BTV to PDX Days 6 & 7: Utah to Oregon

By the end certain routines became habit, an inevitable part of of being on the road for days on end.
We carried things into each hotel in a rag-tag orderly manner, then proceed to tooth brushing and story-reading, puppy-piling on the hotel bed as though it was all we'd ever done. A life in motion. A night of rest, and anywhere will do.
In the morning in Ogden, Utah, the grass was covered in frost but the air was sweet, and the mountains lavender in the new light of day. Whatever the future would hold, hadn't reached us yet. We were just there, gathering up our things, making circles around the city for a breakfast place, then moving on.
Road travel. Everyone warned us that the boys would become unbearable. They said we'd need to keep them plugged in to an endless supply of movies and games, screen time to the max. But we didn't. In fact, though we brought the iPads for that purpose, we never pulled them out.

Boredom is it's own precious device.

Creativity exalts when the mind is left to wander about aimlessly, watching the hills change. New games happen. Ideas connect. Characters come to life.
Things we did do: lots of stops to run helter-skelter down hills, the wind in our hair. Snack breaks. The long hours spent listening to the Moth radio hour and Radio Lab podcasts. The license plate game (only 9 states eluded us.) Good tunes. Sketchbooks filled with pictures. Picture books. Chapter books. Stickers. Candy. Chewing gum. Running circles with the dog.
Yes, there were intolerable parts where everyone was hungry or sick of being in the car, but for the most of it, we were content to be together, moving across the wide country towards our collective future.
The last two days, from Ogden into Oregon, and then from some small place in Eastern Oregon were a blur of anticipation. We drove long miles through the wide expanse of irrigated fields, past canyons and waterfalls, windmills and fruit trees. We followed the river, west, west chasing the sun and finally below Mt. Hood's white-capped auspices, we could feel the future colliding with our now.
Past trees and water-falling cliffs, past big dams and bigger dams and wide-spanning bridges, and then finally, finally into Portland where we all yelled out "HOME!" and then looked immediately for sandwiches.
Since then we've been gradually unfurling, finding new routines in this new place. I can't wait to share some new stories, adventures + inspiration.

BTV to PDX Day 5: Cheyenne to Ogden

In the morning Interstate 80, the only road west out of Cheyenne, was closed at the pass. Inclement weather and nothing to do but wait it out.
First we went for breakfast at a place that seemed afraid we'd miss the fact that its all about eggs. Every surface, wall, and menu emblazoned with sunny yolks and ovals. (Of note: the eggs were terrible.) Then we snatched a glimpse at Wyoming history at the museum, learning that eons ago Wyoming was a tropical wetland with magnolias and palms and swampy places. When the climate shifted, the slow magic of geology turned the swamps to coal, and the rest is history, as they say. Hello oil fields and coal mines.
I could have looked for hours at the beadwork moccasins and headdresses of the Shoshone and Bannock peoples, but the boys were more impressed with the enormous head of a bison and other artifacts from the time of the early settlers. Each one revealing both recklessness and bravery. Rifles, spurs, tin pitchers, whisky bottles, washboards, sheep wagons, pistols, chaps.
I keep wondering what the boys will remember, if anything at all. We took a photograph of them out front standing in the stirring wind, their backs to an enormous cowboy boot statue painted with every Wyoming emblem you can think of. The have those quirky big-kid grins on their faces, the kind that happen when you tell them to smile. What isn't captured is the way Bean kept poking Sprout in the ribs to make him giggle. What isn't ever pictured in any of the pictures we take, are all the snippets of conversations, the eye-spy games, the arguments, the annoying repetitive noises that one or the other of them makes to drive everyone nuts, or the way they say "I love you" to each other out of the blue. What's never in the picture is the sweet scent of the wide open space; of raw snow, of sage brush of stirring wind. After a moment of jostling in front of the boot we ran for the car, checking the road reports.
The Interstate was open, and loaded with snacks from one of those health food stores that smelled exactly the way every health food store of my childhood, we were off, the landscape changing before our eyes.
Up, up, into the thin air and blue sky of the pass. Tears came for me. I couldn't help them. The West feels like home in an inexplicable way. I was born in the bowl of the Rocky Mountains, and it's as if that high-altitude air and jagged geography indelibly stamped my soul.
In Laramie we found the best coffee of the trip; an unexpected win. At the counter, the pretty barista with a feather at the end of her braid, and a guy on the other side of the bar were discussing reincarnation. Outside, the wind never let up and the trains of the Union Pacific kept barreling past. Laramie. I kept thinking of the book I read as a kid: My Friend Flicka. One of the best books. It took place outside Laramie, I think, and in my minds eye I can see the herds of horses. The big thunderhead clouds in summer. The way things were.
Soon we were crossing the Continental Divide, marking the place where the rivers no longer run towards the Atlantic, and instead slip and slid towards the wild, untamed Pacific. We saw antelope run, and a lone coyote with its shaggy salt colored coat blur into the sage brush and sun.
Everywhere the hills were traced with the terraced zig-zags of cattle paths. Small ponds, dried in the sun, left salt-slicked circles in the planes. Birds swooped, bright among the purple blooms and blowing grasses. Snow fences hunched weathered in the sun, and at their backs the last of winter's white stuff, greying in the shadows. And then we were among the red-rocked land of Utah where the mountains suddenly towered above us, the heavens gathering close is the sun slowly set.

