All of the stuff that we wrote after the laptop broke, that never got posted

Taken direction from: The Broken Laptop Journal

Saturday Night, North Carolina

Taking everything off the backseat, moving Max to the front. Putting down the seats and taking out our sleeping bags. This is how we envisoned sleeping in the car. This didn’t happen until Saturday night, upon which we slept at Moonshine Creek. Primarily a RV park, there were a lot of semi-permanent residents, giving the park a very homey feel. This night was highly enjoyed by both of us, and it wholly more write-worthy then the evens of our day.

Laura would like to note, however, of the fact that when we arrived she was nearly asleep. Moreover, the woman in the main cabin told her that she looked exactly how she felt. This was done in the kindest of ways, for they were friendly to the extreme.

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Monday Night, North Carolina

Upon waking up in Moonshine Creek, Laura and I decided to figure out where we were in relation to where we “should be” according to our plans. We were very delighted to see that we were, in fact, four days ahead of schedule. Especially delighted because we did not feel like we rushed at all. As I failed to mention in the previous post, Moonshine Creek is located in Eastern North Carolina. With our extra days, Laura and I decided to continue our exploration through the appalachins, then head to the coast. We decided the Coast was a must primarily because we forgot to get sand from the Atlantic Beaches in Florida. We also decided to include the Virginias; two states which we had previously chosen to pretend didn’t exist. So, head towards the coast we did. It took us all day to cross the state and we eventually went to bed in a rest area near the coast.

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Tuesday Night, Maryland

Inspired by our previous decision to visit the Virginias, I thought another addition might be greatly appreciated. When looking at a newly acquired Virginia map, I noticed that DC chose to locate itself right on the edge of Virginia, solely, I’m sure, for the purpose of luring us that way. Luckily, Laura agreed with me that it would be rude to ignore DC, its like it did anything wrong.

The easiest way to get there included a 20 mile bridge-tunnel. (The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, to be exact). It was…completely rock awesome, a never-ending bridge that you can…barely see the end of.

We arrived in DC in the evening and found a nice little parking garage after only, maybe, an hour or two of a driving in the car and getting a general i9dea of the city tour. After a very much appreciated bathroom break at a Starbucks (this is very important and therefore noted because it was a VERY much appreciated bathroom break). Next we set off to see stuff such as the White House, Lincoln, and …something that I only refer to in a highly inappropriate way of which I will not write on the blog that my mom and dad read.

After wandering -we didn’t have a map of the city, you see- we found the white house. It was the first time we felt comfortable having Max. Before, people would ignore him or look at him funny, like, “What’s that white thing?” and “Why is it on a leash?” However, once we got to the busy area, the cute security guards would grin at us and him, and a couple even talked about how thirsty he looked. The kids loved him, and lots of cute little kids were way more interested in him then the White House. There was one girl was a Boston accent who I’m sure will become a comedian, she loved Max.

By the time we left the White House, it was getting darker, and we saw the rest of the sights y night, which was truly much better. Its gorgeous at night.

I was in awe at Lincoln, totally Jeff, he is so you, but older…and more haggard looking. But he even has your funky eyebrow! To get back to our car we walked by the Whitehouse again and there was a little Indian/Pakistani girl, maybe a year old or so, who was so cute. She loved Max and she was just so animated. It was really cute to see. We were inspired by how well Max acts to take him to Children's Hospital or something, kids love him, and he is completely excellent with them. He just stands there, eh doesn’t try to fight them, or over love them, or knock them over. He just stands there.

While trying to find our car, we saw all of the parking garages on the way were closed. This made me envision choosing which bench looked the comfiest to sleep on, and which homeless man looked like the best neighbor. Luckily however, after some semi-very-confused walking through the city at night, we were able to find our car, and our parking garage was still open. To end the evening we drove to a rest stop just outside of town and went to bed. (Despite “no overnight parking” signs.)

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A post by Laura (Thursday, Sept 6, 12:10pm)

We are at a random rest area in Arkansas, pulled over because I’m sleepy. It’s raining pretty hard…why does it have to turn to fall? We think a tornado is coming and the radio just refuses to tell us. Meanies. They probably figure natives will know, and they want to get rid of foreigners anyway.

Now that we left Tennessee, I don’t really know where I want to visit. I’m thinking we may head up to South Dakota and visit the Badlands again- it is gorgeous there, and I don’t really want to just wander around Nebraska and Kansas. No offense to those states.

