The Road Trip Blog In Words

I guess I'm as ready as I'll ever be to write this, so here we go.

Last Saturday morning, April 7, 2007, dawns cloudy and cool with the promise of showers here in Western Washington. I'm up early, because I'm always up early these days. I don't know precisely when I shifted from being a night owl to being a morning person, but it happened. Now I can never be a vampire. I'd end up not being able to sleep through the day. Anyway . . .

I go to the early Weight Watchers meeting and just weigh in and leave. Which I almost never do, but I still hadn't packed, so I came home and did that. I had told Mom that I wanted to be on the road at 10:30. I call her a bit before 10 to let her know that I was already ready and that if she wanted to leave earlier than 10:30 it would be OK. Amanda had texted me at 7:30 wondering if we were on the road yet, so I knew she was excited, too. Mom says she's planning to leave her place to be at my house (approximately 10 minutes away) at 10:30 and that she'd call when she was leaving. She calls at 10:26. I should have told her I wanted to leave at 10, but hindsight is as always 20/20.

Mom's picking me up because we're taking her car. I drive an SUV, and mom has a VW Beetle. Her car gets way better gas mileage than mine, which is one reason I suggested to her that we take her car. Those who know my mother can probably guess the other reason.

So we're off. The trip out to Moses Lake is not all that exciting really. We head up I-5 North and then cut across at Washington route 18 to get to I-90 East because it's way quicker to do that than to head up to the junction of I-5 and I-90 which is in the middle of Seattle and a traffic clusterfuck pretty much at any time of the day or night. We climb into the mountains and cross Snoqualmie Pass. I'm amazed to see one chair lift still going and a few intrepid skiers on one run; it is the day before Easter after all, and although there's still snow on the ground even at the road level, there hasn't been any new snow for a while and it's really probably past the end of the season.

After the pass we descend into the high desert that is Eastern Washington. It might as well be the moon; it's so different from the Western half of the state. We stopped in a place called Cle Elum to go to the bathroom and grab a little something to eat. Eschewing fast food, we see a Safeway and pull in there. We use the bathroom and then get some bottled water, some diet soda, and each grab a sandwich. Mom's a person who doesn't like to eat while she's actually driving, so we settled into the car in the parking lot to eat our sandwiches. I check my phone for messages, and sure enough, there's one from Amanda. Where are you? I text back Cle Elum, knowing that she probably doesn't know where that is, but it's fun for me. As we're eating, though, a man walks up to the car, about scaring us to death. He has a VW key in his hand that his daughter found in the store bathroom. Since there's a key in the ignition already, we're don't think it's ours, but since he says we're the only VW in the lot, we check. Sure enough, it's mom's spare key which she had put in her pocket and dropped in the bathroom. We thank the nice man profusely, and he's goes on his way. Mom asks me if I think she should have offered him a monetary reward. I say no, he was just doing a nice thing. Besides, he's in his car and gone already.

The rest of the way east, I send Amanda a series of one word texts: Ellensburg, Vantage, and George, (yes, there is a George Washington, cute town) to let her know which town we're passing through. I notice after a while there are signs on the sides of the freeway telling us what's growing in the fields. I see potatoes, sweet corn, alfafa, wheat, and carrots. I think that's a cool idea labeling the fields.

And finally we arrive in Moses Lake. We follow the ridiculously detailed directions to the Job Corps Center and still have some issues getting to the parking place, but I still maintain that's not my fault. Much hugging commences, and mom and I are introduced to a bunch of Amanda's friends and the center staff. We drop off stuff in Amanda's room that she had asked me to bring her (there was a list), and then sign her out and head for the hotel. We get lost more than once on the way to the hotel, although I have a clear picture in my head of where it is. Unfortunately, my internal map is not great, but eventually we make it.

The hotel is nice. We check in, admire the view (we're overlooking Moses Lake ~ named for Chief Moses) and sprawl for a bit. Amanda's reveling in the feeling of wearing her shoes inside (shoes come off at the door at the JC Center). She's hungry, though, and we still need to get her some things, and mom wants a map. Smart woman. We get the map, feed Amanda an ultimate cheeseburger from Jack in the Box, and head for WalMart. There's some faulty map reading on my part, but eventually we make it there. Then, shopping completed and map in hand, we head back for the hotel. We watch TV, and Amanda plays with her laptop, which she can't have on the center. I had double checked that the hotel had free wireless internet for her, because I know that she's not allowed to get on MySpace at all with center computers, and her internet time in general is limited. We went to the hotel restaurant for dinner, which was very nice, and since we were all tired, we head back upstairs and spend the rest of the evening just relaxing, chatting, and watching TV.