BTV to PDX Day 4: Omaha to Cheyenne

We woke to a violent storm. The sky the color of slate. Thunder rumbling low, and breakfast in one of those enormous mid-western diners where everything is super sized: the people, the waffles, the ice-cream scoop sized dollops of frosting on every cinnamon bun. I can't quite capture the disappointment on the boy's faces realizing that, "maple syrup" in the middle of the country means something made corn syrup and flavoring. Crestfallen, they both disdainfully opted for jelly on their waffles instead.
We looked for better coffee for the road, and found it at a little Blue Star Cafe, and good chai too, then merged onto the highway, winding out of the Omaha sprawl. Mega churches, and strip malls. Fast food franchises. Gas stations with signs so high you can see them for miles, and then wheat fields. As the morning wore on, the rain stopped. The sun showed up somewhere above the prairie, flirting with clouds forever huge. The kind of clouds you can't help falling into with your eyes. The kind that keep you awed at the window, as the world rushes past.
75 mph speed limits. 3-container big rigs. Field after field, widening and warming till the air wind-whipped and sweet. At a rest stop by a small pond we ran loops laughing. The boys, all three of them perched on the top of a metal gate at the edge of a field, so I could snap a polaroid picture (one of just a few we took along the trip, tucked into the glove box for safe keeping.)
My bangs like Farrah Fawcett's, in the unending wind. Crucifixes at gas stations. Cowboy hats at tourist traps. Every conflicted feeling about Buffalo Bill's fort, with it's 20-foot tall statue of some Native American chief. Oh this big country and the history that made it. The buffalo that were lost to greed almost as soon as we arrived; the first people soon after; their way of life forever obsolete. You don't believe it quite from a text book, at least not the way it's real suddenly, crossing the way the first settlers did through the wide belly of the country. Seeing the landmarks that kept them on course, and imagining the people who lived in this big country before them, walking with silent feet and eyes that could read the language of the clouds.
Now there are statues and arrowheads at gift shops and an ache in my throat I can't explain.
Later, when it's my turn to drive, the sky darkened again, and a cold, whirling dust storm barreled down upon us. The sky became violet then snow-gray. The car rocked back and forth as we passed semi trucks, both hands on the wheel, Wilco's drummer Glenn Kotche playing a wild set on Radio Lab. The temperature kept dropping until along with dust, there was sleet. Wyoming up ahead, and at the next rest stop word that past Cheyenne the interstate was closed because of weather.
Onwards. Arriving in Cheyenne around dinner time and wondering at the emptiness of it. The presence of Oil. The predominance of pick up trucks and freight trains. Mexican for dinner, the first authentic tacos in ages, and a Corona; then smuggling the dog into a non-dog friendly hotel in a quilt. Giggling. Jumping on the beds. Doing laundry. Dreaming.

