It’s been a long time since I updated this blog, so I have a lot to write (especially since some big things have happened in that time). Unfortunately, Matt and I had some trouble getting our cable internet set up and had to wait until Saturday for a technician to come out and fix it. Anyway, I suppose I’ll start with last Thursday and see how far I get in this post.
Thursday at 3:50AM was the real start of my summer adventure. Dad and I were planning to wake up at four and hit the road, but apparently I was so anxious that I woke up ten minutes early even without an alarm clock. I had packed almost everything in the car the night before, but we still didn’t end up leaving until about 4:30. Of course, our first stop was at the gas station down the street to fill up the tank before getting on the expressway.
Dad drove first, while I slept in the passenger seat. When I woke up again at about 6:40, we were 30 miles from Indiana. Outside, it was still a little dark. It was also a little rainy, though it stopped pretty soon. I think those sprinkles are the last rain I’ve seen.
By 7:06, we were in Indiana. Dad kept driving, and we passed into Illinois at 9:07. This was our first time change. We hit a little traffic going past Chicago, but really not as much as I expected. Again, Dad drove on while I sat in the passenger seat. By this time we were a few CDs into “Zorro,” a book on CD that we took out from the library before we left. With 15 CDs altogether, we were hoping it would last us for a good part of the trip.
We passed into Iowa around 10:31 Central Time (seven hours into the trip). This would be Dad’s last state before I started driving. Iowa’s pretty wide, though, so we didn’t enter Nebraska until 2:24. Finally, at the next gas station, Dad let me take over. He’d been driving non stop for at least 15 hours now.
Speaking of gas stations, we were driving a Mazda 6, which has a 16 gallon tank and, which we discovered, gets almost exactly 30mpg while driving at 80mph, so we were able to go about 400 miles pretty comfortably between gas stations. This was really nice, especially compared to last time we drove across the country, when we were in a conversion van that only got 11 miles per gallon.
Nebraska was the longest state that we had to cross, and I drove almost all of it. We had to fill up the gas tank again near the end of Nebraska, and we decided that we would only drive until Cheyenne before stopping for dinner, so Dad took over until then. We crossed into Wyoming at 7:27 PM.
In Cheyenne, we got off the expressway looking for gas and food. We discovered that they were painting lines on the roads right at that time, though, so we were a little worried that the car would end up with white spots (and road paint is nearly impossible to remove). Nevertheless, we ended up eating at a Village Inn – I had an ok-but-not-the-best Reuben sandwich, and Dad had a hamburger (I think – this was over a week ago). I was driving again when we left Cheyenne. On the way out we saw a big Union-Pacific train station, but unfortunately we weren’t able to get a picture.
By now it was after 9:00 central time, which meant we had been on our trip for almost 18 hours. I was starting to get tired, and Dad was sound asleep next to me. Also, it was pretty dark already and over the next hour and a half or so (I don’t remember exactly how long I drove), I encountered a lot of construction and way more traffic than I expected at that time of night in Wyoming. As you might guess, a lot of the traffic was comprised of big semi-trucks making their way through the night. Eventually I knew I was too tired to keep it up, but Dad had woken up, so I pulled off at the next exit and he prepared to take over again. While we were switching places, we got a chance to look up at the stars for a little while. Without a cloud in the sky, and without any of the lights that we have in Boston or Stow, it really was a magnificent sight. If I wasn’t so tired and cold (it was pretty chilly that late), it would have been nice to stay for a little while looking at them.
But we had to keep moving. I knew Dad was probably exhausted by this time; nevertheless, he wanted to see how far we could go. Once I was in the passenger seat, I didn’t care; I was sound asleep. I guess the night did get to Dad, though. Sometime around midnight he drove into one of the parking lots that they have on the side of the expressway for sleeping truckers and we both slept for a while.
Three hours later, we were up again. We stopped for gas (and coffee this time) at the next gas station, but after that we decided not to stop until Reno. At 5:29AM, we entered Utah. Dad was driving at this point, since he was rested and had the coffee to sip on. The drive into Salt Lake City is pretty exciting on Route 80. Basically, you’re just rolling down the mountain, trying not to go too fast, and watching out for all the big trucks careening down along side of you. It could have been more nerve-racking, but we were in a good car that handled it well. Plus, we were able to get way more than 30mpg for that part of the trip.
I took over the driving again after getting gas in Salt Lake City. This meant I could drive the easiest part of the trip – the salt flats. Dad fell asleep again, and I drove along at 80-85 mph, barely moving the steering wheel at all for three hours. We entered Nevada at 8:05 Pacific Time. Immediately afterward, we stopped for gas; the first exit had gas stations in both Nevada and Utah, so we could compare them to find the cheapest. As it turned out, Nevada was about 30 cents per gallon more expensive than Utah, so we ended up with gas costing 2.949 per gallon after driving about a mile down the road.
Nevada’s another pretty long state, so we didn’t reach Reno until 12:25 or so. We were planning on getting a really nice, inexpensive meal, since the casinos offer those to get people inside. To our dismay, however, we discovered that most of the really good deals didn’t start until 5:00. We walked around for a while and eventually decided to eat at the Circus Circus buffet. The food was not actually that great. They had an Asian section with wontons and egg rolls taht didn’t taste too terribly Asian; they had pasta salad and fried chicken, etc. Maybe my view was tempered by the fact that I started to get a bit of a stomach ache while I was eating. Dad didn’t eat very much, either; we decided that it was probably because we’d basically only been nibbling on food for the last day and a half, so our stomachs weren’t ready to eat so much yet.
We got back on Route 80 around 1:44 and entered California at 1:56. At this point, we were in the mountains again, and the scenery was quite amazing. We had about 160 miles left before we would arrive at my uncle’s house in Vallejo. Halfway there, we remembered that the Jelly Belly factory is an exit or two before his exit, so we thought we could stop there and pick up some Jelly Belly jellybeans for people back home.
Dad and I couldn’t quite remember exactly where it was, though, so we got off at a place that looked very familiar and drove around for about ten minutes. We couldn’t find it anywhere, so we gave up and got back on the expressway. Before the next exit, we saw a big sign for the factory, and our hopes went back up. We had just gotten off too early, so we could still make it before they closed – it was only 4:45. At that moment, however, the animated sign changed and the hours appeared. The factory was open until 4:30. Alas, we had just missed it.
We were going to be at Uncle Lee’s house soon, though, so missing the factory couldn’t get our spirits down. Within 20 minutes, we got off the expressway at Columbus Parkway, drove up the street and pulled in his driveway. We had made the trip that Google Maps said should take 40 hours in 39, even with the stops. That’s pretty good.
Well, that brings my blog up to last Friday, which is good enough for now. I’ll write more later about moving in and my first week of work. Until then!
