American Road Trip 2008

[Erik Boattail]

Yesterday (Wednesday) we rented a second car:
A Mustang convertible to visit the Hoover dam.
Here's the Mustang:

And here you can see that it's leaking like a true Ford product:

[Erik Boattail]

Last Tuesday (December 9th) we left our motel in the greater San Diego area to travel up the West coast to Dana Point, to catch a ferry to Catalina Island.
Since we both are not really the average tourist types, we decided that just a quick view at the island from the Californian coast was more than enough information for the both of us.
Been there, seen it, please do keep the lousy t-shirt.....
So it was time to visit Larry and Linda Daisey at Rancho Riviera in Riverside, CA.
After a warm welcome by Linda, Larry showed up after 10 minutes to guide us around the place.
Here are a few photos, remember that Larry is packing up to move to Arizona, so from the 50 or so Rivieras in his lot, there were only a few left:
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[Erik Boattail]

Larry, and of course Linda, if you are reading this:
A big thank you for having us, and we really enjoyed the tour around the premises !!
See you again next summer for a few So-Cal car shows.

Tuesday night we travelled to Las Vegas, visited the Strip and the Hoover Dam on Wednesday.
I won't post any photos of these tourist traps on the board, but we visited a classic car dealer at Tropicana Blvd. with a few very interesting cars.
More about that later this week.
I'm signing off now from Van Horn, TX.
Tomorrow we will visit another board member....

[Erik Boattail]

Here are a few photos of last Wednesday in Las Vegas and at the Hoover Dam.
At this classic car dealer on Tropicana Blvd. you can rent every car in their lot if their selling prices are a wee bit too steep for your wallet:
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[Erik Boattail]

[Erik Boattail]

After all the Las Vegas entertainment we drove to Wickenburg, AZ where we stayed in this very strange motel.
The person at the front desk looked like she was the president of the Psycho fanclub, and I reckoned that her hairdo was an award winning design at the 1954 Wickenburg Fair.....
Luckily we survived the night at the motel and the next morning (Thursday december 11th) we arrived in Phoenix.
(for the second time)
This time we wanted to visit GM Obsolete.
We were welcomed by Jerry Hammer, the owner of the place, and he told us that it was alright for us to look around the scrap yard as long as we liked.
There still are a lot of Buicks in the yard, but there's also a good collection of interesting Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles:
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[Erik Boattail]

[Erik Boattail]

[Amperebear]

Nice pics Erik, realy nice. thank you so much for that, good job.

regards from Canada, Axel

[Erik Boattail]

After our GM Obsolete visit we drove back to Texas and stayed overnight in a motel in Van Horn.
The next day (Friday December 12th) we drove to Buffalo Gap to visit board member jamyers and his family.
Along the trip we came across Santa and a few old cars:
Click thumbnails

[Erik Boattail]

Here are a few photos of our visit of James, Linda and their children Bruce and Rachel.
James took us for a spin in the 2NABOT, and she spins for sure !
That evening we had a wonderful meal at this local restaurant, but both Rob and I were not sure what to think of the funny name of that place:
Deutschlander......

[Erik Boattail]

Last Saturday (December 13th) we returned to Austin, TX for the flight home.
For Friday night we stayed in a hotel in Brownwood, TX, so it was just a short drive back to Austin.
First we went for some final shopping at the local Academy sports store (like we didn't bought enough t-shirts along the journey....) and after all that it was time to visit Frank again.
In the evening we went out for great steaks at a local restaurant, and after that Frank took us to a genuine Austin honky-tonk café.
Rob and I forgot about the name of the place, but we like to refer to it as "Bob's Country Bunker"...
Great place with people in cowboy hats playing dominos, and there was a live band performing, complete with steel guitar and the works.
Not really the place where the average tourist would end up for a night out, so for us it sure was great to see this all happening:
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[Erik Boattail]

During the 5746 miles / 9245 km we travelled during this road trip, we never saw a Boattail in the wild.
So you can imagine the surprise when a 1972 Boattail showed up in the parking lot of "Bob's Country Bunker", in the last few hours of our vacation on American soil:



Our flight back home was scheduled for Sunday December 15th, 7.00 AM.
So this meant that we could check in at the airport at 5.00 AM.
We left "BCB" around midnight, discovered that we still had a half tank of petrol left, and for no specified reason we ended up in Johnston City, TX.
There we had this crazy conversation with a petrol station attendant who was driving a US$ 75.00 1984 Oldsmobile Ninety Eight.
We arrived at the airport around 4.30 AM, left the Trailblazer (not a bad car after all) at the rental company, checked in for our flight and found out that some of our bags where only a few pounds off the maximum weight limit.
Rob even took home a cast iron 1972 Riviera grille, a gift from James who had it laying around in his garage for a couple of years.
After a crazy day travelling from Austin to Atlanta, from Atlanta to Boston and from Boston to New York JFK, we boarded the plane to Amsterdam around 5.30 PM.
We arrived in Amsterdam on Monday December 16th, 7.30 AM local time.
Rob and I kissed and said goodbye, and I finally arrived back home around 9.30 AM.
So if any of you lot have a car that needs to be driven across the USA somewhere in the future: chime in and let us know !!!


]We drove 2119 miles / 3409 km in the Riviera.
109 miles / 175 km in the rental Mustang convertible in Las Vegas.
And 3518 miles / 5660 km in the Trailblazer.
So that's a total of 5746 miles / 9245 km in 16 days !!!
(minus 1.5 day in Greenfield because of the trouble with the brakes)
Petrol for the Riviera:
We pumped 191.01 US gallons / 723 litres
(but the tank wasn't empty when we delivered the car in Austin)
Petrol for the Trailblazer:
177.51 US gallons / 671.87 litres
(we had to pay for a full tank when we collected the car in Austin, so we made sure that it was running on fumes when we delivered it back to the rental company)
Petrol for the Mustang in Las Vegas:
6.10 US gallons/ 23.08 litres
So that's 374.62 US gallon / 1417.93 litres for the whole trip
The first petrol stop in Fair Oaks, NY was also the most "expensive" one with a price of US$ 2.66 for 1 US gallon.
(We drove 9 miles on the petrol that was still left in the tank by the former owner)
Cheapest one was the last petrol stop at Coleman,TX: US$ 1.43 for 1 US gallon.

[Erik Boattail]

A selection of over 1400 photos is online now:

[Erik Boattail]

Here's a little video/photo impression, made by my mate Harry Clamshell:
< Click image