After PA, we went through Ohio, where we stopped at my college in Hiram, Ohio - I hadn't been back since I graduated in 1985. It was surreal. I bought alumni swag (sweatshirts, hat, etc.).
Then we drove on through Indiana. I killed a bird. Well, technically, while driving 65mph, the bird decided to fly into my windshield...just like Wile E. Coyote did in the old WB cartoons...I was inconsolable for about 2 minutes.
Then we drove through Illinois. It was great seeing Chicago again, it's a cool town. However, the frikkin' tolls every 5 minutes sucked donkey nads. See what you can do about that Joph, chop chop!
We called it a night and found a crappy Super 8 motel. Next morning, we went up to Wisconsin and had breakfast at a Denny's. They had ugly folk there. Scary ugly. Wisconsin truly does smell like cheese. I'm not sure that's a good thing.
Then we drove up to Minnesota and crossed the Mississippi River. That was the highlight. Frankly, the bottom part of Minnesota sucked. I guess all the spiffy stuff in Minnesota is up further north.
After Minnesota, we headed to South Dakota. We basically took a 400-mile detour up to South Dakota to see the Badlands and Mount Rushmore. We called it a night in Mount Rushmore. The presidents look a lot smaller than from the pictures I've seen. The town was closing down as we arrived fairly late, but luckily there was this all-night pizza joint open and the two girls who served us and made our pizza were very cool and hawt. To me, they were the highlight of Mount Rushmore.
The next morning, we drove onto Wyoming and headed across the state to get to Yellowstone Park. This part of the trip was very, very awesome.
Along the way, we saw wild horses, buffalo (in Yellowstone Park where a big beastie walked right up to our car. It was very cool!), and antelope and other stuff. We bought more swag from Yellowstone for ourselves and wives (my wife was already in San Francisco preparing our new house and my step-mom stayed back home in Pennslyvania).
Missed Old Faithful's ejaculation by 15 minutes or so. We didn't feel like waiting another hour and thus decided that the rising steam was cool enough.
Then we finally made our way out of Yellowstone Park and drove for about 15 to 20 minutes through Montana. It had more interesting things to see than all of the Minnesota and South Dakota portion except the Badlands, which rocked.
Down into Idaho, which I had been to when I was 14. The only problem was we didn't drive through the really cool part where I was when I was 14. That was Stanlely and Sun Valley. No, instead, we drove through the gnarliest, ugliest part of Idaho. I was bummed and couldn't wait to get out of there. We felt it was so ugly, we drove later than usual until we hit Utah. We called it a night in Utah.
Got up the next morning, drove out of Utah, which was pretty cool looking, and drove through the Salt Flats. It was very cool. Then we drove over some awesome mountains and stuff and hit Nevada. Nevada was really amazing as well. We passed by Sparks and Reno, but I was anxious to get to my new home.
Finally, we hit California and drove throught the Sierra Nevadas. While beautiful, it was the only part of the trip where I was really sort of freaking out on driving down the huge *** elevations. By the time we hit Sacramento, I was hell bent for leather and hauling *** to get to the bay area. We arrived about 5:15pm and it was nice to be at my new home. My sleep cycle is all fooked up, but I'm catching up on it when I can and I'm really glad to be back.
Unfortunately, the truck with our belongings is down in San Jose and probably won't come up to our house until sometime this week. Thus, my pc is stuck on there and I can only pop on the old laptop when my wife isn't on it. Fortunately, we're in a furnished house as it's my wife's grandmother's house that we've decided to buy. Grandma is knee-deep in her dementia and living full time at my mother-in-law's house. So we've become the caretakers of her house until she passes - at which point we will buy the house when it is bequeathed to my mother-in-law and my wife's aunt. We just have to buy out the aunt, essentially getting the house for half price. In San Francisco, this is a major benefit to us. So basically, we're gonna be living rent/mortgage free until she passes on.
Anyhoo, it's nice to back in California and as soon as I get a bit more settled with unpacking and stuff, we'll have to get a California Boozefest for the local Asylumites in the near future. In the meantime, I'm playing tour guide for my dad while he is here until Wednesday and spending time with my wife and her family. When I can, like 4am in the morning as my sleep cycle is a mess, I'm playing Texas Hold 'Em and GTA Liberty City Stories on my PSP.
Good times...
