I love road trips. Like, there's nothing like a road trip to make me happy. I grew up taking road trips with my grandparents Caruthers. They would pick me up in Lubbock at the end of every school year, and we would spend three days driving across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, finally arriving in Tallahassee, Florida. My grandmother always packed a cooler full of food--ham sandwiches, grapes, and cans of Dr. Pepper. I would take up residence in the back seat of whatever behemoth car they owned at the time--I know the "Caprice Classic" was a favorite for years, but I think there was a Chevy Impala at some point. For a six-year old, it was like having my own room! We would talk about anything and everything, and we would laugh a lot. My granddad stuck to the speed limit of 55 mph, but my grandmother laughed in his face when she got behind the wheel and took the car up to 65 mph. My grandparents taught me a lot on those trips, but to this day, I still remember every capital of every state in the US. I loved those trips.
When I knew that a trip was in order to take Ethan across country to BYU, my heart beat a little bit faster. Road trip!! John did everything he could to convince me that I didn't need to go, but he finally came around to the thought that for Ethan to drive 30 hours solo was insane, and that I would make a great co-pilot. In actuality, we all knew that I would be the pilot, but you know....
In our family, everything we do is "about the story". Some family members say our actions are really "for a good blog post". It doesn't matter--the crazier the happening, the better story afterwards (SCUBA 101, anyone?)
Wednesday morning dawned non-snowy in Pennsylvania. This is a good thing, nay a great thing, because I suffer from panic attacks in one and only one condition--driving on snowy roads. I had been checking the weather forecasts for multiple cities along I-80 for the past week, and all looked good to go. Phew, what a relief!
Ethan had his final orthodontist appointment in the morning, after which we were scheduled to leave. He went out to his car (to leave for his appointment), and low and behold, the car's battery was dead. Or in Monty Python terminology DEED. No problem--Greenie was parked next to the Insight in the garage, but he couldn't figure out how to open the hood. He called me out. I got the hood open, and he got the jumper cables. Crazy thing? Greenie doesn't have a negative knobie-thingie on the battery (I know, my automobile terminology knowledge is off the charts...) We took out the owner's manual for Greenie, but couldn't figure it out. Fine. We had the Element.
We pulled Greenie out of the garage, and Ethan drove the Element in. He had those batteries hooked up in no time. I then (stupidly) told him to just take the Element--it was all charged up and ready to go, and it would be his final drive in what has been his car from the start. He drove away, had a successful orthodontist appointment and returned.
We packed up the Insight, got ready to go, and turned the key. It was dead. Again. Yes, I hadn't let it charge long enough from the Element. Cue rolling of the eyes, by me, at myself.
Out went Greenie again, and in came the Element. Charging complete.
We locked up the house, I left my set of keys in the house, and I ran out as the garage door closed. We got back in the Insight, and I realized that we had forgotten two things.
And we had no keys to the house.
Crazy thing? We always leave our house unlocked. We live in a rural part of Pennsylvania with an incredibly low crime rate, and we never worry. Plus, if anyone was to ever break into our house, the dogs would eat them alive. For real.
However, the side door to our house had been banging into John's 1970 Monte Carlo and leaving dents, so he had decided to lock the door. Just the night before, when the kids came stomping around to the front of the house and ringing the bell because they couldn't get in the side, I had told John that he had to unlock that side door. And he needed to do it NOW before someone was locked out and nobody was home.
Yep, you guessed it. He didn't do it, and there we were, locked out of the house. The crazy thing is that we keep an extra key in the garage. The garage that was currently closed and locked.
We ran around the house, hoping that maybe Pearl had learned to unlock the doors (since she can easily open any of them). No chance.
After prying up a frozen and icy doormat to one of the doors, I happened to find a KEY!! We beat off the dogs (they aren't used to us coming in a different door) and got back in.
Meanwhile, we were now two hours late leaving.
We started down the driveway and decided that we shouldn't stop at our local gas station for gas because we would need to turn the car off, and we weren't sure that it had charged properly yet. No problem--we would head to nearby Tyrone and fuel up there.
We drove almost all the way to Tyrone (on the way to Altoona), before we realized that Tyrone is NOT on the way to Utah. It's the way to Altoona which is where we usually head for everything. We hadn't even thought about going a different way, because I-99 is just habit for us. So, Ethan very stealthily made a u-turn on one of the policeman turn-arounds, and we headed back to Philipsburg (on the way to I-80).
Two things were wrong with our fill-up plan: we were driving a hybrid, and we needed to climb a mountain.
The car initially said that we had 40 miles to drive before the tank was empty. However, climbing that mountain, we watched the miles tick off (about 1 mile per 10 seconds). We were certain that we would NOT make it to the gas station in Philipsburg. I comforted our minds by pointing out that no self-respecting red neck would go without fuel--we could just stop at any double-wide trailer along the way and ask for some gas. Shoot, I would even PAY them for it, and pay them more than they paid at the pump.
I've never been so happy to realize that on the other side of going UP a mountain, is going DOWN a mountain. When the Insight said that we had ZERO miles left, Ethan just let up on the gas and coasted down that mountain. Like, we were coasting for a good five minutes and thankfully pulled into the first gas station we saw (at this point, I didn't care about price!).
