The Road Chronicles: Day 4 (and really just the rest of the trip plus the first week in Chicago)

Ok, here's the real version of events since the disgusting day of packing the car in Tulsa.

We left Tulsa early early early Sunday morning and drove.  The end.

Well, ok, it was a little more exciting than that, to be fair.  We stopped in St. Louis to have lunch with our awesome friend Doug.  We ate delicious pizza and chatted with him, then got back in the car.  There was a huge accident with at least one person (fatally?) injured just in front of us as we were leaving St. Louis and the police had all four lanes of traffic completely blocked off with their cars.  So we parked the car in the middle of the freeway and sat there listening to Harry Potter on tape with the AC on for about 45 minutes.  Ugh (both to the horrible accident and the horrible traffic).

But then we were on our way and made really good time to Hinsdale and Aunt April and Uncle Bob's house.  We had some food, rested a bit, and got settled in.  Unfortunately Uncle Bob was leaving for Michigan the next day, but fortunately that meant that we got to park the van in his spot in the garage.  Not that it's a bad neighborhood or anything, but it was soooo nice to have the car and all of our stuff safely inside during the next few days when the ginormous storms hit.  Really, I'm sure they weren't that ginormous, from Chicago standards, but from our point of view we thought this was the end.  We'll get used to it I'm sure though.

The power did go out for about four hours or so, so we went out to dinner and went to bed early.

Monday and Tuesday JonMarke and I spent the day looking at apartments, and Tuesday afternoon we found a really great one.  We put the application in Wednesday, got approved, and moved in Friday!  Thursday we (he and I and Aunt April) spent the entire day at IKEA and at a mattress store buying furniture and a bed.  Then we moved all the stuff in Friday.  It only took two trips and not very much time, which was great.

Here are a few photos of the apartment before we filled it up with boxes and stuff:

 Standing in the doorway looking in at the "living room"

From the living room looking at the doorway to the "bedroom"; it's technically not a 1BR apartment because a bedroom is qualified by having the closet in the room, so they get away with calling this a "loft" or "convertible" apartment because the closet is not in the bedroom (and the wall doesn't go all the way to the ceiling either)

The kitchen, which shares a wall with the bedroom.  The apartment is not yellow, it is in fact just bad lighting from the flash on my camera; it is the color of the wall on the left in this picture, which somehow didn't get all flashified.

Looking into the bedroom from the living room

Looking back out into the living room from the bedroom (the bedroom is so small it's hard to get an actual picture of it from anywhere, I can't back up far enough!)

The huge closet/changing room (the bathroom is to the right but you can't see it in this picture)

The bathroom, through the closet

All in all we're very happy with it; it's a great layout, and it's just big enough for us to live in comfortably!  We've got most of our furniture set up but I'm not gonna take/post any more pictures until it's fairly close to being done, cuz it's still pretty messy and full of boxes right now.

The apartment is in a fantastic neighborhood as well!  We can walk to pretty much everything we need to get to, and it's all very safe and friendly.  JonMarke can walk to classes, and I can walk to the train and then it's only a fifteen minute ride into downtown where I work.  We've had a lot of fun wandering around exploring the neighborhood so far.

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Day 4, and 5, and 6, and etc.

Oh my god, well, we're here, and it's been like a week since the last post.  But don't freak out, we did make it, we're fine; everything just got sorta busy and/or crazy and I haven't had time or access to a computer or internet or some combination of the three for about a week.

I'll go into much more detail later, but for now JonMarke and I made the drive to Chicago, stayed with Aunt April and Uncle Bob for a few days, found an apartment, moved in, furnished it, did the grocery shopping, etc.

And my first day of work is tomorrow!  So dinner and sleep is in order, and I'll try to get my computer set up so that I can do a full and detailed post, including pictures, tomorrow!  (I've stolen JM's laptop for right now just to check email and the Metra schedule for tomorrow morning)

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The Road Chronicles: Packing for Day 4

Bleh, repacking the car today was not very fun at all.

It is stupidly hot and muggy outside today; according to the weather it is 95 degrees but feels like 107.  And of course we didn't really think to do the packing later tonight when it was a bit cooler.  We just thought "We want to get on the road early tomorrow so we need to pack today instead of tomorrow morning."  Woops.

Also, cuz it was late and dark when we actually got to William's house, I forgot to put up the sunshade.  Then, we haven't had to get in the car for the past two days at all, so I didn't think to put it up then either.  Needless to say, when I got in it today to back it up the driveway so we could pack, the entire car was horribly hot.  The steering wheel (which isn't even black) was so hot I couldn't really hold onto it firmly with both hands for more than about ten seconds at a time.  Luckily I just had to turn the car around in the driveway and back it up a few feet.

