No one said a cross-country bus trip would be easy. But the author learned that seeing America through a giant windshield can be an adventure. Especially if it's smudged.
By Peter Mandel
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, May 26, 2002
Tell someone about your cross-country bus trip and stand back. The Question is on its way. Why would you do that? Why ride the Greyhound instead of driving, or taking a train or plane?
A couple of months ago, a friend and I each had a week to go somewhere, and where we really wanted to go was Los Angeles. We were sick of security lines and cramped flights, neither of us had a trip-worthy car, and Amtrak was on the verge of shutting down a big batch of its long-distance trains.
What about the bus, we thought, poring over maps and schedules and making little puffs of mental exhaust. My friend had just read that buses are the safest type of travel -- something I had to look up to believe. But sure enough: According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, of almost 44,000 travel-related fatalities in 1999 there were fewer by bus (.03 percent) than on airplanes (1.4) or intercity trains (0.2).
Like the people we told about our trip, we weren't sure if we could hack a four- to five-day ride from D.C. to the West Coast. But we were tempted by Greyhound's seven-day Ameripass that lets you get off and on whenever you want, and break up the ride with a few nights in motels.
We decided we would give the thing a try for the sake of adventure. We would aim south for warm weather and check out exotic-sounding towns like Texarkana, Tex., and Las Cruces, N.M. We would try to set foot in Mexico, and also hoped to get a quick glimpse of the Grand Canyon, which we had never seen.
And we wouldn't come back until we had answered The Question once and for all.
Day 1: Washington to Knoxville, Tenn.
It's a traffic-clogged morning downtown, but the D.C. cab driver assures us we're going to be on time for our 9:30 bus. "You're gonna make it," he yells. "You're gonna make it." We miss it.After a five-hour wait, we board the next Tennessee-bound Greyhound, a chrome-trimmed "Americruiser" with a backward American flag stenciled on the side. Our driver sports a royal blue necktie and silver tie-clip shaped like the familiar racing dog. On his belt jingles a ring of keys, ticket-puncher, flashlight, walkie-talkie and . . . could it be? It is. A can of mace.
Legroom is airline-tight: I measure exactly four inches between my knees and the back of the seat in front of me. My friend Judy, who is 73 years old and has never been west of Pennsylvania, is worried about our connection in Charlottesville and pipes up to the driver about it. He doesn't seem to hear, as what comes next is a "No Smoking/No Drinking" speech over a crackly microphone, and then the warning that since Sept. 11, no one crosses the yellow line up front or sits in the first row of seats. With this, gears grind, brakes let out a sigh and we're on the road.
Near Roanoke, Va., hills bunch up around the bus, and soon we can make out the tops of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Once the sun sets, I remember what I've always liked about bus rides. It's cozy zooming along in the dark and, since the interior lights are turned off, your eyes are focused out into the night and not on whatever's happening on board. This sheltered darkness is almost porch-like -- it's good for reminiscing -- and Judy tells me about a lettuce-and-grape-jelly sandwich she once ate.
We pull into a Hardee's for a meal break, and when we get back on, the driver has something else to say. "I do not carry a key to the restroom," he announces. "If you or your child can't figure out how to unlock it, you'll be in there until we get to the garage in Atlanta, about 15 hours from now."
No one seems to be heading back there, so I squeeze myself in and check it out. The toilet is a stainless-steel well with a pool of disinfectant swishing around some yards down, and instead of a sink, there's only a countertop and dispenser full of Fingerbowl brand moist towelettes. When I tell Judy, she just rolls her eyes. It's going to be a long ride.
Day 2: Knoxville, Tenn., To Little Rock, Ark.
Knoxville is home to the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame and the War Dog Memorial, which honors canines who have fought for their country. But no time for these attractions. After rumbling in after midnight and trying to grab some sleep in a motel, we've got a bus to catch. Dennis Brown is our new driver, an elderly man wearing a black fur-lined hunting cap with ear flaps that fold down."What do you call three blondes stuck in a refrigerator?" he asks over the PA system as we pull out. Nobody has a clue. "Frosted flakes" is the punch line, and there's an amplified chuckle as Brown signs off to concentrate on the road.
At a gas station rest stop, Judy points out displays of Goo Goo Clusters and Goody's Headache Powders, sure signs that we're in the South. We get a few minutes in Nashville to scurry around and look at sights like the BellSouth Building, with its sky-high pair of pointy horns. Reboarding, I bring some peanuts and a can of beer and realize that despite warnings of "tightened security," no one has bothered to take even a quick peek into our bags.
On the road to Memphis, the land flattens out and, since it's evening, we are squinting into an electric sunset. Bus windows are huge and square -- unlike the plastic portholes on a plane. I feel as if I am in a movable greenhouse. We passengers are like sleepy plants, potted in our chairs and stuck in cycles of dozing, waking, listening to headphones -- always leaning in the direction of the light no matter where the front of the bus is pointing.