Amy wants food… real food, or ice cream. Typical. J

Anyway…I think I want to spend a couple nights in a real campground and may be meet some other people. All we’ve met so far are some very nice, middle-aged people. I miss my 20-soethings. L

Bye,

Laura

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9/7/07 8:20pm (Laura)

Driving through Kansas. It’s beautiful! I had been told that there’s nothing in Kansas and had this completely distorted view of it.

Geez! Gas is $3.05 here at Westmoreland. That’s the highest its been this whole trip. Well I have to go pump some gas once Amy finds another (hopefully cheaper) gas station.

Last night was spent at a campground ~20 miles, or 40 miles, from Kansas City, Missouri. I wanted to get out early enough that we didn’t have to pay, seeing as the booth was closed when we got there, but Amy wanted to pay. In the morning, they came around before Amy had even awoke. I guess that settled it.

Apparently Westmoreland is smaller than I thought, so we are just heading to the next town. And I had even put my shoes back on. Figures.

Its hard to believe that the trip is so near its end. We have been out here for 15/16/17 days and only have 5 or so more. We are thinking that if we are still ahead of “schedule” at the end then we are/ might go down to Cali to see our Brothers new place. But we’ll see.

Here are the days since DC:

1. Drove west/ south towards Tenn., through West Virginia and Kentucky. The windy roads got to me- way too much wind to ever relax, and it was all back and forth, like this: (insert windy image here). Just like that. See the US map showing our route for the version in highlighter. Stopped somewhere and slept on the side of the road.
2. Got to Nashville early in the day (11am) and did a driving tour for a while, went to the park (where some birds wanted to eat us), and checked into a hotel. Oh yea, and ate a pizza. We stayed mostly to the hotel, the first time we just sat around on this trip. Amy convinced me to go swimming with her-which is quite the task.
3. Toured Nashville again, this time with some ideas of where we wanted to go. After seeing the Parthenon, Ryman, etc. etc. we went star house searching. With the help of our brother, we saw 6 or 7 peoples houses. He gave us turn by turn instructions-better than any gps I’ve ever seen. We left Nashville and slept in a rest area.
4. Headed towards Memphis and decided that was stupid so we headed back northwest toward Missouri. We slept there. Then leads to today.

The end! Thank you, thank you, no applause necessary. I insist! Ok, if you really want to.

8:01 pm

Central Nebraska, heading west

Mysterious white UFO seen in setting sky. Alien? NASA? Mysterious comet too large to disintegrate immediately? We may never know.

9/8/07 (Laura)

Badlands. The squivers are back! Yay! This time the air is cooled and we have the heat on in the car (windows open still, of course) It’s the opposite of last time we were here, when it was ~110 degrees and we were blasting the A/C. Plus, Amy’s driving, and pulling over at every scenic overlook-something I really like…last time she barely got out of the car. Amy yelled at me, telling me that its “too beautiful to be writing” – she’s right. She also got very defensive when she saw that I had mentioned her driving. J Perhaps I’ll continue later- we are on our way to find a campsite here- three camping nights in a row- wow!

A bunch of bison are in the road in front of us. Maybe I’ll get out and start running at them. I think it’s a good idea!

A little later: we found the campground- its free and pretty nice. I’m going to rearrange the car so we don’t have to later, then we are going to go driving some more.

We went on a drive because it was way too early (only 7pm), taking a loop that we hadn’t already gone on. We’ve arrived back now at 9:30 or so and we’re ready to lay and watch the billions of stars.

Badlands nighttime drive

Deer: ||||

Rabbits: |

Porcupine: |

Bison: herd, two on road
four, 2 really on the road (freaked out L) and 2 on side of row

On our drive home (to a campground in Badlands) from a … drive. It was pitch black and there were both a lot of animals on and off the road.

Bison have HUGE turds. –9/9, Amy

I like the badlands, they have reclycling everywhere. -9/9 8:45 am, Laura

1^st Grandchild bet:

Condition: if one of our guesses is right, the other must buy the correct guesser a beer.

Laura’s days: 8/21, 9/13, 3/14

Amy’s days: 3/04, 6/12, 8/24

*with signatures

9/9/07 8:30 pm

Got to camp creek. Amy was freaking out along the drive, and is freaking out now about rattles snakes…in the car. She never relents. I did live here 2 weeks- let me be outside the car for more then 30 seconds. Ok, I should stop J. It is nice to be back. Although it looks so different without twenty other people and twenty tents. It makes me miss field camp and my field campers luckily, only seven or so people graduated, and I can see most of them again come fall quarter. Im so glad I didn’t graduate.

