So here I am, holed up in a lil’ motel in Cheyenne, Wyoming (which I now know to pronounce as “shy-ann”). We are three days into our road trip. Two to go.
It’s cold out here…! Last night as early as 8:00 it was in the 40s. Our plan was to find a campsite, set up the tent, find some dinner, then hit some local bar, but… nope. The two campsites nearest to the city were really just for RVs, no great place to set up a tent (mostly rocks and pebbles instead of grass), and it was 43 degrees and lightly raining, and for us it was two hours later and we were pretty wiped from all the driving (we’ve been doing about 10 hours a day, which I’d say translates roughly to a “strenuous” pace in Oregon Trail). So… after a bite at a late-night diner, we dropped $40 on a motel room, which budget-wise is fine because we managed to camp for free last night (sweet!).
It’s been fun so far. Crazy to think we are already halfway across the country. Starting just past Ohio it’s really been nothing but open fields, trees, power lines (sometimes not even that) and the occasional cluster of farm animals, but frankly it’s all been pretty scenic. Having a travel partner makes a –huge- difference, perhaps needless to say… I can see how making this drive on your own would be... ridiculous.
I love maps. Love looking and seeing that we’re in… what?! Nebraska? Wyoming? These Midwest states I’ve never been to? So cool.
Let’s see... other random notes…
Three of my meals since Friday have involved gravy (and one of them was breakfast). This would bother some people; this does not bother me.
Stopped and crashed at Jeff’s place in (er, near) Cleveland Friday night.
My car is packed completely. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to fit, you know, my entire life into a Toyota Corolla, but I made it work. We can’t see out the back window but, it really hasn’t been so bad.
Had a dream about Ellen Page last night and now I kind of want her to be my girlfriend.
In another Oregon Trail reference, yes, we totally stopped at Chimney Rock yesterday in Nebraska. It was pretty cool, I have to say. Took some cool pics.
Mom got me a GPS navigator and it’s been so cool having it. We are quite techno-ed out in the front seat, with our iPods, the Tomtom, FM transmitter, and cell phones. Don’t want to jinx myself but I have felt very prepared for this trip so far.
Have been mostly eating in local diner/truck stop-type places (see comment about gravy above), including one in a town called Snow Shoe (Pennsylvania) and another called the Pine Cone restaurant. …it just feels good to get out here, I guess, away from the Tappan Zee Bridge and work traffic and… yeah. In the middle of nowhere.
The speed limit is 75 for a good chunk of the Midwest (on I-80, a least).
We started the trip with a five-pound bag of gummy bears. It is now approximately a two-pound bag.
Camping is very different when it’s “functional.” I think both Rob and I pictured camping this trip would be something like our New Paltz experience last year, with guitars, a bonfire, and the leisurely imbibing of alcohol, but that first night in Iowa we were just too tired to really indulge in all that, and couldn’t even hang out outside due to the weather, so we barely managed a few RCM 400 tunes and half a bottle of wine inside the tent before going to bed.
After the abovementioned two campsites Tomtom lead us to last night, we tried a third, called “Camp Care Free” which sounded suspiciously like a day camp. …it ended up being a day camp. It’s hard to paint the picture perhaps but, it was 9:30 at night, dark, obviously, cold and a little rainy, and we’re driving on this unpaved road kind of near the highway in this huge field filled just with the ominous shadows of huge turbines which flashed lightning-like bursts of light every twenty seconds or so. Suffice to say: it was really creepy.
Anyway. So, today we head to Wells, Nevada, just over the Utah/Nevada border (how cool is that?! …sorry). Hopefully we’ll have better campsite luck out there. And hopefully it will be dry.
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