Sunday morning dawns beautifully. The lake is misty, and after indulging in the free continental breakfast, we go outside to take some pictures. Those are in the picture blog. We futz around for a while, and then have more breakfast (McDonald's this time as Amanda has seen the sign for the cinnamon melt and is intrigued). I could use more coffee myself, as could mom, so we sit at Mickey D's for a bit. Eventually, though, we take Amanda back to the center, take some more pictures, hug on her some more, and then we're off.

On the trip home, mom wants me to drive some. I had volunteered on Saturday, but she was OK. On Sunday, though, she's ready to be the passenger for a while. Man, oh man, her car is fun to drive. It goes really fast without feeling like it, so I have to spend a little bit getting used to that (I had her up to 90 without feeling like I was going that fast, so I slowed right the hell down quickly). We're taking a more leisurely time coming home, making tentative plans to stop and take some pictures. I notice the tumbleweeds. There are lots and lots of tumbleweeds in Eastern Washington. It's wild. Personally, when I think tumbleweeds, I think the desert southwest, but the northwest east of the Cascades is also desert, so there you go. Tumbleweeds are not attractive things, so there are no pictures of them. Maybe next time I head east there will be, but not today.

Our first stop is a spot between George Washington (which cracks me up every time) and Vantage. Vantage sits on the western side of the Columbia River where I-90 crosses it. On I-90 in both directions, but easier to access if you're going west, there's a scenic pullout where you can really see the Columbia River Gorge and the Gingko Petrified Forest State Park. It's just beautiful, and I took several pictures, some of which are in the photo blog.

Our next stop was the City of Roslyn. Roslyn used to stand in for Cicely, Alaska, for the 1990s show Northen Exposure. (Excuse me while I take a moment to contemplate Rob Morrow and John Corbett and then wipe the drool off my chin). In Roslyn, I snap a picture of Roslyn Cafe (called Roslyn's in NE) and we move on. At this point, mom takes the wheel. Again, we climb up through Snoqualmie Pass, and again there are a few skiers.

At this point, Mom mentions Snoqualmie Falls. I've never been there, but I'm up for pretty much anything. On the other hand, I don't remember seeing a sign for the falls on the way East, and we don't have the Washington map in the car either, so we decide that if we're meant to go to the falls, we'll get a sign. We got off the freeway around North Bend because it was time for a potty break, and as we're driving through down, there's a sign. "Snoqualmie Falls ----->" So we turn right and head in that direction. A couple of minutes later, mom asks, "why did we turn again?" Vaguely exasperated, I roll my eyes and remind her about the sign. She remembers, and we continue on. We arrive at the falls, find a place to park (not as easy as it sounds, it was packed there) and walk on the skywalk over the road to the actual park. I've been told that I should have been there when the river was at flood stage and the falls were really raging, but I'm satisfied with the view I got. Just gorgeous. And since that picture's not been included here before, I'll pop it in now.

See? Very pretty. Mom's been here before, so she doesn't go back to the highway the way we came, she continues on in the same direction, and pretty soon there's a sign taking us back to I-90. Mostly Mom knows where she's going. Unfortunately what we weren't sure of is just where on I-90 we were. Did we need to go west to get to route 18 to skip Seattle and or east? We make a command decision (I'm good at those) and go west. Unfortunately, as it turns out, route 18 is east, but live and learn, right? We still don't want to take I-90 into Seattle, so we find some alternate routes, including I-405, Washington route 167, and finally route 512. We stop for gas in Puyallup and then head home.

On the way home, we notice that the further west we go, the less blue sky we see. Once across the pass, it's completely overcast but not raining yet. When we were on I-405 somewhere where there were signs for Issaquah, the rain starts. And then it rains the rest of the way home.

Mom dropped me off at home, and I settled in for a nice quiet evening. I grabbed a book, The Villa by Nora Roberts, and settle in. I finish the book, cook and eat dinner while I'm reading, and head for bed, having enjoyed a really great weekend.

Then I'm rudely awakened at 1:15 a.m. by That Boy (AKA Tony) to tell me that he's had an accident in my car. He's really scared and upset, but he's physically fine, and it's Monday by then anyway, so my lovely weekend is still intact. The week that followed . . . well, that's a different story.