Made It!

Five years, six applications, a LOT of cross-country trips via plane, one long cross-country trip via car, and endless hours of writing/worrying/dreaming/planning later.....

I'M HERE!!!!

And I love it. Really, really, love it. 

But since I'm a little late with this post, I'll back up again, at least to the beginning of the trip out here!  

Bright and early on Monday (July 19th), Rach and I set off east. We didn't get quite the running start we were hoping for - she missed her alarm because her phone turned off overnight, then I forgot to pick up my bikes at Jeni's on the way out so we had to backtrack...but all in all, we were solidly on the road by about 7:30a, which wasn't bad.

Of all the driving days, I would say the first day was second to worst. The desert can be pretty, but there is also a lot of flat brown nothing on that part of the drive. El Centro and the dilapidated little desert towns (that's probably a generous description) aren't exactly scenic. Some of it was beautiful, though - we took the route up through the mountains and Flagstaff, which was beautiful (see left). 

We did listen to a good book on CD, The Prometheus Deception by Robert Ludlum (he wrote the Bourne series, to give some context).

We cruised into Albuquerque, NM around 7:30p (long day!!) and were starving, so we threw our stuff in our rooms and set out for dinner. Unfortunately, by the time we left it was 9pm, and we were surprised to discover that Albuquerque, at least where we were, shuts down at 9pm. Unless we wanted McDonald's, we were out of luck for dinner. We called the hotel and found that their restaurant stayed open until 10p (rebels!) so we went there. It wasn't bad...after a day of road food, the salads we got tasted awesome. (To the right is more AZ scenery).

Day 2 was bottom of the list, driving-day wise. If you've never driven through Texas and surrounding areas on the 40, you're not missing much...it's flat, green/brown, and there is the occasional cluster of cows. That's about it. It's pretty, don't get me wrong, it's just the same for about 8 hours (to the left is a fairly representative picture of the entirety of the drive on Day 2). Luckily, this was the part of the drive where they liked their Dairy Queens every few miles like clockwork, so Rach and I drowned our boredom with that! Blizzards are YUM!

We listened to a book that day too, Big Love by Sarah Dunn. It was...different than we expected. Decidedly a chick book, and a little odd, but entertaining at least, which is really all we were looking for! We stopped that night in Fort Smith, AK. That was a bit of an adventure in itself...in our family, those hotels where you give some thought to how much of the room you're actually willing to touch are called crunchy carpet hotels (you can imagine why). We definitely stayed in one of those that night. We ran into the same issue with dinner...the whole losing an hour thing threw us off a bit. Fort Smith is not the pinnacle of night life, so most things were closed by 9:30p when we were looking for dinner. There was a Hooters nearby, though, so we decided that it was at least safe and had beer and decent food (wings!) so off we went. The waitress was fascinated by our accents, as were we by hers. 

On the drive from Fort Smith to Nashville...it was pretty!

The next day was a bit shorter; we drove into Nashville. Rach and I love country music, so we thought that would be a fun place to spend a night since neither of us had ever been there. We got lucky and got a great hotel within walking distance of the main downtown area with the fun bars and such, so we walked over for dinner. We started by having a killer BBQ dinner - it really was amazing. I'm looking forward to eating some awesome BBQ over the next couple of years down here! We went afterwards to Wildhorse Saloon and heard a live band, they were good! Next stop was Coyote Ugly, which was fun and included some interesting people watching.

The next morning, we got up for our final day of driving...into North Carolina!! That was a particularly interesting day, beginning with some torrential rain while we were driving through the mountains. The trip through the Smoky Mountains was absolutely beautiful...we have a ton of pictures, but I'll spare everyone and only post a couple.

We drove through Ashville and stopped there for lunch, I can't wait to get back for hiking and mountain biking! We cruised into Durham around 8pm, but unloading the trailer seemed like an insurmountable task at that point, so we went to dinner at a Elmo's (a local diner) and went to bed! The first night was spent on Sarah (new roomie)'s air mattress - surprisingly comfortable! - and so ended my fun, safe, memorable, and hopefully last drive across the country!