Phew 3- Whee!

Ohhhhh. Big sigh. I've climbed out of my pit of despair far enough to tackle the third and last installment of my journey home with Ameranth.

(Well, that's an exaggeration- it was more like a pit of doldrums-which I guess would be more of a puddle of doldrums, because isn't it related to the ocean?- but really, "puddle of doldrums" just sounds pitiful. Anyway. The days are getting longer, my little blue light at breakfast is helping and changing my pill to suppertime has stopped that mid-morning slump and helped my sleep.)

Let's see, we left Sally at my cousin's house to find her own way back to Florida since we were on a time crunch now, and headed east through Montana. It had snowed the night before and we were hoping the storm would take a different route than we planned. Didn't happen that way.

East of Billings Route 90 heads south and we took a very little detour to the Little Bighorn Battlefield Park. I would love to go back in warmer weather- we could only drive as far as the Last Stand hill since icy conditions had closed the park roads. It was definitely too cold and windy, not to mention too far, to walk. Looking at the folds of the hills and gullies, I could easily imagine both sides nervously dreading being surprised by hidden foes.

Watching the clouds and checking the weather forecasts, we decided to stay on 90, rather than heading further south to try to circle the storm. We cut across a corner of Wyoming and made it just into South Dakota before the storm really slowed us down. Dusk, heavy snow and icing combined for an early night in Rapid City. The next day was pretty much a straight drive east, cold and cloudy. We did see some interesting art in a field as we drove by.

65 mph makes good photography challenging. And yes, that is a giant upside-down hammer out there.

The weather slowed us down again, as we had hoped to get further into Minnesota on Friday than we did. But Saturday morning we made it to Austin where we stopped to visit Ladyslipper and her mom. It was so nice to see her again.

                                   She has a little hair now too.

Her toes are long, long enough for a good grip, just like her father's are!

This visit was definitely a high point of the trip.

Leaving after lunch, we crossed the Mississippi River into Wisconsin

 and made it to the outskirts of Chicago in the dark, hoping to make it through before the morning rush hour.  That didn't happen either, but we weren't held up too badly.

Just caught a glimpse of Lake Michigan as we headed through Indiana,

on past Ohio and Cleveland.

 We saw several huge flocks of birds taking off that morning, all at the same time and all headed north. As we commented on their mixed up direction, each group swung around and flew south. I assume they needed to take off into the wind.

Pennsylvania went by quickly and we were done south of Buffalo after a very long day. The next day we zipped across New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and, ta da, we were home again! I think Ameranth and I each drove 6 hours that day. J was very happy to see us, as was Boomer.

No pictures taken of that last day as it was old news to both of us and we were focused on getting home- just in time for Thanksgiving too. I left on November 1st and was back on the 21st, having made a big loop around the states. I don't even remember how many miles it was. I would definitely do it again although more slowly and with more sightseeing! And with J.

Phew! 2

Finally getting back to writing more about our trip home after I left off  here. We left San Diego on Friday and headed for Las Vegas to see an old friend. We met in high school, roomed together for some of college (she finished, I didn't) and mostly keep in touch meeting in R.I. when she comes back to visit her mom. I was excited about seeing Karen and Tom in their home and mildly disappointed when their son opened the door and said neither parent was home yet. However, it turned out Karen needed emergency surgery that night and we never got to visit at all. Very disappointing but so glad she is recovering just fine!

We left early to get out of their hair and headed north through Utah. We decided to take the slightly longer road through Zion National Park, which was beautiful and well worth it.

However. The road started to wind up again, as we saw this tiny opening in the cliff ahead.

Ameranth hopped out to check out a marker and told us that:

I hadn't had any problems with the mountain roads so far, despite my pre-trip worries.  This, though, this could be a problem. I didn't think I could drive across some bridge to get to that hole in the wall and started anticipating the humiliation of doing a U-turn and driving back all those miles through the park. Imagine my relief when we saw this ahead:

That tiny hole we saw? Turned out to be a 'window' opening in the tunnel. When I uploaded photos later, I found that Ameranth might have eased my mind had she read the plaques as she snapped the pics.

We zipped through Utah, managing a glimpse of Salt Lake as we drove by and got to Idaho, which is remarkably flat in the south.

 

We headed northwest through Oregon to Washington, for a special meeting on Tuesday in Bellevue. (It was very geekily exciting for us, but I am not at liberty to write about it yet)

Cattle, windmills and mountains.

Just after driving into Washington, we had to pass through a dust storm which luckily didn't cover the road for long.

As we left the plains behind and headed over Snoqualmie Pass towards Seattle the weather changed a bit.

Soon we were driving in whiteout conditions which really slowed us down. We made it safely to Bellevue with just enough daylight to scope out our top-secret destination for the next day and get to a motel.

****very fun Tuesday which will only be interesting to us, then headed east out of town*****

We stopped after crossing the Columbia River to get a picture of the Vantage Bridge Wild Horses Sculpture. 

We also stopped for gas in Ritzville and got a couple of nice pictures as we drove through the small town.

Our next goal was Kalispell, Montana and my cousin Steve's house. I think I've mentioned that I hadn't seen him for about 30 years and had never met his wife Lisa, or their son Dalton, but thanks to the family emails it was like seeing old friends.

Montana was beautiful and I hope I get to visit again in warmer weather- and for longer. Ameranth and I were off in the morning, sadly leaving Sally there to stay over Thanksgiving, then fly home to Florida. We had a lot of fun with her on the road.

I'll try not to take as long with the final leg of the trip- I know certain relatives and friends have been waiting!

Cutting it short

We listened to the TV news about the Iowa Caucus yesterday as I gave J a haircut. We don't usually discuss politics much as we have different viewpoints and don't enjoy arguing for argument's sake.

But, he asked me who I liked and then expressed disbelief at my answer. After I gave him my reasoning, he paused, then said "I don't want to talk politics while you're cutting my hair".

Smart man. 

You talkin' to me?

Bits of talkytalk at our house recently:

Ameranth (checking on her new recipe in the oven) : "Yummy smell! And it even made extra muffins!"

Me: "You mean extra muffins just spontaneously appeared as it baked? That is a good recipe!"

Ameranth: ".......yeah"

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As I passed by Ameranth on the way to the bathroom, she's explaining how she asked her Internet friends for soup recipes.

Me: "Hold that thought"

As the door closes, I hear : "oh, that's not going to happen"
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Spoiler Alert!

Last night J watched the movie Hanna, and I came into the room for the last 45 minutes. The title character is a young girl who (from what I saw) is on the run across Europe trying to evade bad guys and get to her supposed father. Bred in a lab and trained to be a fighting machine, she lives (although her father kills and is killed) and the final scene is her finishing off the bad guy boss lady.

J explains the significance of the scene, which echoes the beginning scene, and he states that it was a good movie.

Me: "But what happens now? Everyone she knows is dead- how will she live? What will she do?"

J looks at me in astonishment " I don't care"

And that is why we don't usually watch movies together.