Last Wednesday I got back from a cross-country road trip in which I flew to Tampa, not without first getting caught at LAX during the shooting causing my layover to last 6 hours instead of 50 minutes (I realize I'm lucky that I made it out of there safely, my heart hurts for the victims and their families), swooped up my friend Gaby after a night at "St. Pete's hottest night club" and moved her back to Washington in her little pink nugget of a car.
We left Tampa on Saturday and made it back to Seattle on Wednesday afternoon. Our days looked like:
DAY 1: Left St. Petersburg on almost no sleep after a quick stop at the beach and a few errands, hoped for some roadside gator jerky, didn't get/see any, stopped to pop my Dunkin Donuts cherry, drove through Georgia, saw more billboards this day than I've ever seen in my whole life, popped my Chick-Fil-A cherry, got late night Taco Bell in Tennessee that tasted different from Taco Bell elsewhere (yes, there was a lot of unhealthy food this day) from a woman with a trashy southern accent, ended up in Nashville at about 11pm where we got ready in the car, watched the clock roll back an hour, grabbed a fancy drink with Gaby's friend Krista and then watched some live music (Wagon Wheel!!) and a street fight on Broadway.
DAY 2: Krista lives with the guitar player from Thompson Square and his wife, he showed us his recording studio then invited us for breakfast at his mom's house which was amazing. We stopped for sweet potato lattes at the Frothy Monkey on the way. We drove from Nashville, through Kentucky which had more road kill than any other state ever (Gaby swears she saw a dead pony on the side of the road), through Illinois, into Missouri where we got stuck in the only traffic of the whole trip, stopped in St. Louis to see the arch, have the worst service of our life at dinner (I ate BBQ), said "hi" to one of Gaby's friends and then drove until almost midnight and almost Kansas city where we spent the night.
DAY 3: Drove through Kansas City, we got pulled over in Missouri (BOO), drove into Iowa, stopped at a weird welcome center, and then got dinner in Lincoln, Nebraska. All of those states look the same. We almost ran out of gas in WY, and finally made it to Cheyenne at almost midnight. We stayed at a Days Inn where the man at the front desk assured us our room wouldn't smell bad so we were extra pissed when it was the worst smelling room ever and it was like twelve degrees outside so opening the window to air it out sucked, ordered pizza only to have the delivery man tell me he made an "oopsie no no" and forgot the credit card receipt while awkwardly asking me for a cash tip and then after all of that was said and done we discovered our pizza wasn't at all what we ordered before passing out so tough.
DAY 4: Woke up to snow in Cheyenne. It was gorgeous and also 12 degrees. Frigid. Drove through downtown Cheyenne to get Starbucks and take pictures. I drove us out of the snow and it was my favorite part of the trip, so beautiful. We ate 50cent ice cream cones from Little America for lunch and Gaby did an ice cream dance out of delirium. We stopped at the prettiest ever rest stop in Utah, and finally made it to Beth in Boise, Idaho after traveling for 13 hours. We grabbed drinks (and took shots, what?) downtown Boise with a few of her friends, Beth and I cuddled on the floor of her apartment and we ate Calfonapzaktnch (translation: California Pizza Kitchen).
DAY 5: Idaho to Oregon to Washington! We stopped at the trailer I used to live in on the Umatilla Indian Reservation (that gave me severe anxiety), and we met Gaby's dad in the Tri Cities for a few minutes, and we finally made it back to Seattle that evening totally exhausted and happy to eat dinner that consisted of (not fried) vegetables.
Other notable things from our road trip: we listened to a lot of Ashlee Simpson, Backstreet Boys, N'Sync, country, and old school gangster rap. Basically Spotify Premium was our best friend. We don't know what we would have done without our phones in general (music, GPS, cameras, general entertainment like looking up weird stuff). We stopped at every welcome center and took pictures with every state sign we passed except Washington. We had a hastag mix up we only discovered 1/2 way through the trip, I thought Gaby way saying #GRandadventure and she was saying #GRandventure (combining the two words) so we were both hashtagging different things the whole time HA. Gaby stayed in Seattle with me Thursday and explored the city in the crazy rain while I went to work and then we both headed back to White Salmon on Friday to celebrate my birthday early with all of our White Salmon/Hood River friends and also Beth which was so fun! I loved our trip a lot, it was so much fun, and I'm so surprised I didn't get sick of Gaby at all (I actually felt separation anxiety after we were finally apart for more than like 5 minutes), but I'm probably good with not driving that far again for a really long time!
