Another Journey

We do this each year, one way or another. Head north, head south, take the fast route, the scenic route. We've arrived, safely, are recovering, pretty much, and between naps. I'll just give the info that makes this trip a little different. Like the dead armadillos perhaps. Or my separating car bumper. Or... well, I'll  let you read this.

Packing was put off as long as possible. Even the list making was. We weren't sure exactly when we'd go, waiting to find out whether Steve's back treatment would do any good. As it turned out, it has done some good, giving him the relief of getting his pain levels down to a 5 (on a scale of 1 - 10) on occasion, but still prone to 8 or 9 given any reason. Like bumpy roads. Still, those times of 5 are  much better than before, even though not as good as hoped. But we gave ourselves an extra day before leaving, went the fastest, flattest route, aka boring, and the cheapest, meaning Motel 6 and no gas prices over $5.49.9/gallon. That of course was Sun City, our first fill and worst fill. Best price was Texas, $4.39.9, a local spot just inside their border along 40 which happened to be making their own breakfast "tacos" which really were burritos, but with a chorizo sauce Steve would go right back for now if it were feasible. 

I'm insisting no.

But let's take this in order.

Day 1: "Too Little Too Late:

The plan was to make Tucumcari. Awake by 3 AM (check), everything done and on the road by 5:30 (almost check, missed it by 5) and 600 miles later, bed. The route was planned a little differently than straight up tp Flagstaff and west on 40, instead cutting off from 17 in Camp Verde on 260, angling east on 260 to 87 unto Winslow. It passes through some beautiful high and wooded country. We actually saw a fawn near the road on the way. And Trees! Real actual trees!

While I often get up at 3 these days, I also usually get in a nap for another hour, perhaps at 5, maybe 7 or 8, perhaps not til after lunch or even around suppertime. Whatever, however it falls out, there is a nap, because the next bedtime is around 9.

No real nap today. There was a 10 minute snooze just before we crossed the border into New Mexico. Just enough to keep me going till Albuquerque, climbing up Sandia Mountain in early afternoon rush hour traffic, before things had a chance to get terrible. I was badly in need of a break. It arrived in the form of a gas stop, a short dog walk, a pit stop, and a bitty bag of popcorn. So the issue of needing a nap returned about a hundred miles before Tucumcari.
 

Adrenaline helps, have you noticed? As we headed west, the main thing on our minds was the storm in the distance, whether it was moving south out of our way, was the pavement showing signs it had rained recently, were those dark rumble strips wet? and hey! Can you smell that? Rain! Woo hoo!

Right about then, a few miles shy of Santa Rosa, we saw blue flashing lights ahead, in the freeway median just past a bridge. Nope, correction, two sets of blue flashers. Two cops then. Something was going on. Not just ordinary road construction, which, come to think of it, AZ didn't seem to be doing much of. They stood outside their squad card, waving us to slow down with large yellow flags. Trucks started putting on their flashers, we started slowing and bunching up. Both lanes. I put our lights on, slowed to within 40 feet of the semi ahead, and promptly got honked at by my tailgater.

WTF? Did they know know there was no way faster than however fast the traffic was going? Nobody would be cutting in to come between us if I stayed back that small amount, but HONNNK! I ignored them, other than exchanging a few choice comments with Steve. All my tailgaters get the same treatment: I slow down. Maybe they’ll leave. This one can’t of course, but if you honk, I slow. After about two miles of this, stop and go, creep a bit each time, there were finally red flashing lights up ahead in the median.  Our (right) lane slid over onto the shoulder, and the left lane slid even further over to merge with ours. Most everybody took turns. There's always a couple, but most of them did. We were all in this together after all.

As we got close, then passed, we saw a jackknifed semi in the median, three squad cars around the front and three tow trucks around the rest of the truck. And…we were gone. Just like that.

Just as we started gaining speed again, Steve read the new sign along the road: “Safety zone next 12 miles.” We both laughed, and almost simultaneously said “A little to little, too late!”