Any who, back to our trip…the point of this journal. We are thinking of going down to California to see Jeff. I think its appropriate to start and end the trip by visiting him. Which is somewhat strange because I usually see him twice a year, not twice in three weeks.

Amy suggested rolling the window down and peeing outside the car. Creative solution to the peeing/rattlesnake phobia, but no, Amy, I will not let you get urine on my car.

Tomorrow we will visit Dillon and decide where we want to go next.

Night,

Laura

Amy wrote “hillbilly” on my leg today, maybe yesterday, and “I xcell” on my upper arm yesterday or the day before.

7:10 am 9/10/07 Sawtooth Mountains, Idaho

Laura pulls of the pass illegally at Amy’s encouragement. Surrounded by whispers to rush, Amy grabbed a plastic bag, snuck out of the car and ran to the eroded bedrock. After collecting four handfuls of sand, she runs back to the car as Laura accelerates back onto the road. No one will ever be the wiser to our illegal activity besides possibly you, you and you.

Disclaimer: it must be noted that there are signs saying DO NOT STOP. Plus, we only pulled half off the road, tis why it is illegal.

7:17 …7 minutes later.

Stopped of at the nicest smelling pit toilets I’ve been in in quite some time.

8:15 pm ..same day

Today was quite a ood day, so far at least. We woke up many times last night because it was so cold at Camp Creek. Amy switched spots with me because she was feeling clausterphobic and then added another layer of clothing and my hat around 5am… so when she woke she was in a different position and different clothes from when she fell asleep… that takes talent.

It was quite lovely in the morning, and we headed off toward Dillon @ about 8am (or 830, or 9). I showed Amy where we slept at the KOA. Then got McDonalds (again) for breakfast. I showed Amy the last study area (Dinwoody, oh Dinwoody!)- I’m half amazed that I actually found my way back. We went on the gravel roads, and amy got her first really-rough-road driving experience (yes, I let her drive for some of it… the car came out unharmed, than god almighty! I about crapped my pants and DID pee in them while she was getting air on some of those bumps. Joking)

We left Dillon @ around noon on 1230 and headed down towards Boise on our awy to Davis, Ca to visit Jeff. We took a route through the Sawtooth MTns in Idaho, where I collected a rock sample (a granitiod- yet to be better examined) and sand sample. It is gorgeous there, with lots of camping- we shall go bac there in the future.

We are now in Boise, and Amy is driving. She’s not too happy because shes on an interstate and doesn’t want to change lanes. She’s hoping the lane becomes an exit only. Oh everyone else left and she CHANGED LANES OMG! Good job amy!

Peace.

9/10/07

A song that amy wrote that cracked us up for hours:

I would climb the trees if I had legs

I would fly above the sky, if I had wings

I would watch the bumblebees god by, if I had eyes

I would make a pizza, if I had hands

I would pee, if I had a vagina

But I cant

Because I’m a soul

So I cant climb or fly or see or make a pizza or pee!

Because I’m a soul.

Repeat.

Dramatic hand gestures mandatory. Squeaky voice preferred.

1030pm

We pulled off on a little parking area alongside the road, which seems quite common in Oregon, and Idaho (unlike all of those times I was dead tired with nowhere to pull off). The stars are more amazing here than I can remember. I say that a lot. But here, although they may not be as many, as dense, as a couple of nights ago, we have the widest view I’ve seen. No trees or hills to be seen, only a couple small [cant read the word] in the distance. You can see the milky way down to the horizon, and a little star right at the horizon.

We are going to try to get an early start tomorrow, although I kind of doubt we’ll get it because we’ve learned to sleep in until 8-9am in the car. We are about halfway to Jeff’s from Dillon, Mt, so want to get in to Jeff’s at a reasonable time- which should be possible since most of the drive today was 25-30 mph.

Goodnight.

9/12

I registered for classes today @ Jeff’s place. We arrived here yesterday evening/afternoon, had some grilled cheese and tomato soup, and walked over to UC Davis campus. The walk was probably 5 miles or so, and took about 3 hours. All of our feet were tired by the time we got back, and I quickly fell asleep on the floor. Amy and I both sqitched to the couch in the middle of the night.