The bus station in smart-looking Jackson, Tenn., is a shrunken version of Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall, but there's no movie on the marquee and instead of signs for the Rockettes you see only ads for Greyhound and a coat of peeling powder-blue paint. I ask another passenger, Sunrae O'Neil, why she's taking the bus and find out she's going all the way to San Francisco. "I'll be honest," she says. "It's the only way you can go 3,000 miles for 150 bucks."
Day 3: Little Rock to El Paso
Little Rock boasts surprisingly tall downtown towers and strange looking semitropical trees that are spring green even though it's February. No motel night this time -- we're sleeping on the bus to make up time. But when we try to wash up and brush our teeth, I find there's no soap in the bus station men's room. The fast-food restaurant we go to is out as well. Could it be that people in this town wash up with only water?Back on the bus, Judy grabs me a handful of moist towelettes, though I find that most of them are bone dry inside the foil wrapper. I'm getting worried about her. She keeps pointing out what she tells me are "rivers," but when I turn and look, I see only fields and dust. I don't know whether these are actual mirages, but it does seem, at times, as if we are crossing the country by camel. Our sense of distance is intimate. We get to know every mile and measure our progress bounce by bounce.
Dallas in the dark looks like an out-of-control corporate park: Buildings have weird neon outlines, the street lights are embedded in slabs and flagpoles narrow sharply toward the top, like fresh pencils. Greyhound company headquarters is here, but the bus station itself is confusing and extremely small. As we wait in line trying to squeeze onto our 6 a.m. bus after a night "sleeping" on board, the baggage guy cracks, "I'd wait till the 8:30 if I was you." I'm wondering if I detect a smirk, since the bus door has just slammed shut.
More trouble: When I try to get a printout for buses between El Paso and Flagstaff, Ariz., the machine spits out pages of nonsensical numbers, mathematical symbols and black squares. "That's because Greyhound doesn't go there," explains the clerk. But when I protest that Flagstaff's a big town, she gives me a look and says to "spell the name of it, and slowly." We try again, getting some info this time, and Judy and I are on our way.
The landscape west of Fort Worth is like a safari theme park where the animals refuse to come near. If you look carefully you can see specks along the horizon, and sometimes groups of specks that Judy says have to be herds. Abilene, Tex., is a much more close-up surprise. It appears to have the widest streets in Texas and its buildings are colorful square blocks of brick. Plus, the town looks mysterious, since there's hardly a soul around.
When we get near Midland, Tex., the bus driver tells us to look left, and fingers point as we roar past a family of prairie dogs sitting up by the side of the road. Wildlife at last.
Day 4: El Paso To Flagstaff, Ariz.
The lights of El Paso are spread out in front of the bus, and since it's the Star City, we're welcomed by a cheerful, electrically powered starfish set up on a hill overlooking town. Judy and I are busy trying to figure out how we can cross the border to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, before our bus to Flagstaff departs the next afternoon.Since our motel is on the city's outskirts, there's only one solution -- Bob's Cab. The plan is this: Bob will come to our motel in the morning and drive us to the downtown border bridge. We'll walk across with the commuters, eat a fresh corn tamale in Juarez and, an hour later, cross back over. There, Bob will be waiting to drive us back to the motel. Then, we'll grab our bags and floor it to the bus station.
Amazingly, this works pretty much as planned. It costs 30 cents (or three pesos) to enter Mexico, and suddenly we're in a world of hand-painted signs for cerveza, music surging out of grocery stores and small cafes, and vendors yelling at us to take a look at hats and leather wallets and limes stuffed fat with shredded coconut.
It isn't easy to just get a bite of all this and go back. Judy keeps fingering woven tote bags and stretchy, beaded belts as if they will help her hang on here for just a few seconds longer. I buy a Mexican soda, and when the can of papaya fizz runs low, I know we have to go fast to the passport line on the Mexican side of the bridge and across to our idling cab.
We make the bus just as the driver is ripping tickets and are surprised to find that a fellow passenger, Ralph Gomez, has saved us a place in line. "All that I own is in this," he chuckles, hefting a string bag that is layered with expertly folded white T-shirts and a Bible on top. Gomez is on his way home from a year in the Colorado state penitentiary. As we drive into New Mexico, he's one of the few on board who is impressed with the red and purple, Road Runner-style scenery.
"Mesas," he keeps telling Judy. "Wait until you see the mesas."
Day 5: Flagstaff, Ariz., To Los Angeles
After we get off in Flagstaff, Judy and I talk to cab drivers about getting a ride to the Grand Canyon, about 80 miles from here. One guy just shakes his head; another tells us he wants $250 up front.Since seeing the Grand Canyon is one of the biggest goals for our trip, we're on the verge of agreeing when I happen to spot a van with Keyah Hozhoni Tours painted on the side. The driver, a Navajo Indian named Vince, will take us there and back for $50 apiece, and fill us in on local history and geography as we ride.
