This trip was a “Whitman Sampler” of the country. We did not go to DC or NYC, but we already know those are destinations and not just stops on a trip. This of course refers to Whitman’s Chocolates. Whitman’s is part of the Russell Stover Chocolate family, and we passed a facility of theirs in Kansas! We drove 7029 miles from when we left home til when we pulled unto the driveway again. That nearly doubled the longest road trip we had ever taken (at a whopping 4000 miles), which was a decade ago when we went to The Grand Canyon the first time.
We had a blast in Denver with the family! We want to take the RV out there sometime soonish (next year or two) and spend more time with them. Plus there is so much to do in the Rockies and in Denver. Really I can’t list all the things we could do up there.
We have determined that St. Louis is somewhere we need to go back to. The Gateway Arch was never on either of our bucket lists, but once we got there and were exploring, Toto turned to me and says “Well, we can check this off the bucket list, now that we know it should have been on there.” It should be on everyone’s bucket list. It is an amazing place. Let’s just talk about the engineering that went into the physical arch itself. They built both sides up separately and pretty much had to hope they were doing it right so that when they got to the top the last piece would fit and tie it all together. That’s no small feat in and of itself. Now let’s discuss the symbol of the arch. It is the Gateway to the West. Louis and Clark started their epic journey from this spot. I think a lot of people misuse the word epic these days, myself included, but this really was an epic adventure. If not for Louis and Clark, the west would have remained wild and unsettled for many, many generations. I might live in West Virginia where a lot of my family is from if not for them.
Another city we loved but didn’t have nearly enough time in was Nashville. Yes it was hot, and humid, but we had a blast! CMA Fest was in full swing and we came really close to bumping into Big Kenny from Big and Rich, but we’re pretty sure he was in the bar next to the one we were in (Josh couldn’t get into that one). We spent three nights there, so two full days and we didn’t even scratch the surface. There is so much Civil War history down there and since Dad wasn’t with us, we didn’t go see any of it. We figured he would be irritated if we went without him. So we saw plantation houses instead. I love those things! Plus there are all the things like tours to see the homes of the stars and hanging out in grocery stores in Franklin where some of them are known to shop, stuff like that which we just didn’t have time for!
Page, Arizona is also somewhere we want to go back to. The slot canyons were so cool. Then there is Lake Powell. We could actually go and relax for a bit without running ourselves ragged. The weather down there is AMAZING!! I could spend two weeks just basking in the sun.
Somewhere I never need to go again and I urge you to avoid: Roswell. It was boring and disappointing. The best thing about it was the weather.
So, who is down for a movie night? We’re going to watch a couple of Elvis movies, then The Shining (the original Stanley Kubrick version), and then some X-files. There is something else too, but I am drawing a blank on it, so I will have to ask Toto what it was and have her get back to us on that. She promised me she would remember the movies for me.
I think you all need to take part in a new superstition we have. We tell all FedEx semi’s with two, count ‘em two, trailers to “Behave yourself!!”. We did it all through the trip, and at one point Josh really wanted to know why we did it (he hadn’t read the blog and we weren’t explaining it to him, he had to read it for himself). At one point, we even encountered a small FedEx truck babysitting a big one!! I walked into Fred Meyer’s on Tuesday to get some groceries and there was a FedEx driver there who I literally had to bite my tongue before I yelled at him. It was bad. But way funny at the same time. The funniest part is that the FedEx in Troutdale is now hiring and I am going to apply there.
So. We were awfully delusional the last few episodes weren’t we? Well, halfway down the ET Hwy in Nevada we diagnosed ourselves with Road Madness. We determined that the most severe of the symptoms are extreme delusional tendencies and idiotic laughter at nothing in particular, followed by crying so hard you can no longer breathe. The less severe symptoms are things like talking to inanimate plants as if they were real people, which of course we all know they are(n’t) and playing the same songs over and over for many more miles than is appropriate. Frolicking and prancing have also been known to occur in more serious cases of this illness. Also, Toto and I took to asking odd questions to the sky and the rearview mirrors. There were other symptoms as well, but they were one timers so they didn’t get written down. The good thing about Road Madness is that it provides the sufferer(s) with a highly entertaining experience. A great example of this is now planted in the back yard next to the patio. Wait, no…there are no stolen shrubberies that resemble deformed pineapples in my backyard. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Toto has made the decision that 14 days in the car is about the maximum we can handle without going a little too batty for our own good. I agree with her.
