This post is a bit tardy but things have been hectic over the last several days. Michelle and I departed Ottawa en route to my friend Cyndi's place in Wahoo, NE. I was so excited that my route was taking me past her because it's been a long time since we've seen each other. The drive was pretty but fairly monotonous - lots of corn. We did give a cheer when we crossed the Mississippi River from Illinois into Iowa. Crossing into new states always made us feel like we were accomplishing something and crossing the Mississippi gave it a little something extra - we were entering the "West." I use quotes because we were still only about a third of the way across the country at that point so while we wanted to be west, it didn't feel very west.
A token corn photo from Michelle
Michelle and I had a blast in Wahoo with Cyndi and Chad. We went to the local VFW for pre-dinner beers. It was within walking distance of their place and Gus was able to come with us as well. We partook of a local brew called a red beer, a.k.a. Bud Light with tomato juice and a couple of green olives. I thought it was pretty good, certainly better than a plain Bud Light.
Cyndi, me, and Michelle with our red beers
For those of you thinking, Wahoo, NE, why have I heard of that before - here's why. It the "Home Office" of the Late Show with David Letterman. We swung by the official sign on our way back to Cyndi and Chad's.
Michelle and I
Cyndi, Gus, and Chad
Cyndi and Chad grilled us an awesome dinner that evening, complete with fresh Nebraska corn - yummy! We capped off the evening with chocolate banana milkshakes and a game of Cranium. Thanks Cyndi and Chad for such a wonderful time!
Michelle and I departed the next morning after Cyndi and Chad had left work. We said goodbye to Gus and headed out. Although something did catch our eye and made us giggle a bit on the way out the door, and we felt compelled to take a photo.
Nuff' said
Shortly after returning to I-80 (final destination for the evening - my friend and EIS classmate Jeff's in Fort Collins, CO), we encountered two of these "things." We kept running into them at various stops and each time tried to figure out what they were. I think Michelle was the one that finally figured it out - they were wind mill propellers.
In action... Although our discovery did lead to the obvious question of why were their only two of them?
Cool photo of clouds over Nebraska that Michelle took
A storm we saw from a distance. We got a bit of rain along the way but nothing as bad as this photo suggests.
Finally in WY - the sign upon entering said "Forever West" - so whatever doubts about being west we may have had when we crossed the Mississippi were surely gone at this point. The scenery was starting to change a bit from the corn fields we had grown accustomed.
Our slight detour south to my friend's in Fort Collins, CO gave us our first glimpse of the Rockies.
We arrived at Jeff's at 6PM, just in time to head to a Mexican place for dinner, where we would also be meeting up with another one of my classmates, Katherine, and her husband Marcus and daughter Natasha. Dinner was yummy, the margaritas were strong, and it was great to see everyone again (even though it really hadn't been that long since we had been together in the hotel in Atlanta). After dinner, we went for a walk around Fort Collins. It's a really cute town and bicycle friendly to boot. I liked it there.
We left Fort Collins early the next morning because we knew we had a long day ahead of us (Thanks so much Jeff for being so hospitable!). We had a good portion of the state of Wyoming still left to get through, all of Utah, and we were hoping to get at least half way across Nevada. When we set off, we figured it would be a 10-12 hour day - long but not painfully long.
Wyoming seemed to drag on forever, so when we finally entered Utah we were quite excited. On my last cross country road trip, I spent a lot of time in Southern Utah and was amazed by its beauty. Northern Utah did not disappoint either. There was a bit of the red sand stone that I had seen so much of in Southern Utah, but overall it was amazingly beautiful in a completely different way.
The Great Salt Lake just west of Salt Lake City (thanks again to Michelle for taking so many photos along the way)
Salt Flats
Morton salt factory conveniently located in the salt flats
We were both quite excited when a rest stop was situated at the Bonneville Salt Flats (also home of the "Miracle Mile" were the world land speed record was set - 622.407 mph by Gary Gabelich in 1970 in case you're wondering). This place was awesome (in the true sense of the word as opposed to the surfer dude interpretation that popularized the word).
