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Twenty one years ago this October 8 will mark the first time Andy and I drove across this vast nation we live in these days. The words, "I do," were still fresh on our lips as we had recently spoke them with great sincerity in front of a small crowd of family and friends in the Wayne Community Church and then danced until our shoes wore out on a snowy night in Maine during the peak of the foliage season. We had loaded up all our new possessions, which fit nicely in the back of a 2-door Honda Civic hatchback I purchased from my brother Brian using my readjustment allowance from the Peace Corps where Andy and I met and fell in love in the tropical warmth of Jamaica where everything seems like a good idea. But lest you think we had heatstroke and made the wrong decision, and you might not be the first, let me assure you that we heeded the extolled PC advice and returned home on the range to make sure it was the real thing before running off down the aisle with no looking back. Then off we drove, 3000 miles, for the first time to settle into our first home in the hills of San Francisco and our first jobs and soon welcomed our first baby, Hannah.
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Fast forward 11 years to 1999 when we loaded up two huge U-Hauls with our expanded collection of possessions once again, each with a car on a trailer in tow. We caved in and bought a game boy to entertain our three kids - Hannah plus two of our four Beaver State babies, Christiana and Micah. The kids traded off vans and mine held Micah's two spotted newts - Sir Isaac and Fig - and an assortment of plants I couldn't bear to leave behind like my single peony and we headed back from the left coast to the right. This time we were leaving Andy's home state where we had settled after being all shook up by the SF earthquakes. I was pregnant with Isaiah and we were leaving the remains of Noah and Jonah in a cemetery on a sunny hill in Salem where two sweetgum trees and a granite seat marked their spot. The sight of Mt. Hood retreating in my rearview mirrow allowed me to take a full breath and exhale a huge sigh of relief as I headed my family home to the Atlantic to heal.
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Fast forward another decade and there we were, last week and the week before, doing it all again in reverse. This time we had successfully whittled our "needs" down to one moving van, a Penske this time having learned from our "What maintenance?" U-Haul experience the time before. Andy had already driven one car across in July and I followed him across country like a good wife in my van with two bikes on the back and two different kids this time - our RI babies, Isaiah and Bella. (We left Micah behind, boo hoo, and Xana took the quick way, flying out to meet us in Portland.) Following that big yellow truck made for a quick game of "Banana", if you know what I mean... We figured they could switch off vehicles now and again but the DVD player and leather captain's chairs proved too much to resist. Technology has changed alot in a decade and the game boy lost its allure, replaced by a DS and an MP3 player which barely got used due to the DVD's and Polly Pockets.
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We headed up thru MA and back down thru RI and across CT and over the Hudson on the Tappan Zee bridge from NY to NJ, both of which have a no-cell-phone law while driving. We chatted freely after crossing the PA border and spent the first nite near U Penn. PA, by the way, has the best rest areas with great food choices. I can tell you right now that we saw a good many rest areas en route thanks to the "pinenut" bladders of Isaiah and Bella, who spent the trip filling them up as fast as we emptied them. "I'm thirsty," was quickly followed by, "I have to go potty." I figure they rode 3000 miles across this fair land but will mostly remember Middle Earth as they watched the extended play Lord of the Rings trilogy with perhaps some scenes from Rugrats in Paris mixed up in their memories of our trip across the nation.
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Skipping across OH and IN - not much to see besides barns and no wonder Michael Jackson left the armpit known as Gary - I have said this before, but seeing all the wind turbines spinning happily over the verdant waves of corn and soy in our nation's heartland - IL and IO - warmed my heart. But really, must they do all the work? And speaking of putting people back to work, I should add here that our nation's highways are under construction - all of them. We spent a night at Andy's cousin's farm and learned a bit about the farming-thousands-of-acres life before heading on to cross the mighty Mississippi River and eating lunch at ACOE dam #12 - voted the most scenic Subway in the nation in our very professional scientific study. There we sat in the sun and watched the heaping piles of coal on flat barges traversing the locks in Bellevue while chatting with the city manager. Iowa looks small on the map but it is not. I was elated by the "Welcome to Minnesota" sign and picked up the national public radio station broadcasting live from the MN State Fair. Perfect.
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We crossed over the mighty Missouri River on the Lewis and Clark trail, a great visitor's center where a gal walked her horse in the "pet walking" area and they had a "beware of poisonous snakes" sign on the scenic overlook trail. I figure they should post one of those at the airports in Costa Rica and that would pretty much cover them for the entire country where, by the way, we never saw such a warning in spite of the plethora of said creatures!