DAY 2: The Lonnng Day.

This was the planned 700 mile leg, aiming for Lenexa, KS. There were no reasonable accommodations at the 600 mile mark or thereabouts, and as grueling as we expected, it make the last leg a "mere" 500. Our room had been comfy, nice beds, with an AC unit in the wall which actually worked. There were a couple issues: the door didn't lock properly, the safety catch coming out of the woodwork and the deadbolt requiring much adjusting to engage.  Despite the website, there was no fridge or microwave, no coffee pot, and it turned out the toilet stopped flushing after the first two. I opened up the top to see if I could adjust something, like a chain which might have come off the lever to let water out the bottom, but it was plumbed very differently than I'd ever seen. We just left them a note about it. Heaven forbid they'd think we were that kind of people! Noise levels proved the walls and ceiling were thin, but they usually are and we managed sleep anyway. 

Until 3AM. Even after losing an hour crossing into New Mexico, my internal clock adjusted to their 3 AM, and we'd lose another hour on this leg. Steve was awake and we agreed there was no reason to stick around. Since I'd gotten to bed almost the minute we were inside the door, I was feeling well rested. And for sure this early there'd be less traffic!

Back on the road, we had an excellent view of the stars, particularly Venus, very bright despite the sky lightening up, and usually dead ahead. I clearly identified Cassiopeia out my window, the first I'd seen of it since... well, I guess last May in Utah on our big trip. Minnesota skies had been mostly obscured all summer with Canadian forest fire smoke.  Phoenix skies aren't helpful. Orion maybe, at their clearest.

Wind farms began to show up, then Venus disappeared just as we were wondering whether the soon-to-be rising sun was going to stab our eyeballs. Clouds dead ahead! Low ones. Suddenly the windmills showed only the bottoms of their towers and the rotating blades only showed about a third of their bottom blade at any time. Flash! You see it. Flash! You don't. Flash! The next blade's bottom is in view. Abruptly the semi ahead of us put its flashers on and slowed way down: fog! We were in and out of fog the next 60 miles or so, with it finally rising for the heat island of Amarillo. As we'd stopped for gas much earlier, there was no need to do more than drive straight through, and by the time the clouds ended, the sun was so high it wasn't a factor for driving.

Much as I hate Texas on principle (several of them in fact), Steve commented that they did one thing right, at least this far into the trip. The road smoothed out the minute we crossed out of Mew Mexico. His back was ready for that!

Most of the drive was uneventful. Just very, very, very long.  We did see more wildlife along the way though aside from cows all over, “life” was a misnomer. Call it roadkill: a small skunk, several turtles, a couple armadillos. I’m used to thinking of that latter as being in Texas, but these both were along the turnpike in Kansas.  We finally hit our motel in Lenexa, a western suburb of Kansas City, KS, about 6:30.

Heather Too was being her usual self on the trip. It takes her a while to adjust to changes, so her intake of both food and water was down for these first two days. She’s contented in the back seat on top of two soft duffels Steve packs his stuff in, with one of his sweatshirts on top to snuggle into. She’s happy to get out and sniff all the other pooches who’ve used the pet areas on our stops, but by the end of the 2nd day had very little of her own to contribute. She's a true desert dog, hates grass, especially if it's at all wet, either from dew or rain. She keeps pulling at her leash to get off the grass. Where's that gravel back yard she's used to?

I’d figured out how many hours we should have driven, and kept coming up short. It finally hit me: road construction! Lower speeds, single lanes, even over a weekend. From 4:40 AM to 7:30 PM, all freeway from Tucumcari to KC, Kansas. It was supposed to be 700 miles, but turned out to be about 750. When we hit our room, it looked exactly like the previous one, with one important difference: the wall unit for AC didn't exist, just the overhead unit for heat. In theory anyway. We were chilly, so I turned the heat on. The room got colder. And colder. We hadn't packed winter pajamas! I had a snuggely warm dog, but even the bath towels for extra blankets didn't help. I finally got smart enough to turn off the "heat," and Steve went to the car and brought back two sets of sweats. They were almost enough. This was well after the young children running all over and yelling outside our door for about 3 hours after we tried to get some sleep, because of course they did. Did those kids even have parents? Steve made me promise no more Motel 6 stays. Period.

