So, the kids are all back to school this morning! All of them! Well, not Ali. I promise that usually during these Mondays I will be very busy with errands and laundry and groceries and swim lessons and and and
and -- but today is the first one, and I am lazy at home with the baby, who is asleep, so! Bogging!
Hey how about I blog that big ol' road trip I took across the country this summer, remember that?
When Another Nathan moved at the end of July, he needed to get his car to Minnesota -- too far for him to drive alone, so I got to go.
Yes, I said
got to -- it was lovely.
I know that's hard to believe, because it should have been rough -- driving for three days and thousands of miles in a small car with one other person, a person with whom you miiiiiight have been known to occasionally bicker, a person whom you love dearly and will have to say good-bye to at the end of said thousands-miles journey -- but it totally wasn't rough. It was awesome, actually.
We listened to music for maybe an hour, napped for maybe half an hour each, and other than that we spent three days in the car hanging out, chatting, eating snacks, taking pictures at every state line we crossed, joking about the travel diary we'd make when we got home (here it is!) and opening presents (yes we brought road trip presents). We were teary when we felt it, but mostly laughy when we didn't.
Anyway, these pictures from our trip have been sitting my camera roll for over a month, so here are the state-by-state highlights of delightfulness between NC and MN.
NORTH CAROLINA
Okay so to give you a clue to how pre-planned this whole thing was... it wasn't. We needed to meet the property guy at his new Minnesota house around noon on Friday, and we rolled out of Raleigh sometime mid-morning on Wednesday, with no real plan between there. Nathan was not hearing any advance planning; he just wanted to drive and see how far we got, and look things up -- which routes and which places to stay -- on our phones, as we went. I won't lie, I
cringed. But I rolled with it. (And it all worked out great.)
All that to say: we stopped twice before we ever made it out of Raleigh, and then twice more before we made it out of the state.
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| First road trip picture! Half an hour from home! At Starbucks, obvs. |
Also before we made it out of NC, we were in a debate which, actually, I'ma need some bloggity help to settle, right here and now. A poll: Which of the following is a more cute/fun/clever nickname for a phone car charger, if one were to name such a thing?
A. Chargey Cord
B. Charles in Charger
I mean the right answer is obvious, and I won't tell you who suggested which name, but y'all tell me which is better, and settle this debate for us please? Kthx.
VIRGINIA
Somewhere in the lovely mountains over our first state line crossing, I became convinced we were about to pass our last exit for many many more miles, so we stopped for lunch in a town called Fancygap (all one word?) Virginia. We ate at outside at a little deli which was, as best we could tell, the only restaurant in town. ("Town" here being a loose meaning of the word.) I don't know what I was picturing for our road trip, but our first meal being sandwiches in a butterfly garden (if that sounds serene to you instead of panicky, we are not friends) was probably not it. The food was really tasty though! And it actually
was sort of lovely out there! The flowers were pretty! And no butterflies landed on me, so.
There was a hilarious little garden shop next to the deli so of course we went and awkwardly shopped around some while the owner chatted with us. (She opened it up especially for us, so we had to at least wander through.) No pictures allowed, so you'll have to take my word for this, but they were well-stocked with barn art, hundreds of decorative pumpkins and other Halloween things, and anything you could ever need made from a mason jar: wine glasses, key rings, pencil sharpeners, coat hooks... there is
nothing you can't make from a mason jar. That's what I learned in Fancygap, Virginia.
(Turns out there was an exit with tons of normal stuff, like... three miles later. Whatever. That would have been less interesting.)
WEST VIRGINIA
We decided West Virginia was the prettiest state we drove through, yet we somehow came away with a sad paucity of pictures.
But it was lovely, up through the blue ridge mountains (literally through -- there were a number of tunnels which were apparently foreign to Nathan, who was hella startled the first time we approached one).
It was overlooking the river (so pretty!) in Charleston, WV where Nathan finally let me open up some travel apps and think about where to stay for the night. We decided to shoot for Dayton. As in Dayton OHIO. Which to me sounded super far from home. I think that's when it hit me,
whoa we are driving
across America whoa.
OHIO
Ohio was notable for five things:
- it was the first place people started talking funny
- it was the only bad weather of our drive: a short but strong summer storm
- it was the first place with wide open cornfields like I'd never seen before
- it was the first time I
had to got to drive
- it had a truck stop with more tractor trailers than I have ever seen in one place; I felt like I was in a
Friend Car movie and they were all lined up to watch the big race together or something.
(That's my Hollywood moment, in podunk Ohio. Yes I took pictures.)
At some point while I was driving in Ohio, Nathan stumbled into
this blog post and video (Him: darn, I keep opening this tab on my phone to look for a new post, and then I remember you're
with me so there's nothing new to see. Me: *raises eyebrow*), and we ugly cried until the crying turned into laughing, which is one of the best feelings in life, isn't it? It was cathartic. After emotional months and weeks and days and four states from home, we needed it.
