The Long Way Home

The adventure began in Washington. Jenny flew out from Pittsburgh to the north west about two weeks earlier than I. She tied up loose ends and gathered up her belonging scattered across the state, tokens and reminders of her college days there. I arrived on the scene just as she was saying her goodbyes. The day after I flew in, we said goodbye to the state of Washington by visiting many of the places in which she had lived. We drove north to the Olympic National Park and hiked a couple of miles through the forest—still amazingly lush even in January. We then took a ferry to Seattle and enjoyed an exquisite meal before returning to Centralia. The next day we said goodbye to her many friends there who turned out for a large meal hosted by the family we were staying with. Clearly many would miss her.

The original plan was to drive back from Washington to Pennsylvania in her Jeep Wrangler (filled to the brim) via such convenient and direct stops as Santa Cruz, California, Phoenix, Arizona, and Okalahoma City, Okalahoma. Okay, so perhaps we were taking the long way home, but we had people to see and places to be along the way. However, just before we left for California we learned that our stop in Phoenix was not to be, so we took off without quite knowing what direction we might take after Santa Cruz.

We spent one rainy day in sunny California visiting Jenny’s sister, Angela. While there we got a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean, once again found ourselves in the woods, and in a cafe downtown met Richard, otherwise known as the man with dreadlocks down to his toes. In addition to telling us some rather amazing stories about never wanting to brush his hair again, Richard also gave us better directions out of California than MapQuest.

Since we no longer needed to stop in Phoenix, we had considered changing our course from a NIKE swoosh across the country into more of a straight shot across the Midwest. However, to our surprise, from Santa Cruz to Pittsburgh, there isn’t much difference in distance or travel time between venturing south on highway 40 versus the northern route through Utah on 80. Seeing that it was January and that we were returning to a land recently visited by heavy snow falls, we decided to stay south and enjoy the warmth of the desert as long as it would last. Besides, it would still give us the chance to visit Jenny’s uncle in Okalahoma.

When you’re crossing the country in a Jeep Wrangler you quickly notice two things: one, the car just simply isn’t going to go any faster than seventy miles per hour no matter how much gas you give it and two, you finally have time to tell the long version of every story. Each day Jenny and I ended with little voice left after yelling story after story to one another over the rush and roar of the road. We turned out to be well suited as traveling companions.

Santa Cruz to Okalahoma took two days. In that time we transitioned from the mild warmth of the desert winter to the stiff cold winds of the plains. Our most dangerous moment came when, against our better judgment, we stopped at Denny’s for a bite to eat. Now, I have nothing against Denny’s per say. In fact, I’ve enjoyed plenty a wonderful meal there in the past. For whatever reason, this was not one of them. But soon both Denny’s and Arizona were behind us (Arizona in general was gorgeous) and after a full course of New Mexico and a dash of Texas we rolled into the driveway on her uncle’s farm.

Though it was already very late, in classic country fashion they fixed us up some hot chocolate and heated some spaghetti before saying good night. The next morning we awoke to the bright and brisk air of Okalahoma. Before taking up our journey again, we had a chance at a decent breakfast and a visit with Jenny’s cousins living just down the road (I got the feeling that everyone lives just down the road in Okalahoma). As in Santa Cruz, it was hard for us to leave the comfort of family for the rough ride ahead. Yet now home was in sight, well, it was still twelve hundred miles away, but when you start in Seattle, that counts as “in sight” and so we began the last phase of our trip home.

Now let me just say that the United States is big. I’ve seen quite a bit of it as this was not my first road trip across the country. I remember when I lived in Taiwan that when asked about America somehow or another I always ended up emphasizing how big everything is there. The roads are bigger, the cars are bigger, the houses are bigger (perhaps not taller though—Taiwan residences tend to be stacked rather high on top of one another), goodness, even the people are bigger there. That sense of vastness can overwhelm you when you have the chance to drive each mile and watch town after town, person after person, life after life, slip into the rear view mirror. The slow addition of so much land and so many lives indelibly leaves one with a sense of awe at the sheer size of the nation, and in extension (if one is quick enough to observe it) the world and space ad infinitum.

Road trips also tend to cause even computer geeks to wax philosophical when attempting to capture the movement of life one sees when glancing up from the glow of the laptop computer and out the window at the blurred collage of trees and gravel and light posts and mountains. There goes another one of those green highway signs. And we actually passed that semi-truck (usually it’s a challenge for the Jeep to pass anything that isn’t already stationary). The sun is setting behind us and the road ahead has turned from a line of grey rock leading to the horizon to a trail of white and red lights marching into the darkness. And just how many billboards are there? It appears I can’t even cross the country with the radio off and escape commercials. And interestingly enough, right now, I don’t think either of us knows exactly where we are, but we know where we’re going and that’s all that we’re concerned with. It’s thoughts like that that cause even computer geeks to find the meaning of life scribbled in the road between those yellow lines and white dashes.

After traveling two thousand some miles we decided it was time for a break and a treat. Rather than race through Saint Louis like we had so many other cities, we drove downtown and found a nice restaurant where we could recover from the Denny’s episode. The food at Caleco’s more than made up for prior trauma and thankfully no one stole Jenny’s bike from the rack (this was a constant concern of ours— Jeep’s provide about as much security as the Homeland Defense team). So with that we looked through the city’s silver arch and on to home.

I am convinced that somewhere between Saint Louis and Indianapolis we crossed an ocean and ended up in Antarctica. I suppose the Atlantic froze since all our bottled water certainly did. As we traveled through the winter wonderland, Jenny and I questioned the sanity of humanity to live anywhere so cold. But sure enough, the world had changed colors from green to red to brown to stark white. Through the ice and covered under a foot or more of snow lay the lands of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and just beyond, Pennsylvania.

We had one last stop before we could enjoy the joys of unpacking the vehicle. My boyhood home, Wheeling, West Virginia, lay between us and Pittsburgh. Most of my mother’s family still lives there and it just so happened to be the week of my grandmother’s birthday. We would miss the surprise party held in a cabin in Oglebay Park, but we could still visit with my relatives for a short time before returning.

The end of a journey always comes like the waking from a dream. A few years ago when I flew home from Taiwan, I saw the two years of my life there slowly fade away as I caught each plane and said goodbye to each friend along the way. Eventually I was just me, not some global traveler or foreign missionary, just me. Suddenly I was driving home as if I had never left. Likewise, Jenny and I quickly found ourselves in familiar territory, driving home just as if it had been any other day and any other trip. It seemed hard to believe that just a few days ago we were wearing t-shirts in the desert.

During our travels it was easy to be struck by the variety of scenery and life just beyond the floating guard rail. However, one also notices a number of constants that bind this country together. Somehow we all agreed on the color of highway signs and that rest stops should be spaced just far enough apart that you always regret not stopping at the last one. Regardless of the fact that you asked for all the vegetables, Subway employees universally ask, “even the peppers?” And no matter what language it is Americans speak or with what accent, we all call it English.

In addition to returning to over 1400 emails and a pile of bills (hey, I’m mailing them today), I return knowing I lived through one of those events in life I will later recall as the “good ol’ days.” Such moments are not always so adventurous, but they each carry common themes and feelings of being somehow more real than all the other days which add up unnoticed. I haven’t taken such a long vacation in three years and it’s funny to think that when I finally got around to it, I flew all the way across the country for the sole purpose of coming back home again.

Photos and QuickTime movies of the trip will soon be available on the website. Look for a new article and new photo galleries later this week!