Friday, September 4, 2009

Cross country drive

So...when I bought Jeremy's plane ticket I only bought a one way. When I bought mine, I got a round trip. This proved to be a problem when we were trying to decide how to get Jeremy back home.

After thinking about it, he decided that the two of us would drive his dad's bronco back home. I will admit I was a little weary of how long it was going to take and how the two of us would be with each other during and after we got back. Long road trips like that can sometimes make or break a relationship and I didn't want it to break us. I was able to call and get my return flight cancelled and now I have a year to use that ticket.

Friday morning, the day we were taking off dawned bright and clear. We got up early and got ready and packed the things into the bronco. Then Jeremy's uncle took us to breakfast and we sat around talking. I guess we were trying to ward off the inevitable but we needed to get on the road. We had made sure to print off a bunch of mapquest directions before we left to make sure we knew where we were going.

After saying goodbye, we headed off on our journey. It didn't take long to get out of Denver and then we were on our way to Wyoming. This was the state we did most of our traveling in and boy was it boring. We wouldn't recommend driving through Wyoming anytime soon. There was a whole lot of nothing and everytime we came over a hill waiting to see some new landscape, we would be disappointed with the same old thing. It seemed to take forever to get through the state and finally it was starting to get dark and we decided to stop and spend the night in a town called Evanston, Wyoming. It was still early in the evening, so we went to dinner and then got a good nights sleep before getting up before dawn to start out again.

As we took off that next morning, we discovered we were only three miles from the border of Utah!! We had been so close to finally being out of the state of Wyoming!! Haha! This was going to be our big travel day and it turned out to be much more interesting with better sights to see. We made a deal that we would get gas whenever the tank got down to half, that way we wouldn't push the envelope. We would fill up on drinks and snacks everytime we filled up and make sure to have at least one good meal.

We had a plan every time we stopped for gas. We would fill the bronco up and then Jeremy would check the transmission fluid and add more if it needed. This plan wasn't decided right away and we had quite a few tense moments. I was the one driving and at first Jeremy assumed I knew what he wanted me to do and of course I didn't. After a few words and hurt feelings, we finally figured it out and had an enjoyable rest of the trip.

We ended up traveling for 12 hours that last day and going through 5 states that day that included Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. It would have been only 4 states but I forgot that I had left my keys with my parents and so didn't have a house key! Oops! It worked out good anyways because we were able to visit with my sister and cousin who were in town for my bridal shower the next day.

Jeremy and I were exhausted from traveling all day and didn't want to drive back to Hermiston, especially when it was pouring rain. So we crashed at my parents and had a leisurely time of waking up and having breakfast. The trip turned out to be a good experience for us and I'm happy to say we survived our first road trip together!!

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