The rearview mirror is pure black, framed by the windshield through which I can see as the headlights illuminate.. more South Dakota. The driving is easy. It’s just straight ahead. No turns and no traffic. In fact, I seldom see other cars. The moon is full, and illuminates white water towers, washing them in a pale blue light, and transforming them into small moons which seem to illuminate the wheat fields below them in the same pale blue light.
It’s been a long night. Amalia drove earlier today, so she wouldn’t have to drive at night. On Monday she drove the last driving shift and was a little stressed about at the possibility of deer running out into the road. She drove very cautiously, and slower than I would have. The next morning, she admitted that her depth perception in the dark wasn’t very good. So I drove the remainder of the nights.
Amalia forgot the guitars that we were supposed to be carrying to our friends in New York City, so she was a little late picking me up. I stuffed my one bag into the car, and shut the door. We heard a deflating noise, which was unexpected.. which of the boxes or items were deflating? I investigated, and found that the sunscreen in our food bag had been squished and had sprayed all over our food and had dribbled down onto my sleeping bag and a box that had been packed in the car. Oops. Hopefully this would be the last leak.
We started out our trip by heading north on I-15. Our first stop was in Idaho Falls. For gas. And for some Wendys.. for me – she doesn’t eat meat. We headed into Yellowstone by around four that afternoon and saw the mud pots and watched Old Faithful go off. Some Germans were standing next to us, but I didn’t have the courage to speak German to them.
And then we tried to drive as far as we could eastward before we stopped for the night. We stopped at a Walmart in a small city in Wyoming. I got some chicken tenders, and Amalia got a large cup of noodle salad. She wanted to save it for the next day, so we got some dry ice. The dry ice was even free! We went out to the car and spent the next 15 minutes trying to blow smoke rings. I discovered that the secret was not to breathe out of the lungs, but to force a small amount of air out through rounded lips in a quick burst. We had a fun time. I noticed that she wasn’t very eager to start the engine and to continue the trip. I looked at her, and said, “You know, I’ve always wanted to make out with a girl with dry ice.” “That’s gross!” she said. I was slightly embarrassed until she said, “Just kidding.. but what are you implying by that?” She smiled teasingly. I smiled back, and as I moved my head toward hers, I said, “Oh, I don’t know.” She moved her head in, and we both experienced making out with dry ice. We both decided that it was way better than normal.
Actually, that is what I should have done. I only realized that afterwards. So, we sat in the car for what felt to me like a long time. And then we took off at a slower pace, winding our way through the rockies. About midnight, we stopped at a state park camping site. As we were packing up, we had seen a tent in the back of the car, stuffed into a lamp shade we had been packing. Thank you Suzie and husband!
We unpacked the tent by the headlights, and had to look at the instructions to get it right. It was definitely a two-person tent. I’m not sure my mom would have approved me sleeping in a tent that small with a girl. And I’m not sure what God would have thought about the situation if I would have made out with her in the Walmart parking lot. So it was probably better for my mom and God that we hadn’t made out with the dry ice. But was it better for me? :)
The night was a very cold one. The tent didn’t have a tarp bottom, but had the same wall fabric on the floor. I had brought a blow-up air mattress, but it would have covered about 2/3 of the tent floor, so we would have had to either both sleep on the mattress, or one person would get very little space. So I left my air mattress in the car. I slept on the cold ground with only my sleeping bag and the thin tent bottom between me and mother nature. It was cold! I tried to sleep on my side because if I slept on my front or back, too much of my body would be touching the cold ground. So I tried to sleep on my side. But then my appendages kept falling asleep. It was a long night.
During the restless night, I dreamed that we woke up and everything was wet from dew and rain. When I got up, everything was wet. But probably due to condensation.
I headed to the campground bathroom, a “plumps-klo” – named after the sound one might hear in such a bathroom. I didn’t lock the door because I didn’t see anyone else around and I just had to pee quickly and didn’t want to get germies on my hands from touching the door with anything besides my sandal. I was interrupted by a man who I had overseen. After excusing himself, he stepped back outside. I finished quickly and came out to see him waiting. I avoided eye contact, but he struck up a conversation. He said that after he had gotten up, he jumped into his car to get warm, where the thermometer had read 28 degrees. He had also talked with someone else, who had also said that their car thermometer had read 28 degrees. No wonder it was so cold. It was good that I had brought a jacket. Unfortunately, my one pair of jeans were in my large bag, packed with the rest of the payload in the back of the Jeep Cherokee.