We wondered if this was some kind of omen for the rest of the trip. How could we not with all that had happened, and we weren't more than 30 miles from home?
Thankfully, the rest of the trip was nothing like this. I like to think that we got all the mess out of the way in the beginning (or climbed the mountain), and the rest was just coasting to Provo :-)
We were scheduled to stop outside of Chicago the first night. If you know anything about Ethan however, you know that he couldn't possibly continue driving down I-80 when he saw the sign for "South Bend". That's right--we had to make a detour to the University of Notre Dame so that he could get a picture with the golden dome. He's mighty proud of this photo:
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The next morning started out fabulously. We met up with Chris Grimm, and his darling wife, Cyrena, and their three boys, Bauer, Emmett, and Reese. "Elder Grimm" was one of two missionaries we first met when we moved to Germany. He and Elder Wendel were so helpful to our little family when we could speak no German, but were immersing ourselves in the German way of life. They took good care of us for several months, although I think they would say it was the opposite. I could hardly believe that it had been 12 years since we had seen him, because we fell into conversation like it was yesterday. At the end of the breakfast, I couldn't help telling him that seeing him and his family "was better than family". I know I have friends out there who know exactly what I mean. I really didn't want to say goodbye, and I hope that we see each other again before another 12 years passes.
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| Ethan was a bit shorter when Elder Grimm knew him before :-) |
I love driving through Nebraska. I'm not sure why. Although I refused to stop at every Big 10 school along I-80, Ethan managed to take pictures of every EXIT to every Big 10 school :-) We thought we were within minutes of our hotel, only to discover that the time zone changes in the middle of Nebraska (and not along the Wyoming border as we thought). In fact, out hotel was about 20 minutes into the new time zone, so again, the drive seemed longer than it needed to be.
The crazy thing is that no matter the time, we had to unload the car almost completely every night. Ethan had just about everything he owns packed into that car, and the last thing we wanted was for it all to be stolen (especially in Indiana, right Mark?) Even when we would pull into restaurants, we would back the car up to a window and ask to sit by the window so we could watch the car. We pulled into Ogallala, Nebraska mighty late, and the temperature was in the single digits, but Ethan was out unloading everything, including his bike and the bike rack.
The next morning, we didn't want to get up. We were getting mighty tired. However, it was the last haul, and I was looking forward to "The Great Gasoline Hunt". Seriously, the further west we drove on I-80, the cheaper the gas. I'm starting to think that the Eastern seaboard is funding the refineries in exchange for steak from the cattle states :-) No sooner would we think that we had found the cheapest gas around, then we would fill up, drive one more exit and find even cheaper gas than before! Wowza!
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| Iowa--we thought it couldn't get any better than this... |
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| ...and then we hit Wyoming! |
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| I had to email this picture to Sarah Moran since she once lived in Wyoming. She lovingly warned me to watch out for the wind! |
A funny thing happened at this point of the trip. We crossed the Wyoming/Utah state line, and began the descent into Salt Lake City. My mood took a turn for the worse, and poor Ethan bore the unknowing brunt of it.
It was almost like a light switch. I did NOT want to be in Utah. However, I wasn't sure why I felt this way. When I was here three years ago, I thoroughly enjoyed my time here. Instead of saying one more rude thing to my boy, I just turned my head towards the passenger-side view and thought. And here's where my thoughts led me:
My son isn't coming home with me. This is the end of this journey, and I'm leaving him here.
Too, I'm leaving him in a place that holds the worst memories for me as "home". I didn't enjoy Utah at all, and I worry that he will end up marrying some girl from here and we will never see him again.
I know this might sound silly, but I was very thankful to call John the next day and find that he completely understood my feelings.
It's one thing to have Ethan down in Washington DC--we always know that he can come home at a moment's notice, and that he actually does come home frequently. When we went to the temple, we could see him. It was the same with Mark. He was further away and had more scheduled responsibilities, but there was never a plane flight required--he drove home when he could.
Here in Utah, we won't see him anymore. Aside from the phone calls, it's almost like he's back on a mission again. And for John and me, having just two girls at home is too easy. And it's not as much fun as having three kids at home, or even four. We just love our kids, and not having any other family that visits us or has much to do with us, losing our kids just breaks our hearts.
I was thankful that it was already dark in the car, because I shed some tears as we drove into the valley. Tears that I didn't want my boy to see, because none of this is his fault. He's doing what he's supposed to be doing, and he's growing up and moving out. I just don't know that John and I are ready for any of this.
Boy, I didn't want to arrive in Provo. I think I was hoping that I-80 was an endless stretch of road that Ethan and I could drive down for a couple more years. Keep the closeness alive and deny the fact that there's a plane waiting to take me back to Pennsylvania. Alone.
While it's fun to go somewhere, I think the best part of the trip is getting there. I'm not ready to arrive at this destination quite yet.
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I loved your retelling of your road trip, it was almost like I was in the car with you. I can't imagine how hard it must be to say goodbye to Ethan and fly back to PA. I'm praying for you, my dear friend.
ReplyDeleteThis was a great read. Isn't Iowa a fun state to drive through? :)
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