Road Trip (Part 1)

Day 3:
Just waking up in a cold florescent lit hotel room in Bozeman MT. Energy efficiency replaces atmosphere. It's early no birds, no sun, no noise except our converse crunching day old snow. There isn't anything open early but the Walmart superstore, and even they can’t provide the long johns I need. Upon peaking out the window, a graveyard greets me good morning Montana. We drove until midnight last night when lack of sleep pulled us off the road. Excitement replaces sleep as we embark on Yellowstone park this morning.






9:14am
Sunday March 30th
Leaving Yellowstone, we ventured into the hot springs for a quick walk. 52miles to Leavingston, I’ll catch you up on the past adventures. Leaving San Luis Obispo at 4am Friday morning we made it to the Oregon border by noon. Running into a slight blizzard on Grants Pass excitement running high. Arriving in Portland around 4:30 we had a quick meal at PF Changs. Tripped out by the obscure people in a near by bookstore we fled east to Meet up with Kevin Russ. He was attending a concert and allowed us a few hours to kill. We checked out a couple old 21+ theaters. Deciding to save time, we headed North. Arriving in Seattle around 10ish we hung out with Aunt Heidi at a local Jazz club. Cozy. Next morning we ventured into the city a bit to explore REI and view the bay from the North West side. After that we decided to hit the 90 going east. Spokecan greeted us with its brick and mortar building giving us a feeling of history and respect. East bound. Idaho welcomed us with an overwhelming amount of snow and ice. Slowing to about 35-40mph we cautiously crossed in to Montana. Planning on camping in Missoula. Upon our arrival the East continued to call our names. Scanning the radio we found silence until Butte. 177miles to go. Bozeman arrived just as sleep was setting in.



9:35am
PRAY. Hwy 89 ¾ of the way in, a street sign reads. Pray. Ok, the only thoughts that come to my mind are thoughts f thankfulness. Thankful for Rick, thankful for my camera, for being in Montana, for my work, for vacancies and heaters, thankful for fingerless gloves, and sunglasses and ipods. The world is beautiful. People in love are beautiful.

Ugly Cassanova overwhelms my thoughts, so I’ll take a break.



Day 5. Nashville
8:23am
Woke up early on the dawn of day 5 in the AWESOME apt of Jenny and Mike. They are artist, who work out of their home shared with a pair of kitties and puppies. Cozy. So the culprit for my tiredness isn’t entirely driving for like 12 straight hours, Ricky and I had to say up and see the Nashville night life. So fun, even for a rainy Monday. We’ve seen quite a bit of rain in the past 24 hours. In fact the only time it cleared up was in Illinois thru Kentucky. Even then it was only for a few minutes at a time. The worst weather we’ve hit so far would have to be in South Dakota. After our decent from Mt. Rushmore, we hit a pretty overwhelming blizzard. We followed the 385 thru a National Park into Nebraska. This was by far the creepiest drive I’ve ever been on. Not a soul for hours, just the sound of 100mph winds and empty space in every direction. Looking into my rearview mirror, my tire tracks seemed to disappear almost imminently, leaving no trace that we ever existed in this place. 5 hours of this surreal world left me in a trance as we rode speechless with only the wind and sound of our tires in the snow to confirm that we we’re in fact alive. Isolation is a creepy thing. Upon meeting up with Interstate 80 we drove as fast away from that place as we could. Ricky’s turn greeted him with the hardest rainfall we’ve ever experienced. Nebraska weather forced us to find refuge at a rest stop way before we reached our goal in Omaha. 2 very short hours later, lighting and thunder motivated us to keep moving. The night mixed with rain and little sleep plays tricks on our eyes. It was getting hard to predict where the road was heading, and things that shouldn’t be there started appearing along the shoulder. I guess its time to stop. Yet the only thought was to run as far and as fast away from these things as we could. We arrived safe and sound to the Iowa border. South to Kansas City, then East to St. Louis then a quick break in Kentucky. The rain chased us the entire way. In the time that we lost refueling our selves and the civic, the rain caught us. It took us over an hour to get ahead of the downfall. Nashville became this beacon of safety and shelter from the open road. All I have to say is it was totally worth it.