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Okay, here is where things slow down so read more slowly. One word - South Dakota (!) Guess we should have known we were in for some long miles ahead when they offered a 4 CD set at the first visitor's center on all kinds of fascinating and not-so-fascinating details to get you across their state without killing yourself from sheer boredom. Guns for Jesus should be their motto judging by the billboards and thank God we had those to read! I used to think it was terrible that the white man hung out of train windows and shot at the buffalo passing thru this vast expanse but now I understand their desperation completely. I was ready but we never saw even one buffalo in 3000 miles. Ask me anything about SD. They have a state dinosaur, the triceratops, and I really wished I would see one running at us thru the miles of sunflower farms which seemed so lovely at first... As an aside, many states have state dinosaurs. RI does not. But one of my wonderful uncle's lasting legislative achievements as a State Senator from our neighbor, CT, was to get them one - the theropod - never heard of it but there you have it.
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So it is really called the Mt. Rushmore State and that is as it should be since that awe-inspiring monumental achievement made every long and boring hundreds of miles across SD worth the trip. Dream big! It is an amazing achievement and you should make a point of seeing it before you die. Bella had a bloody nose there and bled on the stone, a family tradition as my Dad recently bled on the Blarney Stone, and we renamed it Mt. Gushmore.
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We had to seek shelter from an awesome hail storm as we hiked the presidential path and in the walkway of flags RI was touching OR, how poignant...
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Safe to say we were the only RI plates in the multi-tiered parking garage and we made the kid's day who was working his summer away taking money at the park entrance and asking folks, "Where you from?" That's what he said after he said, "No," when we said RI and asked for a discount for distance traveled - "But you just made my day!"
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When you do go to Rushmore, enter thru Wyoming. Here the deer and the antelope really do play and the landscape is varied and interesting with the Rocky's looming in the western sky. Black oil rigs pump away in folks' backyards like prehistoric critters themselves and their owners smile all the way to the bank. Wyoming is a state where you can really STREEETTTCCCHHH out and you can do whatever you want in your own backyard and nobody else will know. This is the state I was traversing as NPR reported on that poor gal who had been found imprisoned in that creepy CA backyard all these years later but looking around WY one can easily see how that could happen.
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Entering into MT the sky really does seem to get bigger. Courtesy of the pinenut bladder twins, we happened to stop at the site of Custer's last stand, the Battle of Little Big Horn. There we listened to a very engaging park ranger recount the entire day as well as a good bit of the history of those times. We should have stayed for hours but it was only supposed to be a pit stop... I sure felt sorry (read that with a western twang...) for how we treated Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and so many other proud and wise men of their time who fought so hard and unsuccessfully to live in peace. NPR chose this very moment to do a Pete Seeger show and I drove while singing along to folk music inspired by the landscape around me, including songs from his days with Woody Guthrie. We sang "This Land is Your Land" while we traveled thru Bozeman and crossed over the continental divide to Butte, home of the largest scary still-filling superfund lake site in the land, and on into Missoula where Steve and Heidi of the Christiana posse put us up for the night. We talked and dreamed of Jamaica with jerk chicken and Red Stripe in our bellies.
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We climbed thru the serious mountain passes all in the next day with gorgeous views of Lake Couer D'Alene as we crossed the skinny part of Idaho's panhandle. In WA the weather was wild and I ran over a good number of quintessential tumbleweeds in the road as we approached and entered into threatening dust and lightening storms under black skies. "I hope there aren't any tornadoes," Andy remarked casually, scaring me to death. It was blowing like crazy in the windy Columbia Gorge where hundreds of wind turbines lined the river, a new feature since our last trip thru. The wind and kite surfers criss-crossed the river with their splotches of fast-moving color and we pulled into Hood River in time for dinner. Our stated goal for the entire trip was to be right there so I could swim across the mighty Columbia from WA to OR on Labor Day the next morning and we made it!
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Early the next rainy dark morning ("Get used to it," I thought to myself), several hundred swimmers loaded onto a sternwheeler and travelled across the river where we jumped off the not-so-low side in flights of ten. By the time we reached the WA shoreline the sun had come out and before we jumped into the sweet water a rainbow appeared and spanned the course like a magical map. I held my nose and goggles and was the last one in after my new friend, Alcatraz Joe, who was celebrating his 75th birthday. I adjusted my goggles and started swimming easily for the border in the middle of the river to re-enter Oregon after a decade away. After 6 days of driving it felt heavenly to move and stretch with each stroke. I pulled my arms thru the pale green river waters which are home to the salmon and sturgeon I had worked for years to save. I thought of the waterfalls the dams had drowned but could not feel their pull. Each stroke brought me closer to crossing over as I swam directly and willingly towards Mt. Hood - the same white pointed peak I was so happy to see receding behind me a decade ago. The water was warm and the happy arms of my family greeted me with a dry towel as I emerged under the rainbow's end to begin our new life here. Again.
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K3
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