It's a deal -- and as it turns out, Vince is loaded with information on what we pass, including a police car that he says has a cardboard decoy cop inside. When we get close to the canyon, I ask him what kind of animals we should watch out for. "Scorpions, rattlesnakes and kingsnakes," he says, letting us out near the Rim Trail at Bright Angel Lodge. "Almost forgot," he adds. "You might also catch a coral snake or a tarantula."
Judy and I keep one eye on our shoes as we walk to the edge, and suddenly there it is: a horizon-swallowing jagged copper bowl that is too wide to be photographed, too intricate for art. At this second, every knee-crunching minute of our trip feels worthwhile. You could ride a year's worth of buses to get here, I think, and drive them all over the edge so you wouldn't have to go back.
We're getting near the end of our trip, riding that same night and changing buses in Phoenix at 5 a.m. for the final leg to L.A. I doze on and off until around 8 o'clock, when we pull into a last-gas McDonald's buffeted by blowing dust and desert sand. "Blythe, California," announces the driver, and although it's a rest stop and Judy gets off for coffee, I don't want any and slump back to sleep.
Next thing I know, I'm woken up by a revving engine. The bus is heeling around a curve and roaring toward a highway ramp. Something feels wrong -- I've got much too much room, for one thing -- and then it hits me. Judy's not on board.
"Hey, wait," I yell to the driver. "We're leaving someone behind!"
No response.
"Stop, will you? Can I run back and get my friend? Can I get off?"
By now I'm up past the yellow line in front, explaining that Judy is an elderly passenger, and hear only mumblings from the driver that include the phrase, "got to keep on schedule." Some of the other passengers are angry, too, and I collect some names and phone numbers. Someone lends me his cell phone and I dial the number on my Ameripass, but all Greyhound suggests is that Judy keep her eye out for a bus due into Blythe later that afternoon.
It's been five long days. We've been to Tennessee, Texas, Mexico, the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and dozens of beaten-up, midnight Greyhound bus stations scattered along the way. I have made it from D.C. to L.A., where it's 89 degrees, bustling and hazy, and Judy has made it to a fast-food restaurant in a town I do not know how to spell.
Hours later, I meet a dust-coated bus from Blythe and there is Judy, sunburned and exhausted from pacing around in parking lots.
"Greyhound has made it up to you," I say, handing over a certificate entitling her to a Free Entree and a Medium Beverage at the bus terminal cafe.
Judy starts to crumple the scrap of paper. But then a ghost of a grin appears. She yanks me by the arm, pushing our baggage out of the way. "C'mon," she says. "What're we waiting for? Let's have lunch."
Epilogue
The rigors of our trip begin to evaporate just a little as Judy and I sit, slightly dazed, in the back yard of my brother's house, which is flooded with L.A. sun. I toss out my collection of baggage claim checks from along our route. Since one of my suitcases smells like a Greyhound bathroom, I hose it down and hang it out in the hot air to dry.Tomorrow, after Mann's Chinese Theatre and a visit to Venice Beach, we are due to head back east, and this time, we believe, the trip will be a breeze. We're not going to rip open a single moist towelette. We're not going to get into arguments with drivers. And we're not going to get off at rest stops. Not even once.
Judy and I are going to fly.
Peter Mandel last wrote for Travel on deep-sea fishing in Florida.
Details: Cross-Country by Greyhound
Then I logged onto www.greyhound.com, clicked on "Tickets, Fares & Schedules" and, typing in departure and destination cities, called up daily schedules and trip duration times between points along that route. (You can also ask for printouts of these schedules at any station.) I picked our stop-for-the-night target cities by planning to ride about 12 to 18 hours each day, and seeing where that would put us on our map -- although to make up time during the trip, we ended up deciding to ride past some of the targets, at one point spending 34 straight hours on the bus.
One company we had good luck with, both in terms of its national scope and helpful operators, was the
Other useful items: cell phone, portable radio/CD player with headphones, small pillow, moist towelettes.
Greyhound buses sometimes arrive nearly full (from loading passengers at previous stops), so it's wise to show up as early as possible. Get to the station at least an hour before your bus leaves, find your gate and begin lining up in front of it. If you're toward the back of the line, you may not get on, and -- except in rare cases when a second bus is brought in -- you'll likely have to wait hours until the next one.
It's also a good idea to gather and hoard information. Get gate numbers, baggage claim checks, schedule printouts and motel reservations as soon as you arrive in a city -- with future legs of your trip in mind. If you wait until the last minute you may be scrambling to make your bus, and there's a chance you'll run into a ticket clerk who is of little or no help. Most of the drivers and baggage handlers we dealt with were polite and professional, but some ticket and gate clerks seemed rude and strangely ill-informed. Terminals with clerks who seemed particularly confused included New York's Port Authority, Dallas and Phoenix. One recourse: Take names and see if there's a customer service office in the terminal with an agent on duty.