Today we are having jeff add to our country list, and are going to head over to the coast once Amy finished showering. We realized these are our first showers since Nashville (9/4… I think) making it 8 days since we last showered. Luckily we couldn’t smell each other- hopefully Jeff couldn’t either. Although he did suggest we shower numerous times. We just didn’t want to take the hint.

Accents

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I have discovered that the reason that people often think that I talk funny, or that I have an accent, is that I take peoples accents. Completely unintentionally. After country concerts I would always speak with an accent (annoying Laura) and it wouldn't go away for hours. So in response to a comment Shelley made, saying "try taking their accent and seeing if they notice": multiple times I've talked to them and they have no idea I'm foreign. One person asking where I groom Max, "In Washington"- Ohhhhhh they say. They had no idea that the accent I was talking with wasn't local, wasn't just me copying them, without me even noticing. One time I spoke to a woman at a gas station and Laura could of sworn that she said a comment that made no sense, until I told her it was I who said it. But with her accent.

Just thought I'd write this, cause it was an interesting thing I've noticed.

Amy

Acting Out

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Yesterday we drove from somewhere to somewhere else. I cant keep track. Ok, it was at a rest stop in southeast-ish Oklahoma and at a hotel in Monroe, Louisiana. It was a lovely drive and I’m enchanted by the south altogether so far. We stopped off at a dam and saw a sign about alligators being around. For some reason Amy wouldn’t let me near the water. How little trust! We headed toward New Orleans, our destination for the night. We stopped by another lake in Louisiana to stretch and relax a little. The water here is nothing like the lakes in Washington. You get in the water and it’s warmer than the air. Crazy, seeing as the air is 90 degrees or so. We swam for a wee bit and decided that we had to head on. It was, after all, getting to be around 5 or 6pm or so and we had a long drive to get to New Orleans. As we were leaving, our car decided to throw a tantrum and made some scraping noises. We looked at it there and saw nothing, but soon noticed that, oh, we have no power steering or A/C. Great. We headed to the nearest large city in order to get a repair shop. Seeing as it was Sunday, nothing was open, so we got a hotel in Monroe. $60 seemed like a lot of money compared to the $0 we spend every time we sleep in the car. We got it worked on today at a dealership- it was just a belt of some sort that had broke. The people there were some of the friendliest I’ve met. Amy loves their accent. In fact it seems to be the thing she loves most about this area.

We made it to just outside New Orleans tonight, after touring Start, La and Star, Mississippi (I cant remember it’s abbreviation) – the hometowns of Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. (Start, an pretty empty town with nothing in it, was one of the most exciting things for Amy on this whole trip. She loves Tim McGraw that much.) This hotel is even more expensive than last night, but it’s totally worth it to have internet, right? Yeah.

Well, I’m out for tonight. We have pictures on the photobucket account from the last few days (I’m not sure if we’ll get the ones from today up or not)

Out,

Laura

Titleless

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Yesterday we were driving towards Santa Fe from Arches and noticed that Mesa Verde is actually on the way. We had originally planned on skipping Mesa Verde, seeing Guadelupe Nat’l Park instead. However, Guadelupe was out of the way, Mesa Verde wasn’t. Therefore, we stopped by. As is necessary with lots of the roads we drove on, there was construction. Not bad construction, normally done in 5-10 minutes, but the kind where you wait, follow a car on a skinny windy path for a long time, then you’re free. Once we got to the top of the mountains (why did they choose such a cliff like place to live?! Not cool. Amy no like cliffs.) we couldn’t really go to a lot of places without a) a ticket, and b) with a dog. We would do two methods: Laura goes and sees it and Amy stays in the car to make sure it doesn’t get too hot, or we go, but are gone for no longer then 2 minutes, with windows down and with lots of water for max.

We didn’t get on the road again until closer to dinner time, but we managed to get to Santa Fe, which was our goal. We slept in the car again, about 100 yards uphill from a campground. We just stayed in the parking lot. Its cheaper. J This morning we drove around Santa Fe, the capital, a very beautiful place. You’ll see pictures, but it was all adobe and themed and very nice, very spanish. (New Mexico definitely gets two thumbs up, Santa Fe in particular).

After lots of driving (through Northern Texas) we got to Oklahoma. By the way, I (Amy) LOVE southern accents. Oklahoma also gets two thumbs up (so far, its where we’re gonna stay tonight). We went to this little park that was completely flooding, but it was during sunset and it was amazing beautiful. We like the people there too! There were some really funny campers who joked with us.

