminal records has to look in only one place; LA Superior Court in downtown LA, not 40 different locations in the same county. In fact, a court researcher can go to any of the 40+ courts and access the records of all of the courts and get all of the criminal information including infractions like traffic tickets, misdemeanors and felonies.

Some states are not consolidated. In several states, such as Mississippi, Massachusetts, Montana and Wyoming the courts are not consolidated. The result is that searching for records one is, in most cases, only going to retrieve information on felony cases only because the search is being conducted at the highest level court in the county and the records are for that court only. Most lesser crimes such as traffic infractions and misdemeanors are adjudicated in the lower courts. These Municipal, Justice or Chancellery courts also handle things like small claims and other minor civil court cases.

Remember the following regarding records searching:

1. Juvenile court records are almost always sealed and unavailable.

2. In states where records are searched by county and not statewide (such as California) each county Superior Court has records of that county only. The subject of your investigation could be an axe murder from the adjoining county, but your county court would not have a record of it.

3. Some states Like New York have statewide conviction only criminal history databases.

4. Other states like Georgia and Michigan have and even more restrictive felony convictions only databases. (This is the kind of info you get in those “Instant Nationwide” database checks).

5. Different states have different names for their main county courts. In most states it is called Superior Court. In some remote areas of the country a Circuit Court may be the highest court in a district that may encompass more than one county. The name is a holdover from the days when a judge traveled on horseback to courts in each territory.