We made it into Nevada, although later than we had hoped. But with the time change to Pacific time we felt that trying to get to Carlin was still possible. It would push our day to the 14 hour mark, but since we had both had a bit of a chance to doze during the day we felt okay about that. We reached Carlin right at nightfall, and I know I was really happy to be there. My butt was sore from sitting all day long and I didn't exactly want to be driving in the middle of nowhere with few other vehicles on the road and spotty cell phone reception after dark. We made our ritual stop to refuel the truck so we would have a full tank to start with in the morning and headed to the hotel. When I say "the hotel," I don't mean the the hotel we were planning on going to, but rather the ony hotel in all of Carlin. We parked the truck, and I headed in to secure a room while Michelle got stuff out of the back of the truck. Alas, there were no available rooms and the nearest town to the west was an hour away. I managed to make it back to the truck just before Michelle put the lock back on it, so we tossed things back in and headed back out on the highway. The drive from Carlin to Battle Mountain was reassuring and creepy at the same time. Reassuring in the sense that while there wasn't a whole lot of traffic, there was enough that if something had happend to us or our truck it wouldn't have been too long before someone found us, and I think we at least had roaming cell phone service the whole way. The creepiness was due to the fact that if you looked to the left or right off of the highway, there was nothing, no lights, nothing. We made it to Battle Mountain and were lucky enough to get one of the last few rooms. It had been a long day and we were beat.
I headed out to the breakfast area at the hotel before Michelle did the next morning and was amusing myself by the news story being broadcast on the television about a farm that provides water beds for their cows. I was thinking it was some podunk local news station when I realized it was Fox News. Seriously, there's nothing better to report on? I mean they spent at least 5 minutes on this story. As that was wrapping up, I was joined at my table by a 12 year girl named Olivia, although she hated her name and was going by Fu-Li instead. She was really talkative and obviously incredibly intelligent. We were soon joined by her 9 year old sister Mia, who was clearly the more rule oriented of the two since she was quietly admonishing her sister for talking to a stranger. As she continued to make attempts at getting her sister to go back to the hotel room where their father was still sleeping, we were joined by Michelle. All in all, we really enjoyed chatting with the girls - they were also planning to go all the way to the Bay Area that day. We left them to their breakfasts and headed out to resume our driving.
We were expecting about an 8 hour day, which would put us into Point Richmond around 3:30 in the afternoon. We were staying on schedule fairly well until we hit CA. We had to stop at the agriculture inspection station, where we had an orange confiscated from us and shortly thereafter found ourselves in single lane traffic heading through the Sierras. It was slow going. Not only was there a lot of volume, but at best we could only go as fast as the slowest moving semi in front of us heading up to Donner Pass. We took a break from the traffic to grab lunch in Truckee at a coffee shop, but in the end it took us at least two hours just to get through the Sierras. While we were now severly behind schedule, at least the scenery was nice. I did a quick look for branches of my bank in Sacramento since I still needed to get a check for my security deposit before picking up my keys that evening, and we were now in jeopardy of not making it to Point Richmond before 5PM. Traffic got heavy again around Scramento, but I think detouring to the bank may have helped us out a bit. Once we were back on the road, things were moving fairly smoothly and it was pretty easy the rest of the way. We pulled up to my Realtor's office with only 10 minutes to spare to pick up the keys and then made our way over to my place with the hopes of finding a parking space for the truck near enough that we could haul the mattress in for the night. I had forgotten that my apartment is on a crazy steep hill, so needless to say there was not a good place to park the truck. We ended up parking it about a quarter of a mile away and abandoned the idea of getting the mattresses in that evening. Luckily, our friend Rebecca was able to put up for the night.
The movers came the next morning and did a great job unloading the truck, so now I sit amongst a jungle of boxes to overwhelmed to figure out where to put things. Thankfully, my parents are arriving tomorrow and my mom loves to do that kind of stuff. By the time they leave, I will essentially be settled and can truly begin my life here on the West Coast.
