Viva La Road Trip…

A few posts ago I had spoken about fate, and how it was shaping my life in ways that I couldn’t ever have imagined.  I had just come back from my adventure in Tarpon Springs, and I was in Jacksonville less than 24 hours when I was leaving on my next trip.  I was about to take the kind of road trip that you read about and see in movies.  The kind of trip that doesn’t present itself everyday, and all thanks to a little fate.

If you remember a couple months ago, I ran the Gate River Run with my treadmill loving co-worker and one of my Yelp besties.  In order to be off  work for that, I had to trade a shift at work with someone else.  I hate trading shifts.  Our schedules are complicated enough as it is, but this was important to me and I found myself working a night with the Blue Squad.  I was working with some people I don’t know at all, and some I know from over the years here and haven’t worked on the same squad with in a while.  One girl, who happens to have been born in the same month and year as myself, is on Blue Squad and I was talking  to her while I worked.  She is the same friend that gave me the  sweet wanderlust bracelet for my Birthday.  She started telling me how she was moving…to Vegas!

It turns out that she was driving this whole trip  from Florida to Nevada with her daughter and small dog.  To help with the driving, her sister was supposed to be coming with her, and last minute told her that she couldn’t.  Well knowing my adventurous spirit, she asked me if I wanted to come.  Alas, it was a weekend that I worked, and I knew I would not be able to trade away all three shifts. I was kinda bummed cause the trip sounded like we could make a life time of memories.  I walked away and then realized..the dates that she had just told me were on the weekend that I had taken off from work for vacation!! I briskly walked back over to her and we had a very quick convo that ended in me saying YES I want to drive across the country with you!

Fast forward just a few weeks and I was emptying my carry on bag into the washing  machine from one trip and packing it for the next.  My boy Waylon and my fave Handy Fellow got some visits from me and I was here in Jacksonville just a little more than 12 hours. I had to switch gears and mind sets for the type of trip I was on and also give myself a little time for nervous thinking of all the things that could go wrong about two women and a teenage girl driving  across 10 states.  We were about to head out early in the morning on the road trip of a lifetime.

My new travel buddy came and picked me up and it was RAINING.  Not the beautiful weather I had earlier in the week for my travels, and also I had apparently forgotten that she now drives a truck.  Like a pickup truck.  Y’all I drive a Ford Focus.  The Doozer Mobile is small and I am able to whip it around easily.  This was a new challenge.  And so, with approximately 33 hours of driving  and close to 2200 miles to cover, we headed out.

We took a quick selfie, and were on the way.  We were able to get out of the rain that was hitting Florida when we crossed the state line into Georgia.  It was here where we took our first state line picture of ourselves and also a picture of the welcome sign.  This would become a fun little thing that we did, as well as me starting to make  “updates from the road” videos.   Had I mentioned that I had gotten a new phone the day before my vacation started? I also made friends with all sorts of travelers and gas station clerks along the way- shout out to Mike, sorry you couldn’t come with me!!

We  drove on and on, we listened to music and sang along, we talked, we laughed, I installed an app on my phone to track all the license plates we were seeing. We also started doing  something that I thought seemed both pretty smart, and also hilarious.  Whatever we were talking about, if there was a question, the person not driving  was in charge of Googling  it.  This is something I do in my normal every day life as it is, but for some reason; looking up facts about states and the protocol for a deer crossing the road became great fun.  We learned so many things while on the road together, and I also taught her a lot about music!

I can tell you that regardless of how many actual miles you log, some states will just SEEM longer than others.  We were in Alabama for ever.  We made every song  reference, and we talked like Forest Gump. Just when we were ready for a new state-stat, we saw a truck with writing on the back of it.  I tried to read what it said, so did Road Trip Buddy, and so did her daughter, Hell I think the dog  was even trying.  Then we had to speed up, change lanes and practically follow them until we saw sweetly proclaimed on the back of that truck..Nikki and Antonio Forever …and Always.  We guessed at a lot of names and got it wrong and laughed when we finally were able to get close and snap a picture. We sure do wish those love birds the best!!  Lucky for us we were in Mississippi soon, both needing a restroom break and a little stretch of the legs.  We stopped in Tupleo.  For those that aren’t familiar, this is the tiny town in which Elvis Presley was born.  While at the gas station, we met some other friendly travelers, and I also whipped out my handy Yelp app.  I of course had told my travel buddy that anytime we needed to find food, gas or something fun to do in whatever state, it was all right at our fingertips with Yelp.  She even signed up for her own profile on it!  Anyway, we learned that not too far from where we were stopped for gas, was the house that Elvis was born in!  We were able to stop by and take a few pictures and add this to our list of cool stuff we’d see along the way.  Also worth mentioning is that we have both been to the famous Graceland mansion in Memphis Tennessee,  where Elvis lived and sadly, passed away.

Renewed, and back on the road, we would soon invade Arkansas.  We stayed in Arkansas for a really long time, and now…darkness had fallen.  We were officially night time drivers.  She took a turn at trying to sleep, and then me.  I can tell ya’ll unless you’re the teenager, or the dog..napping just doesn’t really come that easily in a car.  So much to the fact that we didn’t even bother trying after those times. The steps to handle a deer in the roadway include keeping your seat belt on, reflecting on your situation, looking for the  rest of the pack, driving slowly, honking, and NOT swerving  to avoid the animal.  We learned all of these steps because we were seeing  an increasing amount of warnings about possible animal encounters.  We also learned several different road signs and what they all meant.

Driving on thru the night, we soon started to enter the stage where pretty much everything is funny and you cant stop yourself from laughing.  There was a sign for something, and as became actually the norm for us, we were reading things  wrong and almost making up what the signs  were saying.  We passed something  that had the word golf in it and when she mentioned it to me, I said…G-U-L-F like the Gulf of Mexico or g-o-l-f like the game??  She laughed at me and said..no we are not anywhere near the Gulf of Mexico!!  We also passed through countless Indian reservations, and also many National Parks.  There are LOTS of songs to be played about both, in case you were wondering.

We had consumed a great deal of Red Bulls between the two of us, and we started to make plans on how far we thought we could continue to drive that night before we had to stop somewhere; and would a hotel be worth the cost for us to only be there for a few hours. At around holy crap o clock, we decided enough was enough and I started calling the hotels and motels in the next nearest city that were listed on Yelp.  We used the star ratings, the proximity to the highway and price as our guide.  We also discussed some hotel rules that I had once covered with Handy Fellow, which are as follows-as long as there is no reason to think I might be murdered or pimped out in the parking lot, as long as the shower is clean enough to not wear flip flops in it,  and there is no bugs, I can pretty much stay anywhere. The problem is that we were getting the same news from every place.  They had no vacancies.  What we learned later is that due to the Wildfires that were taking over large parts of Oklahoma, there were Emergency teams from all over that had been called to assist.  We needed a place to stay, but clearly not as badly as these people.

We did finally find a place to stay, and while it was a little  terrible, we didn’t even care.  We unpacked some items we needed, and settled into our room.  There were cigarette burns on the floor, and it smelled, but it DID meet all my other criteria.  In what would soon become a little tradition, we poured some booze into hotel paper cups and reflected on the miles that had past.  We were to call this place, Clinton Oklahoma (where the winds go sweeping down the plains)  home..for about 5 hours.  To be continued!!