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| Ohio has pretty skies after a storm. |
We made it to Dayton for the night, to our steal-of-a-deal nice hotel (this is where I grudgingly admit that sometimes last-minute planning works out), and dinner at a fire station turned restaurant, and we drank beers and marveled that not twenty-four hours earlier, we had been doing the same thing, at
our regular place, in Raleigh. We already felt
so far from home. Yet still so far from Minnesota!
And that's how we decided Dayton, Ohio might just be our safe place. All the goodbyes and transitions from Raleigh were behind, but
our goodbye and transition was still many days ahead, and it just felt good to be in that in-between place. Safe. Easy. Normal. As normal as you can feel when you're many states from home on a road trip to say bye to your best friend. Which is... well, surprisingly normal. Dayton: RECOMMEND.
And then, we slept. I slept hard, one of the best sleeps I have had this year. We had scrounged some cough drops for Nathan at an almost-closed drugstore nearby, and they helped more than the myriad fancy prescriptions he was on for bronchitis (because of course, the week of a cross-country move) so he finally slept too. And we slept
late. And then drove several hours to...
INDIANA
My first new state of our trip! Also, where Mr. David lives! But because timing is sometimes a bitch, he was not in town that day, so we did not get to have lunch with him or see his workshop or drive into downtown Indy, but! we did see the pretty skyline, and we got to have Steak N Shake (it was a road trip requirement for me), and I only rammed Nathan's car's under-bumper into one median on one busy highway, so. (It was fine. We're still friends. He just needed to cuss a little.)
And then Indiana got kind of awesome!
Okay first, did you know that corn ethanol is a real thing? Like, fuel for your car,
from corn? This is not a movie thing or a hypothetical/hippie thing. They already make it! And sell it at normal gas stations! HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS. Corn gas! We are living in the future!
And THEN. I saw someone win the lottery in this very same gas station OH YES I DID. He had a scratch ticket and he won! Like ten bucks. Which was paid out from the cash register. There was no tv news crew or anything. (You're shocked, I know.) But I SAW SOMEONE WIN THE LOTTERY and it was very cool and no one can take that from me.
Not even Nathan who rolled his eyes and made me hold a can of pop. POP. Um, it's not called pop, it's called soda.
Can I have some paaaaaahp? NO SIR ANOTHER NATHAN.
We drove past many miles of cornfields, everything got flatter and flatter, and I feel like my eyes got wider and wider. I just kind of couldn't believe the space. (Looking back, I'm amused -- that was nothing compared to Wisconsin or Minnesota.)
At some point when we were still in Indiana, we were also suddenly in Chicago. I was just in Chicago last summer, but apparently my geography is bad, because I don't think I fully understood that Chicago sort of spills into Indiana. Hence the eight lanes of interstate and suburban exits when we hit the Illinois state line.
ILLINOIS
Our first goal was to get through Chicago before rush hour. Magically our phones went back an hour, which helped, but we got slowed down by other things -- first, a berjillion toll booths, and then the siren song of... the Interstate Oasis.
I had never seen these before, so if this is something everyday and boring to you, then, first of all, bear with me in my delight, and second, well don't you lead a charmed life.
Okay so because of all the tolls, people can't really be in the habit of taking exits when they want a snack or some gas or whatever, so Chicago (all of Illinois?) has built these little exits-but-not-exits: parking lots with gas stations, connected by a building that stretches
across the interstate, and inside are things like food courts and shops and transportation offices and whatnot. All the benefits, none of the land costs, none of the toll on/off inconveniences. Over the interstate! SO SMART, RIGHT?
So of course I made us go inside one. And take pictures. And get Starbucks. And also some egg rolls, because egg rolls are pretty much the best junk food you can buy for a dollar. (Nathan was horrified that I brought egg rolls into our road trip. He got over it. They were delicious. And not just because I bought them in a food court
on a bridge spanning an interstate. But partly because of that.)
Oasis stops: RECOMMEND.
As we were pulling through the northern burbs of Chicago, Nathan got hungry (shoulda had an egg roll, is what I said) so we unpacked the cooler (wait! I forgot to say this! we had a foam cooler from the
Chamblees full of snacks and goodies and such, which was lovely and awesome but SQUEAKY, so we had been listening to this thing for six states by then, now and I might avoid styrofoam for the rest of my life), and made some pimiento cheese sandwiches in a busy Chicago interstate.
Maybe we were tired or maybe we were high from the magic of the Oasis but basically we were punchy and could not stop laughing. Also that pimiento cheese was
delicious.
Hey are you still reading? I am about to go to the next-to-last state!
WISCONSIN
Holy crap if I thought Ohio felt far from home, Wisconsin felt reeeeeally far from home. But it was
gorgeous. The wide open spaces and cornfields blew my mind. I seriously felt like I was on the set of Smallville. I have only seen open space like that at the ocean. To see so much
land, going and going and going and unbroken by towns or trees or anything, all the way to the horizon, was incredible. And, like the ocean, it's something you can't capture the vastness of in words or pictures. I didn't know til I
saw it. And I am a fairly well-traveled person! I have seen middle eastern deserts and sand dunes, and african bush, and mountains and beaches and cliffs and all sorts of natural beauty -- but the cornfields of America were new to me, and kind of amazing.
