Road trips freaking suck!
It shouldn't really come as any surprise, as long car rides in general tend to be an awful affair. I don't particularly look forward to cruising (and I use that word very optimistically) through my own country, and there's much less of it, so a three day trek across the states?0 I wouldn't say it had no merit, but I did learn that not all states were created equal.
Our trip got off to a flying start when we left Kansas far too late and only got three hours into the drive before we hit a blizzard. Have I mentioned yet that the weather in both Kansas and Colorado has been diabolical? I mean, on the bright side it could have been worse in Kansas, the Tornado riddled place that it has a reputation for being, but it has still been pretty miserable on that front. Heck, the Tornado simulator in the Exploration Place felt tame compared to the wind outside on that very day. Either way, we were forced to pull in at Ellis. Another expedition may have fought through the storm and carried on, but we being of a more sensible creed and having a two year old in the back came to the collective decision it was perhaps not the best of ideas.
And wouldn't you know it, the next morning the world was full of blazing sunshine and even the wind that was buffeting our car around on the road was gone. It was as if the whole thing had never happened. We carried on through Kansas, which for the purposes of road tripping isn't much to shout about. Unless you like roads that never seem to end.
Or lots of wind turbines that blink red at night, which honestly makes Kansas kind of creepy to enter after dark.
I also got to see my first tumbleweed of the trip. Admittedly it was under somebody else's car, and yes I was trying to take this picture during said blizzard in Ellis, but one must have priorities!
Once we started hitting western Kansas, we may have lost the advertisements for the world's largest prairie dog (in what looked to be the most redneck of zoo's!) and the sheer delight of signs that featured Jesus poking out of a wheat field but the landscape started to become much more interesting.
From Ellis we took a very ill advised detour into Denver. You remember that homophobic chicken I talked about a couple of weeks back? They don't have a mainstream branch in Washington so we were on the hunt for some tasty, tasty food and figured the Denver one was on the way. Unfortunately it was situated in a shopping mall and we couldn't find anywhere to park, and once you're in Denver? It's not all that easy to get out! We travelled around the road system for a good hour before abandoning ship and heading back to the branch we'd already visited in Aurora. Which involved backtracking. Which is never fun on a roadtrip as long as ours. Denver itself was my first taste of a proper American city, like you see on TV and in films, all skyscrapers and busy streets. It looked fun, but I'm sure I'll be having a much more indepth look at Seattle later.
That added to our travel time significantly, meaning we had to stop over one more time in Wyoming. But once we broke into Wyoming and Utah? The landscape got really breathtaking all of the sudden.
There were views like that pretty much all the way until we wound up deep inside of Idaho (add your own perverse laugh!) and it was easily my favourite part of the trip. Everywhere you looked there were mountains, cool rock formations, snow, all capped by beautiful blue sky. Then we hit Idaho and it was like being in the worst parts of Kansas and Colorado all over again. Dull, flat, uninteresting, with nothing of interest to look at. At the risk of offending anyone from that state, I'll tell you all now - If you want to travel too or through a part of America? Don't make it Idaho. My albeit brief impression just made me never want to go back again, and I was a little disheartened we had to stay the night there - But it turns out Boise? Isn't that bad! Figures it's on the very edge of the state!
One thing I did notice from Kansas right through to Idaho was the massive amount of static. You couldn't seem to touch anything metallic in those states or Wyoming without getting a shock, and after going to bed everyone's hair was on end. It was a fairly bizarre experience, making me think I was in some kind of giant experiment.
We were soon out of Idaho and into Oregon, which brought back the beautiful landscape for the most part aside from the actual trail, which we took some of the trip on. Nobody caught dysentery,so that's okay! There was some great, distinct views to be had, and we took a trip right up a mountain - Which near burst my eardrums but it was a cool experience.
Nothing could prepare me for Washington proper though. While eastern Washington was a collection of flat land, plateaus and cow farms (we saw a bunch of cows in every damn state, by the way, it's almost like America doesn't farm any other animal) western Washington is like something out of Lord of the Rings. My friends had been calling it the Misty Mountains all trip, and having seen them I can't say they're entirely wrong!
As great as the views were, I can't tell you how happy I was to finally pull into the house here. We've been here a few days now and I still feel like death. That's another thing they don't tell you in movies, the whole experience is just really physically exhausting. Honestly, my main recomendation from the whole experience would be if somebody asks if you want to drive across America and you have the opportunity to fly? Fly. Always fly. Road trips are terrible.
So I'm in Washington until I leave now. Hopefully I'll have some interesting things to report, but I'll be headed out to Emerald City Comic Con real soon! So there's that to look forward too in any case! Until next time, stay off the road!
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