Saturday, July 31, 2010

Road trip...Success

As most of you know I was on a 13 day road trip, suffice it to say it was a success. I say this because I am still friends with my travel companion(we weren't going to let 13 days ruin 16 years), still in charge of my mental capacities(err, maybe I never was), Cori(the chevy corsica, I lovingly drive) is still owning the pavement, and I have seen things that I haven't seen and lastly I still want to see more. But, no blog would be complete without the telling of the misfortunes that find me(or rather I get myself into), so here's how the story goes...

For starters, day one to be exact, I lose my credit card in Wyoming at a truck stop, only to realize it when we get to Twin Falls, ID. Excellent....how am I going to pay for this trip now....thankfully it worked out. In between losing my credit card and realizing it we got desperately close to running out of gas...thankfully God plopped a small town 8 miles off I-80 with a 24 hr gas station...picture the Hillz have Eyes at 10:30 pm, good thing my "Kung Fu is strong". As modern women with college educations and street smarts we are survivors and we trucked along to drive along the Columbia river to a fun, but apparently "weird" city(many a bummer sticker said to 'Keep Portland Weird'). We only crashed in Portland for once night but I am confident that I would like to go again. After a most delightful and deep sleep we woke to get going to the coast and drive through some of the Olympic National Park....but wait...Cori was trying to tell me something, she needed new spark plugs, she told me by randomly jerking as we increased speed. So, Janette and I decided that it would be good to get things under the hood checked out, after a drive around Portland with a mechanic we decided it was something that we could get fixed on the road a little later. Once we realized we weren't going to blow up mid-drive, we headed on route to Port Angeles, WA.

The next four or five days went on without any snaffoos, we arrived in Canada without a hiccup, that is a lie, we did get stopped at the border. I don't consider it a hiccup only because it didn't delay any of our plans and was quite hilarious...we only wanted to get our passports stamped (they didn't seem too excited to oblige, but they did it after we batted our eyelashes). Once in Canada, we roamed the streets taking in the sights and the beauty. We spent one day in Victoria, three days in Vancouver and one day in Whistler....ahhhh, the freshness was crisp and good for us. We made a quick stop off in Squamish...where I got raped by the Canadian Tire people....$350 for spark plugs...you have got to be kidding me...but here is where the story get awesome...My bank won't allow me to use my debit card....they think that someone stole it and was going on a rampage in Canada, so I had to jump through those hoops, boo!!! The weird thing, I had been in Canada for three days, got to love the quickness of the American Banking system. Moving on, we headed for America...Yellowstone, Tetons, Jackson Hole, etc.

Once we were back in the states we spent two days getting to Yellowstone, oh Yellowstone!
Suffice it to say, as beautiful as Yellowstone can be, the crowds and rangers make it less appealing. We got pulled over for speeding....duh, when the speed limit is 45, if you factor in the amount of time I spent going 0 mph, I think our average mph was 45. With that behind us we moved at a gingerly pace as not to provoke the wildlife(rangers). A little less than two hours after receiving our ticket(which requires a mandatory court appearance, awesome) we stumble on what I will lovingly call the Clusterfuck of Yellowstone.
The Clusterfuck of Yellowstone can only be described as a ridiculous series of events that has led me to think that Park Rangers suck. As we slowly(45 mph) arrive to another dead stop on the federal highway(illegal to stop, btw), we are continually asked to keep moving along...but of course we want to know what the back up is for....GRIZZLY bear! Awesome...only it turned out to suck, we got caught behind a family that refused to move along and park on the side of street(the park ranger, only doing her job, reprimanded them thrice), so in our infinite driving wisdom we tap the horn once and pass them so we could get the party rolling along....THEN, we get cut off by another park ranger who starts to berate us over the loud speaker in front of the entire cluster of people looking for that damn grizzly. The following is this jerk's epic speech to us..."Please be patient, there is a reason people are stopped, there are people running in the road. You need to be patient....Everyone look at the people who are being impatient". Are you serious homeboy....talk to the lady who kept telling us to move along, get your facts straight. We were done after that point, screw the grizzly and Yellowstone. Aaargh, even writing about it gets me in a huff. Thankfully we were on out way to Jackson Hole and the Tetons.

Jackson Hole the last and final stop on our way home was a good place to wrap up our travels. Snuggled against the Tetons with perfect weather Jackson Hole offered us time to decompress and remind ourselves why we took this trip in the first place. We spent one day walking around eating good food, looking at beautiful jewelry and reading in the park...perfection for this tail end of the trip. To top off the day we went and had drinks at the Oldest Hotel in Jackson, The Wort and at The Tavern. Both places I got to dance and get twirled by some local hotness...I love to get twirled. We ended the night with some brothers whom we enjoyed thoroughly...dances, drinks, and then a drive back to our hostel. This was to be our last night in a foreign bed, as we eased into bed I prepared myself for our homecoming.

We arrived in Denver on thursday, July 29th at 8:00pm, we grabbed some Wahoo's and headed to the casa. HOME, SWEET, HOME!

Those are the misadventures of me, for more details call me, I would love to hear from you.

Till the next misadventure, stay safe
APKilla


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