Day 3: Lost!

I think we both got about 3 hours of sleep that night, and this time didn't hit the road until after sunrise. Shortest leg, but most grueling ahead. Getting lost didn't help.

I need to explain that, taking pride as I do in in finding my way  around almost everywhere, particularly when I've driven through there several times before. But northbound through the Kansas Cities is always a problem on their good days, although I've nearly figured them out. This wasn't one of their good days. And the MO side isn't known for good signage.

35 was under construction. Closed, even. We were to take something else, but I was still trying to figure out their sign which stated "closed 12th St" - or maybe Avenue. I didn't know, nor care. Cones narrowed that section of freeway to one lane... and we'd zoomed past it. Now the only signs discussed 70 and 760 and I had no clue where any of those went, although I had noted that 70 was closed. So... take 760 then? (Or was it 670? Remember how sleep deprived I was.) We opted for the one with a 6 in it, and subsequent signs gave that route as 35 and whatever that number was, so I thought we were OK, but we kept going and going west. I needed north. I finally found an off ramp that didn't threaten no return freeway access, located a convenience store open that early on a Sunday morning, and stopped for help.

Apparently she was used to people like me who couldn't figure out the bad signage. She'd been one of us her first couple of times through there and she already knew the roads. She gave verbal directions that sounded simple: turn left back onto the street we'd taken to her store, go under that piece of freeway, under the next one which was the closed 70, and eventually we'd see signs for north 35. Easy peasy. Right? But then she decided to check with Google and print us out a map. It would get us to Des Moines, but I could do that part myself, if I could only get back on to 35. The map had a size scale where the needed part was a pin prick in size. NOT HELPFUL!!! I decided, after thanking her, that I should just trust her verbal information. The six sheets of printout had as instructions 2 and 3, to go to the light where we'd turned in, take a left (number 2) and take a right (number 3) onto the very same street. We had 6 sheets of scratch paper for the car!

Sure enough, her original directions were easy to follow. We were back on 35 northbound, heading out of Kansas (again!), and this time Steve saw a sign I'd missed both times through the tangle that told us which road to take instead. Moreover, more decent signs followed. FINALLY! Homeward bound.

It was pretty much same old same old from there, a stop for gas, a rest stop with a nap attempt (failed), an oil check (fine), breakfast (free because they got our order screwed up AND we caught it at the window), another nap attempt (successful), lunch, and finally Minnesota! We were back in roadkill territory, but this time is was all fawns. Every single one. There were well over a dozen along the shoulder, every few miles. No adults, just another fawn. Eventually there were a couple of widely separated raccoons just for variety, before the last dead fawn.

Finally we hit the Twin Cities, and 35E is still under construction, or at least constricted right in downtown St. Paul. How many years has that been now? 10? Seems like I was still working when they were doing the north end, around 694 and up. It really started to feel weird when we hit the Chisago Lakes area. It was home. But it wasn't home. I was simply too tired by then to deal with it, just needing to get home safely. I got Paul to help unload the car and we discussed the changes to the yard - or what still hadn't changed despite last summer's work. (They're called weeds.) More of some flowers are blooming however, like 4 columbine plants instead of last year's one. Perhaps I really made some progress after all.

I spent my last brain reserves making the adjustment for the TV from Dish in AZ to Dish in MN. Different schedules, offerings, even the remote. Where the heck is that button? How do I turn this on/off again? Eventually I set a few timers and decided to go to bed. Unpacking would wait. 1846 miles later, and We. Were. Finally. Here.

Uff da.