This trip took place before I had this fabulous adventure blog, but I did have a livejournal (long since neglected), and naturally, I wrote a post every night of our journey - it was an adventure, after all! I thought I would re-post it for posterity today. It's interesting to look back and see how my observations and writing style have changed in just the last three years exactly. Enjoy!
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| day 1: twin falls, id | [09 Aug 2008|08:28pm] |
| it's actually 9:28 here because my computer still thinks i'm on the west coast.
I slept horribly last night. rather, when i did sleep, i slept fine, but in the 7 1/2 hours we were in our makeshift bed on the floor, i was probably asleep for three of them. half the time too excited about moving to sleep, the other half too nervous, worrying about driving, crashing, the truck, our stuff getting stolen, etc. the goal was to leave at 6 am. we pulled away from the apartment at 1840 agate for the last time at 6:15, so that's really not bad at all. chris went straight to i-5 because he didn't want to deal with city streets while i dropped off the keys at jennings and got coffee and then caught up with him. it was like a math problem; if chris leaves at 6:15 and goes 55 mph, and sarah leaves at 6:30 and goes 65 mph, when will they meet? anyway, we found brennan (her apartment was actually only 4 blocks away from erin's first portland apartment) where i parallel parked like a champ and gave many needed hugs and then we were off! by the time we got out of there it was nine-ish, but no big loss. it turns out that I-84 basically follows the oregon trail. for like, its entirety. we drove along the columbia for quite a ways, and then it kind of cuts off the top corner of oregon through baker city and other such awesome places into idaho. chris was noticing a lot of oregon trail visitor center signs, and i kept noticing place names that i recognized from the game, so we looked on the map of the u.s., and sure enough, it follows it at least into utah. we had pb&j for lunch at a windy rest stop along 84, then stopped for gas in pendleton. one fill-up used all of chris' arco gift card and then some. then we switched so i could drive. scary!! but really, not that bad once i got used to it. the whole time i'd been picturing the gigantic OMB penskes, and this is much smaller. after pendleton, though, you start getting into the high desert, so there are lots of windy hills that go up and down and round and round. i spent a long time yelling at them, but it didn't help. i learned about how every little motion is amplified in a truck, so even semi-slamming on the brakes makes you swerve. boo. there was lots of road construction once we got into idaho, and that was equally scary. we stopped for dinner at subway (again, free with a gift card!) just past boise. at one point, we'd hoped to hit ogden the first day. that's about 4-5ish hours past boise, and we'd forgotten to account for losing an hour into mountain time, so we settled for twin falls, about two hours farther. it's actually in jerome, where wade from my omb section was from, but it has a hot tub. that was the most amazing feeling i've felt in forever. really. there are two other groups from oregon here, and a kid and dad from colorado driving him out to u of o. exciting for everyone! our goal for tomorrow is cheyenne, which should be no biggie, except for we have to cross the rockies all over the place tomorrow. but i'm driving first becasue i'm perkier in the morning, which means chris will get the rockies. so i'm extremely tired. riding/driving in a truck is exhausting. even so, it didn't feel like it took that long. we did a few mad libs and had some team-crossword action. the truck has no tape player, but yesterday we bought battery-operated speakers at radio shack, so we can listen to cd's or ipod, for the more technically advanced of us. we're getting up at 5:45 tomorrow. the motel starts serving continental breakfast at six, so we'll eat it and then roll out. when we were stopped for dinner, i thought about grabbing a small carton of soymilk at albertsons but figured i could get it later. except we're actually about five miles outside of twin falls right by a truck stop, so no soymilk. oh well. i think in the morning i'll call the days inn in cheyenne and make a reservation, because we liked it here. and stuff got filled up tonight, although it was a saturday so who knows about tomorrow. whew. unwind. today was a good day. some grumpiness in the morning, and it's weird to be leaving, but not really leaving. i am getting excited for the fall (hopefully for the right reasons) and i know it will go by just as fast as it can, and then i can come out. another time that i got so caught up in minor stresses that i downplayed the whole transition and only now am i realizing, whoa. i'm moving to ohio. the midwest. ohio. it's pretty wild. i'm excited. i'm more excited now than i have been. it's really happening now. even through all the planning, even yesterday, even this morning in eugene and portland, it didn't really feel like it was happening. but now it is. yay! | |
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