Gandolf vs Sentra

Wednesday January 9th, we left Olympia, WA just after 6 am. Traffic was thick, but fast moving despite the rain. Once we separated from the morning commuters, we headed northeast into the mountains via Hwy 12 to I-90. There, in the higher elevation, the precipitation changed to a thick white blizzard, completely obstructing the view. Traffic crept up the mountain, gaining only occasional glimpses of road lines.  I had considered pulling off, as I'm sure the other drivers did, but I had no idea what the side of the road looked like, as the heavily falling snow blanketed any potential hazards.  Eventually, we summited and descended down I-90, back into the rain, which oddly enough was a relief.

The clouds remained, but it seemed we were out of the rain.  We continued Eastward, and soon entered Idaho.  There we stopped for lunch a great local joint in Coeur d'Alene, and kept going.

Soon the precipitation started up again, but this time was heavy rain and at times sleet. At this point in the afternoon, my father had already called once and would soon call us twice more, repeatedly asking if there was any way we could drive further than the intended destination for that night.  My mom, who planned most of our journey (which was so nice) had found a great bed and breakfast in Montana that was in a "wolf sanctuary".  There people enjoy the open range beauty of the Western state and are lulled to sleep by wolves howling.  Sounded awesome, and way more fun than staying at a regular old Holiday Inn. This is all to explain our protest to my dad's suggestion that we pass by Bozeman, MT, and keep driving.  How could we cancel when we were so excited to stay at such a unique place?

The concern my dad had for our safety turned out to be accurate, and not selfishly based.  As I explored weather.com, looked at radar, and called ahead to our wolf sanctuary, all sources confirmed that there was a monster of a winter storm, Gandolf, chasing us out of the Pacific Northwest. In fact, the storm was called to arrive in MT that evening, and follow our exact route East, dumping snow and blasting 60 mph winds at each town we had on the itinerary. 

The choice was simple; push for about 4 extra hours of driving on day 1 and disrupt our entire itinerary, or continue with the plans and risk getting caught on the highway, or delayed up to 48 hrs.  Through tears of disappointment and fear (it literally felt like being chased by a monster.. did you see the radar image of that thing?!) I called ahead to hotels and we rapidly adjusted our route.  Instead of  5 nights and 6 days of driving and site seeing, we traveled 3000 miles in 3 nights and 4 days.  Cut from our itinerary was a nights stay in MT, SD, and Chicago.  Instead of unique and locally owned hotels, we stayed in a Hampton Inn in WY, and a Best Western in MN.

After the first day's drive which equaled 14 hrs, we arrived at our hotel in Wyoming and crashed.

In the morning we awoke to a beautiful view of the Rockies, and a weather report of 12" snowfall in Montana. The snow would arrive in South Dakota by evening (which was where we had originally intended to stay Thursday night), but because of our little extra stretch, we had gotten ahead of the storm and were safe.

Lamentations 3:21-23 is one of my favorite scriptures, "For this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness!"

We certainly had innumerable mercies that morning, and we continued East to South Dakota, where we drove through the Black Hills, stopped at Mt Rushmore, and on through the Badlands. 

In October of 2012, South Dakota experienced out of control forest fires.  Sadly, a huge portion of the Black Hills National Forest was damaged.  

We also stopped at the weirdly famous Walldrug, and bought some magnets.

The drive continued for hours but offered a beautiful sunset.

To pass the time driving, we listened to music, watched movies on my iPad, and read to each other from Ordeal by Hunger, a book about the Donner Party of 1846.

It's an incredibly true story, but horrible and fascinating and awful and inspiring and dreadful and gruesome and unimaginable. At some point toward the end of our 13 hr drive the second day, we decided we had to take time off from reading for a day.  This was after I asked my mom to stop reading for the last hour of our drive because I was afraid I was going to have nightmares..

Thursday night we stayed in Minnesota, and Friday we drove for another 13 hours through Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana, up to Michigan.

The visual that day was awful. We saw nothing of the first two mid-western states apart from fog.  Luckily the road belonged to us and was basically straight, otherwise we would have lost an incredible amount of time due to conditions.  When I took an exit off of the highway for a pit stop, I could not see any of the businesses, but blindly followed a sign that suggested their may be a gas station to the left.  We didn't actually see the physical building until it appeared right next to us.

But we stopped at a little store and got some Wisconsin cheese and wine for home.

The traffic around Chicago was intense.  Though the speed limit said 55, traffic on I-294 was flying at 85-90 mph.  To go any slower would have more dangerous than to just keep up with everyone.  The speed didn't bother me so much - we had to drive that fast in LA too, but what was difficult was that with my belongings in the back we had no rear view visual.  Just side mirrors.. needless to say once we made it through, we switched drivers around Gary, IN, and I passed out seconds after sitting in the passenger seat. 10 hours of driving through fog and then into crazy fast traffic is enough to wear a person out.

PW drove about three hours, then we arrived in MI, for our last night on the road.  After altering our route, losing an hour every day due to the time zone changes, and enduring weather and traffic, we were so looking forward to our final stop.  Frankenmuth, MI

It was out of our way, but the famous Bavarian town, good food, and Bronner's Christmas Wonderland beckoned us North into Michigan.  We had dinner and tucked ourselves in to the themed hotel, then went to sleep without setting alarms. 

We woke up when we damn well felt like it, had a great breakfast, then went exploring.

It was everything we thought it would be - over the top, flashy, excessive, and unfortunately, a little expensive.  But we found a few items that we left with, justifying that they were so unique and you couldn't find them elsewhere.

We left Michigan, and in just 6.5 short hours, we arrived in Indiana, PA.

My family was all there with signs, snacks, and help.  What took me well over two hours to pack by myself, took them less than 30 minutes to unload.  It was amazing and so nice to be welcomed back to PA.

Now to sort through my things and find a place for them...

updated map - recent trip across I-90 

Next up for me? Ski trips and time with family.  Then hopefully find steady employment.. if not, I'll take another assignment until I can find something in the Western PA area :)