We headed off, down through the mountains, and to the nearest gas station so we could brush our teeth. I waited in the car for a minute, and then Amalia came out and made the following announcement: “I just had my period, so we might have to stop at gas stations more frequently.” I didn’t know quite what to say to her. I didn’t have any older sisters, and hadn’t ever talked with girls about that, so I didn’t really have any idea what that meant. I was worried that telling her that might elicit an educational lecture on female-specific ailments, so I opted for a “Don’t worry, that will be all right.” And let the thing be.
Our tour took us next through the charming state of South Dakota. Somewhere in the car ride, we had discussed veganism and vegetarianism. Amalia told me that she usually encourages people to try it out for a week. She said that most of them never make it. Partly to impress her, and partly to avoid eating meat around her, I told her that I wouldn’t eat any meat for the rest of the trip. So when we stopped in Deadwood, South Dakota, we got sandwiches. Without meat. I splurged and got a raspberry and white chocolate scone. It was really good. I had heard about a monument to Crazy Horse, and an oddity called “Carhenge” which was basically a tribute to Stonehenge in gray-painted cars stacked on their ends in a circle. They were supposedly within a short drive of Mount Rushmore. We followed a map to Crazy Horse’s Monument. We neared a small hill, and saw toll houses at the top of the ridge. As we topped the ridge, we realized saw a head that had been carved out of the rock. Nothing more. Some of the rock had been blasted away, but in the last 40 years, very little work had been done on the monument. Perhaps they were running out of funding. They expected $10/per person, or $27/car. What a ripoff. So we stopped, took pictures, got in the car again, then headed toward Mount Rushmore. Mount Rushmore was disappointingly little after seeing the large face carved in the rock at Crazy Horse. Whatever. But it was good to be there.
As we were taking pictures of us with the famous faces in the background, a guy came up to me and told me that I needed to go whip a guy into shape who was wearing a UofU shirt. I guess he had seen the logo on my BYU Barbershop free tshirt. We started talking, and he told us they were making the cross-country trip for the second time. The first time they had driven out from Provo to Washington as a young couple. Now they were revisiting the sites with their kids. “Someday you can do this with your kids, too.
And then I started driving across the lonely South Dakota plains. Where I could enjoy the eerie water towers all by myself.
Amalia was in the passenger seat, catching some z’s. I was listening to a mix of favorite songs from my ipod. I wasn’t really tired, but figured we should stop for the night, so I pulled into a KOA in Suix Falls. I remember asking some questions like “Would this be ok?” and “Do you want me to put up the tent?” to which she responded “I don’t care! It doesn’t matter!” I briefly considered throwing in the towel on the dating issue. She apologized later, citing lack of sleep, or her female problems as the source of her outburst. After she got a shower, she was a lot more pleasant.
The next day, Wednesday, was filled to the brim with uneventful driving, only broken by a brief stop at a Wisconsin cheese factory. And I skinned my left big toe doing a cartwheel in front of the town We stopped at a national park in Indiana, but because we were too late, we had to camp in a picnic area, but it was free.
And finally, on Thursday, we made our way into Brooklyn, New York. For some reason, the directions we were given were inaccurate, so we ended up driving around for a while, then finally using the GPS system on my phone to get us to their house. The phone took us right through the middle of Manhattan. Amalia got a little scared, but I thought it was a rush. The back of the jeep was filled to the brim, except for a space the size of a shoebox, through which I could see a little behind me. So I had to drive with only my side mirrors. For most of the crazy trip, I would look for a free space, signal, then start to pull over slowly. If none of the Friday-night taxies honked, I would assume it was safe and finish pulling over into the lane. What an experience. Noone got hurt, and the jeep made it through unscathed.
We had a great visit with our friends in Brooklyn. They had been married for a year and a half, and had a little daughter. They didn’t seem too concerned by the sunscreen stain that decorated one of the corners of one of their boxes.. phew.
Friday morning, we got up and unloaded the jeep, and then I left on a bus to Boston.
And now I’m here.
Hello Boston.