But, half an hour, three bottles of water, and about ten gallons of sweat later, the car is packed!  It is full to the brim, there is maybe room for the two pillows that are inside the house still, and that only because pillows are fairly squishy and forgiving.

After three days of driving with the van seat on top of the car, we decided we didn't actually want to put anything else up there.  There were a few things that didn't fit into the car that would have, had we been willing to put more up on the top.  But Dad and JonMarke did a really good job of tying that seat down, and then we did a really good job of getting the tarp bungeed down on top of it.  So I'd rather not mess with it at this point.  When we were driving through New Mexico there were a bunch of lighted warning signs that said things like "High wind area next 75 miles" and a bunch of cars passed us in those areas that did not have their roof cargo tied down very well.  One large black SUV had two large suitcases on their roof rack.  The suitcase were very well wrapped around with rope and tied down to the left and right sides of the car, but the owners did nothing about the front and back of the suitcases.  So this SUV flies past us and the suitcases are blown up at about a 60 degree angle on the top of the car, but held on at the sides, just not the top.

It was all fairly scary and I'd rather leave well enough alone.  So there are three boxes of JonMarke's books and one of his guitars that William will mail to us in Chicago.  I offered to repack the car so that the guitar would fit, but JonMarke swears that mailing it is how he got it to Tulsa in the first place and that it will be fine.  So that's the plan.

So now, an hour and a half later, we are finally almost comfortable in our skin again, after drinking much more water and sitting under the fans in the air-conditioned house.

We're going to bed early today and hopefully we'll be on the road by about 6:30 tomorrow!

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The Road Chronicles: Pictures from Day 2 and Day 3

Ok I think it'll be easier to do all these pictures at once, since I didn't actually have the energy to upload any last night, and I don't really have the energy to edit yesterday's post and cleverly insert pictures along with witty captions in either yesterday's or today's post. I will solve the problem by just putting everything in one and using plain, boring captions!

Day 2:
Mesas in Southern California


Weird looking plants (trees? shrubs?)


This is the border between California and Arizona. It goes over this pretty river with gorgeous turquoise/aqua blue water.


Just on the Arizona side of the border.


The landscape changed significantly and things were rockier and less flat.


Stripey!


JonMarke thought perhaps something was burning; I thought it was a low hanging cloud; either way it's a pretty picture that is well framed.


Two Guns, AZ. Yes, this is the entire town. We thought "Oh an exit with a gas station, let's stop for a pit stop." Yeah, that didn't work. The entire town was those two buildings and they were both completely abandoned.


So we made the pit stop in Winslow, AZ instead. I asked JonMarke to take a picture of me standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona.


Which is exactly what he did, the picture was of me, and I was on a corner, but in my head I had a different idea of the framing of the picture. So here (as we were driving out) is the corner framed as I had imagined it. Just imagine me still standing there!


Apparently there are also mesas in Arizona.


I tried to get a good picture of how SPRAWLING Albuquerque is as we drove up Wednesday night, but it's hard to get a good picture in the dark out of a moving car through the windshield.


Day 3:
The landscape was very different in New Mexico. All of the sudden there were trees instead of shrubs.


Trees.

And like I said, there was really nothing of interest in Texas or Oklahoma, so we passed through there without any photos!


P.S. I was always taught that photos are more interesting when there are people in them. And after going through thousands upon thousands of Nana's photos of plants, dogs, gardens, and landscapes, I totally agree! The problem is that when you're on a road trip with just two people, the pictures of people get pretty boring after a while... "Here's Jessi driving", "Ooh, now JonMarke is driving", "Oh, now Jessi is driving again, still looking straight forward, at the road". You get the idea. And we can't even switch it up a tiny bit cuz any pictures of the person in the passenger seat would have had to have been taken by the driver, which is dangerous! We would never do that. :-) So you get pictures of landscapes, cuz that's what is interesting on a road trip.

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The Road Chronicles: Day 3

So now we're in Tulsa, safe and sound at our friend William's house for the night. It's ridiculously hot here, and muggy, and icky, but it's nice to be at our (semi) destination. I'm really looking forward to not driving for the next two days. I'm going to bed without setting an alarm and waking up whenever I wake up tomorrow! How exciting. William said "I have to work a shift tomorrow, from 8am to noon" and I said "Don't worry, we probably won't even be awake until you get home anyways". Hurray!

Today was an interesting day. The driving wasn't horrible but because we had such a long day yesterday we were already a bit tired. And we got lost a few times trying to get back on highways that we left to take a break or get food or switch drivers.

We left at about 7:30am after eating a continental breakfast in our Super 8 motel (er, some toast and juice). At some point we crossed into Texas. At some point we then crossed into Oklahoma. It was rather uneventful overall.