(Nathan laughed at my amazement. Whatever.)
(Also, he knows a lot about corn. He claims it isn't much, but he can tell you about feed corn and sweet corn and seed corn and which kinds have which tassels and grow how tall and something something something, he knows enough to bore the socks right off your grandpa, so... never ask him about corn. His Iowa blood runs thick.) (This PSA has been brought to you by corn.)
Somewhere into the cornfield depths of Wisconsin, Nathan mentioned something about the Dells, which are...
also in Wisconsin. *record scratch* wuuuuut?
You're getting this, right? That means it's a
real place. Not just a nursery song. I KNOW.
So he half-joked that we should have dinner there, and suddenly we tapped our phones a few times and asked google maps and urban spoon, and then heck yes we went and had dinner in the Wisconsin Dells.
And, it sort of defies description. Not
the dells themselves, they're like rock formations in a river or something - but the town itself is... well. How to explain.
It's like Myrtle Beach, but smack dab in the middle of Wisconsin. There are water parks and themed hotels and a gift shops galore. We drove slowly through town and laughed and laughed and had very wide eyes. We were
delighted.
Between the Oasis and the Dells, July 31st was a day of midwestern wonders for me.
After our Wisconsin Dells dinner (at the least-crowded restaurant in town, which was tasty but sketchy in the most put-together-un-sketchy way possible; it was most definitely a front for like mafia work or drug deals or something, I decided), I talked Nathan into going a few more hours to make the next morning easier, even though we were both tired and he was increasingly anxious.
We did our only night driving of the trip (including a stop at one of the hundreds of gas stations that sell cheese! every gas station in Wisconsin touts its fancy dairy case!) and crashed for the night in Onalaska, just before the Minnesota state line.
The next morning we were weary, but we got some coffee and put on brave smiles for the last day. (Also to take the one and only car selfie of our whole trip.)
We crossed the river (I had never seen the Mississippi! Well, except on a cruise ship at its mouth, in New Orleans when I was a teenager) and...
...we were officially in Minnesota! Another Nathan's new home state!
MINNESOTA
And then we drove through corn and more corn and more and more corn, and yes it was all still
beautiful. I took a crap ton more pictures but (shockingly) they all look somewhat the same, so here's just one.
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| My camera roll from the whole Minnesota portion of the drive is basically THIS. |
At one point when we were allllllmost there, we hit a road under repair and there was a detour, from which we took a wrong turn, and it took
miles and miles to correct (because CORNFIELDS) -- and that was the only bickering we did the whole trip -- less than half an hour from our final destination.
And then, we got there. Suddenly amidst the cornfields, in the middle of nowhere, there was a little neighborhood and a house, and that's where he lives now.
(And beyond that, the town of Northfield and beyond that the twin cities,
thank goodness, because from our driving route, it felt smack dab in the middle of the corn.)
I spent the weekend there helping him get settled, and the town grew on me the whole time. We walked by the river, we had drinks at a pub, we shopped in delightful stores downtown, we walked all over campus at his beloved St. Olaf.
We also unpacked boxes with his parents, had a perfect friend date with drinks and coffee at a local foodie restaurant, and went to worship at his new church and got to sing hymns in worship together for the last time for a long while.
Really, the weekend was lovely and sad and happy and wonderful, all at the same time. We made new memories, the whole time, even in the eleventh hour.
Northfield is exactly like I wanted it to be for him. His new church people are warm and kind (almost southern!) and one man even write down his name and address in case I ever wanted to come visit with Mark and the kids, since he and his wife have lots of space and loving having people around. I met the famous (and infamous) composers and teachers who have known Nathan longer than I have, who love him already, who will be his support system in his new job. I left knowing this call is the right thing, and feeling legitimately excited for him in it.
Not that I wasn't sad to leave. We had a quiet coffee and a quiet drive to Minneapolis, and then we sat outside the security line at the airport for over an hour, not ready to part. We
finally, after countless convenience stops over the week, found a diet coke with one of our names on it, and we took one last happy-sad picture at the MSP airport, before our dreaded good-bye.
We hugged and cried a lot, and then when I got through security and to my gate, he called, still on his side of the airport, and we cried some more. And then after a miserable crowded connection in Chicago and a dead phone and a late arrival back in NC, I sat by an outlet in the Raleigh airport at 1am, and we talked and cried yet more.
It was a terribly sad night for us, after a fun and funny trip. I still feel teary remembering it.
But. It is all okay. The goodbye was the hardest part. A month later, some days Mark and I look around and it still feels weird, like wait where's Another Nathan? But in general, real friendship persists, across states and miles, and through texts and calls and FaceTime and photo streams, and it is very okay. Even with the gut wrench at the end, this road trip was one of the best things we have ever done as friends.
So I'm not sure what else to say besides this: if you ever have the opportunity to drive across the country with your best friend, even if it's to say good-bye? Do it. RECOMMEND.