We also have some new words to share with you. While Toto and I were driving through Missouri on our way to St. Loius, we put on the emergency weather alert station to make sure we weren’t going to get caught in a twister. The weather man on the radio said to us “Today is not appearing to be tornadic in the Missouri area…” Toto said, “Tornadic?” And I replied, “Tornadic.” So one of our new words is Tornadic. “So Zack is in a tornadic mood today.” Another word is dissable (pronounced dis-ub-el). It generally is used in relation to Josh. He puts himself into situations where it becomes easy to diss on him, so he dissable. The last one is an invention of my own genius. Well, I have to give a shout-out to my loyal reader and friend Shea Hergert who sort of helped me come up with this one. Awesomething. I was sitting in Page, AZ uploading pictures to Facebook and writing the blog for that day, and chatting with Shea on Facebook IM and he said “….something…” right as I was writing “awesome!” and I read it as I was typing and I was really tired (it was nearly 2am at this point), and I typed “awesomething.” When Shea inquired as to what the meaning of that word was exactly, all I said in response was “ask me in the morning when I might have an answer.” I don’t think I had an answer in the morning when he asked me.
Have you ever seen a sign that reads “Bridges May Ice Before Roads”? We hadn’t either, until we got to Colorado I believe. Then we saw it in pretty much every state we went into until we got to Nevada. Toto and I have taken to looking at each other quite seriously, and saying “Did you know, the bridges may ice before the roads?” It doesn’t seem all that funny but it really was.
Something we had a pretty big issue with was Josh’s language once we picked him up. We understand that swearing is something that happens a lot in the Army, and we swear on occasion too, but hi useage of the F word was so extreme we had to yell at him multiple times. So I told him to get creative with it. I say Holy Canolies Batman instead of Holy $#!t, and I say “effing” and finking for the F word. So we came up with Ferret for him. If you ever hear him say Ferreting Ferreter, you know what it means now! We came up with one for Toto but I don’t remember what it was. I’ll ask Josh later.
Something Toto and I argued a little bit about were the continental divides (which is the imaginary line that determines where the streams in that area flow to, the Gulf of Mexico, The Pacific, etc). You may recall on the day we drove from “I’ll-be-quirky” to Page, I mentioned we had crossed our one. Toto didn’t believe me. So I did a little remembering: somewhere in Wyoming we crossed the first one. Then we crossed it again at some point that same day. On our way home we crossed it again in New Mexico. I commented to Toto that that was the third one we had crossed. She didn’t think that was possible. Now because I am the crazy researcher I am, I know it is in fact true!! In Wyoming, right across our path, is a weird circle in the divide. So we crossed it twice there, and then once on the way back. That makes three times. See the map below for clarification.
The Wednesday before Toto and I left on this grand adventure (which I now believe might rival that of Lewis and Clark in overall awesomeness) I made a bow tie pasta spaghetti sort of thing. I decided to take it with us so that we could have something yummy to snack on in the car. I ate a little of it to curb the nausea I get from my migraine meds at one point in Kansas, but we never ate it all. But it was in a Tupperware so we didn’t want to just throw it out. Then it took on an identity almost like JT did. But we didn’t talk to it. We were just determined to make it go the whole trip. And it made it all the way. Not a speck of mold in sight either, though none of us were going to eat it.
We only lost two things during the entire trip! One was one of Toto’s earrings, and the other was her brand new (well she’s had it since Christmas), bright pink iPod Nano. That’s right. It’s gone. Toto thinks that it is somewhere in Josh’s stuff because he was the last one using it. I think it got lost out the door of the car on one of the thousands of stops we made. BUT we bought her a new one at Costco on Monday, though it is purple and she misses the pink.
Toto and I did a little math the other day regarding this trip. We were gone for 372 hours. Almost exactly. We figure between freeway speeds and highway speeds, we probably averaged about 62 or 63 miles an hour for the whole trip, which would put us in the car for 112.5 hours (30% of the entire trip). We spent 16 nights away from home and slept an average of six hours a night which comes out to about 96 hours of sleep (25.8%). I calculated that I spent a total of 21 hours blogging, but since I did that while driving, I can’t really give that a piece of the pie chart. I was multi-tasking: riding in the car and messing with the computer. Between the two of us, Toto and I took a total of 3087 pictures. That averages out to 181.5 each day. Wow. The most we took in a day was on Day 15 (Friday June 18th) in Page, with the slot canyons. We took 351 pictures that day. Thank God for digital cameras! Could you imagine taking 351 photos with a film camera?!
Now. Here is something neat I am going to do. Some of you may know that I want to be a writer someday (as well as an architect). Well this blog has been my practice to see if anyone really cares at all about what I have to say. I have gotten such a good response from all of you, that I have decided to do something. This idea started out as a present for Zack since he did not get to go with us: I am going to self publish this blog into a book. Not a novel obviously, but a story book with a lot of the pictures from the trip. Probably a soft back, like 8" x 8" or 12" x 12". If you want a copy, email me (seanydawg@comcast.net) and I will send you one free of charge (though if anyone WANTS to donate a little moola to the cause that would not be unappreciated). Let me know. I will even sign it to you if you want (if I make it big someday as a writer you'd have major bragging rights).
Well folks, that's it for now. I do plan on recording interesting details about the trip to Yosemite Toto and I are taking in August, but since there will not be long hours of boredom to battle, I can not guarantee that it will be as humorous as this trip was, but stay tuned anyway. And I apologize for taking so long to write this epilogue.
Peace out sauerkraut!
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