Though, I did have a huge scare about almost hitting a deer! We were in Oklahoma on a four lane highway that had a large grassy divide between the two lanes going the different directions. There were no other cars in sight so I had the cruise control on at 75mph. About 100ft ahead of us we saw a frantic doe sprinting across the two lanes of our side of the highway and into the grassy divide. It was far enough in front of us that I wasn't worried, and I was more thinking "Ooh, a deer! Oh no deer, don't run into the lanes on the other side of the highway, you'll get run over!" But apparently the deer had the same thought and it whipped around in a quick U turn right before reaching the other two lanes and headed back towards our side of the highway. So I was like "Ok, slow down, I'll let it run back across and we'll be fine". But the deer didn't run straight across the road, so I had slowed down, and the deer slowed down a bit, but we were both still going about 60mph (I swear that deer was fast!) and the deer was RIGHT NEXT TO US. The deer and I were trying to figure out "Do I go in front? slow down? go in back? aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!" and neither of us could decide, but the deer had all of this forward momentum, which was taking it straight into the driver's side of my van! It was right next to my driver's side door; if I'd had the window down (and the car and the deer hadn't been almost hitting each other at 60mph) I could have reached out and patted it's head.

Well finally I just hit the gas and managed to pull right in front of it. We didn't hit the deer, and it didn't hit us, but when we looked in the rearview mirror the deer had completely fallen over itself in the lane behind us because of trying to turn and avoid us and because of the slipstream from the giant van. Poor deer. But it's still alive to frantically run around the highway and give someone else a heart attack another day.

The rest of today was fairly uneventful, and like I said, I'm looking forward to going to sleep and not waking up until my body is good and ready to!

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The Road Chronicles: Day 2

Or Day 3 I suppose, depending on how you count it. But since we didn't make any progress with the little amount of driving we did yesterday, I count today as day 2 instead.

Yesterday we went to San Diego to visit Lauren and Whit. It was really awesome! We walked around on the beach with Whit and then met up with Lauren for lunch at a burger place called Hodad's in Ocean Beach. It was yummy.

Today we woke up at about 5am. We finished packing up some of JonMarke's stuff and loading it into the car, and we also put a tarp over the seat on the roof to avoid some of the bugs. Luckily we didn't run into any summer thunderstorms on our route today, but JonMarke's mom had the brilliant idea of us getting a tarp and bungees BEFORE we got to Tulsa, rather than in Tulsa. It was nice to have the tarp to keep the bugs off, but it was freaky to hear the noise of the tarp flapping around and see the shadows every once in a while. We must have stopped about four different times to make sure the thing wasn't falling off!

We made excellent time today. We got in to the motel at 11pm, left at about 6:30am. So, with a one hour time change not in our favor, it was 16.5 hours on the road, but only probably about 13 of that driving. We stopped for a full breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as snacks and leg-stretching every once in a while.

It was ridiculously windy today! My van is already unhappy in the wind and definitely gets buffeted around, but there were high wind warnings etc. and it was a bit scary. Add in the tarp noise and it was a bit harrowing for a while there.

My car finally hit 90K miles just as we were passing the Grand Canyon! So exciting, it's all grown up!

Also, we were driving along when all of the sudden we saw signs for Winslow, AZ. Turns out we also wanted to stop then for a pit stop, so we got a picture of me "Standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona"! It was awesome.

I have a bunch of pictures of cool landscapes and stuff (and me on a corner), but we're exhausted so I'll probably put them up tomorrow or Friday.

Off to bed!

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The Road Chronicles: Day 1

Well we made it safe and sound (to JonMarke's parents house in Escondido)!

We woke up at about 4:45 to finish packing and getting all the stuff into the car and we left right at 6am. Went to Noah's and got some breakfast, and to Safeway and got some water, string cheese, apples, and blue Doritos. Driving snacks are awesome!

We actually got on the road just before seven and drove to Yucaipa to visit his grandfather and aunt. We had some awesome Chicago style pizza and then drove the rest of the way to Escondido.

Nothing (that we can tell so far) broke in the car or got smushed, and the seat stayed on top of the car just fine. However, it is now TOTALLY covered in dead bugs. Eww. I forgot to take a picture when we got here, but I'll take one tomorrow and add it in. [Here you go!]

I did get a picture of the pretty purple hills and the disgusting disgusting smog however. The purple hills were pretty, and the smog was really really bad. I kept cleaning off my sunglasses thinking that something was on them; it was blurry and fuzzy and just plain hard to see through. The mountain in the bottom picture is totally covered by smog. We couldn't see it at all, and it was only about a mile away.

Tomorrow we hang out in San Diego/Escondido and take a break. Then we leave again bright and early Wednesday morning!

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