And finally, we bought the camera adapter so now we can put picutres up on photobucket. Not like you ever knew the difference, seeing as we haven’t even had internet yet to post these up.

But there you go! A nice little update. Hopefully eventually we can actually get these posts up.

Amy

Written: 8.25.07

State Pictures...

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Our goal of taking pictures as failed miserably so far.

Entering Oregon: Laura changed lanes before the “real” sign, so all we got was a small, crappy sign.

Entering Idaho: There was construction so they moved us to the other side of the freeway, the sign, however, remained far across the valley, too small in the picture to see.

Entering Utah: Mile Post 3. Mile post 3?? What the? Are we in Utah?

Entering Colorado: Mile Post 4. Mile post 4??? What the? Are we in Colorado?

We will, however, try to continue this tradition.

Meanwhile, we are greatly enjoying the book on CD we purchased, called “In the Woods”. I want to play it constantly, both Laura, the pooperscooper of the group, says it makes her tired. She does enjoy it though..

We’d like to apologize that you receive all of these posts at one time, unlike in Washington, there is not wifi at every rest stop. (very upsetting, I agree)

Adios,

Amy

Began: 8/23/07

Perfected until the 25th

My time to shine

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Aha! Finally I (Laura) have control of the entry! Amy decided to let me sight see and took over the driving responsibilities for a little. Which means that I’m free to write whatever my heart contents. Anything from the itch on my ankle to where we stayed yesterday is fair game, if you ask me. Ok ok I wont bother you with the ankle thing… plus my ankle doesn’t actually itch, that was just an example. Anyway, last night we rolled into Moab at around 9 or 10. Arches itself was full (campsites… it wasn’t physically filled in with packing peanuts or foam or anything), so we found another campsite off our handy AAA campbook.

It said there was one about 9 miles up this small road, including 6 miles of gravel road, so we headed out there. Keep in mind it was pretty much pitch black out. The road started winding around a canyon, winding up the side of it. With steep sides. I was calm- I don’t normally drive off the road, why would now be any different? Amy on the other hand… Amy oh Amy. She was freaking out the entire time. When we got to where our campsite was, we decided that, eh, we didn’t want to stay there. Partly because we didn’t really know where we were, partly because we thought it was full (which we learned was not true later), so we turned around and looked for a motel. Did you realize that motels are expensive? The cheap one was going to be around $70. no way jose. Back to camping. We found a really nice site just north of Arches.

This morning we checked out the park, seeing as the last time I was there was when I was 3ft tall. It’s hard to see much with a dog, as they arent allowed most places. But we did some nice car viewing. Not watching cars. Don’t be silly. After looking at the awesome geology, and going ga-ga over some amazing cross-bedding (OMG it was beautiful! And I’m not even a soft rock geologist), we decided to go back to the scary cliff area from last night. And Amy was going to drive it. No, she didn’t kill us. Unless she did, and I came back from the dead to write this. Now you’ll never know if we made it back alive or not! HA! We drove along the road for about 30 minutes or so. It is incredibly beautiful there- I almost want to say that it’s more beautiful than Arches, but that feels like it’s blasphemous or something. So I wont actually say it… you can just know I was thinking it.

And now, now we are on our way to Santa Fe. At least that’s the plan. I’ll let you know later where we actually ended up.

Oh yeah, we still don’t have a cord to upload our pictures to the computer. If/when we get one, we’ll start uploading pictures (granted we have internet access- I’m thinking we should just start sitting nearby wi-fi hotspots and stealing it… we just are yet to go to that effort).

Peace out,

Laura

Written:

8/24/07 1:45pm

Generalizations, part 1.

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Washington: all the Canadians speed. Reason, best answer is that they are used to going “20” over, they feel more comfortable with the idea. If we go to Canada, we don’t want to go more then 5 over, even though in Kilometers, that isn’t that much. Another possibility: Canadians are crazy. (This may not be about Washingtonians per se, but, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Washingtonians and no generalizations can be made. We are all unique individuals. That is not true about other states though.)

Oregon: The gas stations are ridiculous, they’re not self pay, meaning you can’t just get gas and go, especially since when you get there you can’t see anybody nearby to fill you up.

Idaho: …they like to widen their roads near cities…

Utah: Very Mormon. The billboards are all for homes, kids and marriage. For instance “two toddlers, twins on the way? Buy our washing machine.”