BTV to PDX Day 3: Chicago to Omaha

It took a half a day to leave Chicago, and after that it took even longer to find ourselves at the edge of the Great Planes, crossing into the wide expanse of prairie that is Nebraska. It wasn't what any of us expected. We'd been warned about boredom; about the endless flat expanse of field and sky, but none of us were bored. Even in the back seat, the boys seemed lulled by the wideness of sky and grass: Reading books and drawing pictures and watching the world go by. Lunch on the banks of the fast-moving Mississippi
Outside, the landscape was a soft and rippling quilt of grass and cottonwoods and creeks and farms with circular irrigation systems. The kind that from above make great round crop circles. Wheat fields, and also, genetically modified corn. Miles of it. Newly planted. The earth raw, the day ending slowly. Violet and vermillion for hours as we chased the sun west.
Omaha after dark, later than we'd planned. Carrying the boys in from the car. Falling into bed heavy-lidded and grateful to all be there together, and then waking early to hard-falling rain.

BTV to PDX Road Trip: Day 2

After the first day of ill-fated adventures and leaving the state we'd called home for nearly a decade everything became a kind of blur. The kind that happens around the edges of a photograph when you snap the shutter too quickly and the subject twirls in motion. That is what we were: in the motion of moving West. Each day we spent following after the sun, following until the sky turned to violet and then gathered up her skirts filled with stars, and then finding some small hotel to tuck into, our movements of unpacking for the night and packing again in the morning becoming more routine and efficient as the day wore on.
After the first day of leaving, a shift happened. We stopped being in the abrupt present tense of logistics that had held us so sturdily for months, and slipped instead into a more fluid state. I kept scattered notes in my molskeine, but never had time to sit with them, recording details in paragraphs the way I thought I might. Instead, I found myself simply becoming the journey.
I spent hours just watching out the window--or attentive at the wheel, and at night fell into whatever bed we'd claimed as ours for the night with fresh gratitude.
Here then, are the glimpses I remember.

Buffalo to Chicago

Bruce Springsteen singing Erie Canal. Crossing the uppermost corner of of Pennsylvania along the wide flat Lake Erie; so wide it looked like some gentle sea. The boys, rolling like puppies down the grassy hill at the rest stop. The sweet scent of petrichor, after rain began to fall. Bushes of singing birds at the rest stop in Ohio. Indiana slipping in and out of focus. Finding our way into Chicago after dusk and realizing immediately everything anyone has ever said about the city is true. It's intensity and grit reared right up to meet us: Drivers hurtling past in their cars, merging without warning, road markings and traffic signals taken more as suggestion than regulation. Humans hurtling across the intersections without warning, strung out, running recklessly. Pitbulls. Boom boxes. Bright lights. Dark allies. Sweet music. Fierce beats. All of it. And still, the city begged to be loved.
At night from the 19th floor downtown, the city put on all her finery for us. Lights glittering in the constellations of loneliness and companionship all up and down the glass-windowed high-rises, and in the morning, while T went for coffee and to walk the dog, the boys jumped in giddy glee on the soft beds and the morning sun flirted with the rooftops, and blushed, finding herself reflected in every window-glass.
For the boys everything was thrilling from that vantage point in the sky, but seeing Daddy walking the dog two blocks away--and then having him turn and wave up at them at just that very moment, that felt like magic. And then the parks and the waterfront and the Little Goat Dine with it's menu of brilliant collisions. It's above ground subways with trains clattering overhead to delight the boys. The smell of chocolate brioche in the air. The confused circles we made looking for just the right coffee shop. The biggest Whole Food's EVER. The overwhelm of it. The best fish tacos. Restocking on coloring books and sticker books and chapter books and mazes at Barnes & Noble, and then off, later than we'd planned to cross the width of Iowa.