On the Road Again

My Grand Adventure began early Saturday morning, July 30. Matt and I were in Sunnyvale, having gone down the day before in order to see some of my friends and go to the last concert by their band, Big Robots. We left the Bay Area by 9:00 that morning, just as we had planned. This on-time departure would prove to be quite the anomaly.

By lunchtime we were back in Folsom, stopping only long enough to load up my car since we had to make it to Elko, Nevada that day. Fitting everything I wanted to take into my Corolla was quite the challenge, but luckily it's exactly the sort of puzzle-solving that I love to do. Soon my car was filled to the brim (almost - I still had plenty of room to see out the back and into all my mirrors) and we were on our way!

We hopped onto I-80 and set off on our 400 mile "short" day. I had a rough time leaving first the Sacramento area and then California, but I tried not to think about it. Unfortunately, there's not a lot to do when driving through Nevada besides thinking. I managed to distract myself with my fabulous new iPod that has over two days of music already loaded onto it.

I also didn't mind the scenery as much as I usually do. Normally I find the drive through Nevada to be mind numbingly dull, but this trip was rather pretty. Perhaps because I've been noticing how dirty the Sacramento Valley air has been I was more appreciative of seeing the mountains far off in the distance and watching the freeway snaking out for miles in front of us, semi trucks glinting in the distance.

We arrived in Elko at about 8:30, ordered pizza (my comfort food), watched some TV, and turned in early.

The second day was to be our longest: Cut off the corner of Nevada, head north through Idaho, and penetrate about halfway into Montana.

Though we made it out of the Motel 6 at 9:30, only half an hour behind schedule, it took me a while to get up to speed and I had to crack open a Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper at about 10:30 that morning.

The strangest thing about the drive is that I recognize most of the places we drive through. I've made this drive four times in one direction or another, so the juxtaposition of familiarity and foriegnness is odd.

We stopped for dinner at a fantastic little restaurant in Butte called The Uptown Cafe. Though we were both boring and ordered the pasta with meat sauce, it was nice to take an hour out of our travels to enjoy food much less greasy than what can usually be found on the road. We also had really fabulous cheesecake and coffee before pushing through to Billings. We arrived quite late and fell asleep almost immediately.

Sleeping felt great. So great in fact, that I accidentally snoozed my alarm and woke with a start at 10:07. Though it was a lot later than we'd meant to get up, I think those extra couple hours of sleep really helped get through the last leg of the journey. We got ready in record time and hit the road - I-94 all the way to Fargo and then north to Grand Forks.


This third day contained the longest leg of our whole trip: 7 hours from Billings to Bismarck without stopping. By that time spending hours in the car seemed normal to me, so it didn't seem that rough. I sang along with my iPod, listened to my CD copy of The Da Vinci Code audiobook, and amused myself with the walkie talkies Matt and I had to make sure we could keep in touch.

Somewhere between Billings and Bismarck we ran into a thunderstorm. It seemed pretty intense to me, being used to mild California weather. But we also got to follow an amazingly clear rainbow for quite some time, so it made me feel a bit more comforted about my move.

We had dinner in Bismarck and then pushed on through to Grand Forks, my new home sweet home. We even had enough time and energy to move a bunch of stuff from my car to the apartment before bed!

But it's way past my bedtime now, so pictures and accounts of my settling in to the aparment will have to wait until another day.