possibility42

Ok, so it's officially been almost 2 years since I posted on LJ.  A lot has happened in those two years I realize, but anyone who might actually read this already knows that!!!  :)

But I was totally reading my last two entries, and came across one that totally sums up what I'm currently feeling:

"Dude, is she coming…is she not coming? Heather is supposed to come today, but has just called me with the call of dread, “I think I’m going to miss my plane.” What?!?!? Has God/Energy/Mother Nature/Powers-That-Be truly decided that I need 6 weeks fully by myself? That I don’t need anyone else? That I’m ok – just me and Herman??? Herman is a freakin piece of plastic people….plastic!!!!! Herman can’t read me Harry Potter 6 from the passenger seat, or his spot in my permanent garbage area. I’ve gotten this far by myself, but dude…I honestly would love some company. I mean, I’m not going to crack or anything if I don’t…but I haven’t had much playing and I FREAKIN’ WANT TO PLAY!!!!"

:)  So Scott, oh love of my life, has now been away from me for almost 3 weeks, which isn't even as long as the ride above, but what have I done while he was away??? Filled myself with 100 projects the "must be done before I leave to join him 8/24 or else..."  Or else what?  What's wrong with relaxing, watching some TV, finishing Book 7 (ironic...I know), enjoying my Netflix membership, or just hanging out with friends??  Well, I have too much to do!  (What, I am a glutton for punishment??)  I miss Scott a lot, but that doesn't mean I have to be superwoman while he's gone and not, you know, take a chill pill.

Anyway, so, I did just finish Book 7 (finally...but honestly almost 3 weeks is pretty pathetic, though admittedly I re-read Book 6 since obviously Heather reading it to me in the car 2 years ago didn't cement it enough for me to remember all the fine details, so is barely less than 3 weeks ok for two books???  I guess I'll let myself off the hook this time.)  :)

Life is good, work is great, I love my boyfriend, I love my cat, I'm more happy that Sunny is so happy living with Mom then I am sad that she doesn't live with me anymore, half my friends are pregnant and happy, one just popped out a baby girl and I'm so freaking excited for them, i love the location of our condo...life is just good.  It's actually gotten pretty boring visiting family and friends I haven't seen in a while and they ask how I am.  All I can say is great.  :)

So why haven't I kept up LJ?  This seems like a perfect place to journal and keep a written record of where I was and what I was doing on August 10, 2007 at 8:00pm exactly.  Hmmm.  (Now I just need to remember how to work all the bells and whistles.)

Hello all! For those of you who don't know...I am safely home! Heather and I arrived home Sat. night and I have been either unconscious or cleaning out the car and tents since. (The joys of long trips...this is truly the fun part!!!) I am missing now about 2 weeks worth of journal entries, which for my own benefit at least, I will still be posting. I will hide each of them within their own links, as to keep them short for those of you who also use LiveJournal and have Friends lists. This will also allow you to pick and choose which entries from the 2 missing weeks you would like to view. Most of the 2 weeks are currently partially done, so I did write parts of them live, I just didn't get time while on the road to complete them. (Formatting pictures, etc. takes a lot of time...trust me!!!) :)

Anyway, thank you all for following along with me and as soon as I have completed the trip, I will probably keep this as a LiveJournal and write about normal everyday stuff like most people.

- Megan

Dude, is she coming…is she not coming? Heather is supposed to come today, but has just called me with the call of dread, “I think I’m going to miss my plane.” What?!?!? Has God/Energy/Mother Nature/Powers-That-Be truly decided that I need 6 weeks fully by myself? That I don’t need anyone else? That I’m ok – just me and Herman??? Herman is a freakin piece of plastic people….plastic!!!!! Herman can’t read me Harry Potter 6 from the passenger seat, or his spot in my permanent garbage area. I’ve gotten this far by myself, but dude…I honestly would love some company. I mean, I’m not going to crack or anything if I don’t…but I haven’t had much playing and I FREAKIN’ WANT TO PLAY!!!!

Calm down Megan! Let me tell you about the rest of my day while I sit her and wait for The Word.

For a reference point, a countdown of my last week of the trip – today is Friday. I get home next Saturday. I have 9 days and counting, if you include today.

I left my hotel room in Holbrook, Arizona by checkout time of 9am – i.e. I slept in!!! It felt so good and I had a leisurely drive of only 4.5 hours today to get to Phoenix, (where I currently am writing from a Borders). Heather’s plane wasn’t due in until 7:30ish, so I had a lot of time.

I headed west for a small distance, into more flat, country of desertish area.

( Northern Arizona )

I did pass Meteor City and Geronimo though, so I don’t really have anything to complain about!

( Meteor City )

( Geronimo )

I soon hit the relevant highway and headed south for Phoenix. It soon became slightly more…bumpy.

( Arizona…Bumps )

And as I began to climb into higher elevation, trees all of a sudden took over the landscape:

( Arizona Trees )

But it didn’t last too long and they again started to become more spotty:

( Arizona Spots  )

And as I headed out of the last hills before Phoenix, it became much drier, and hotter. I stopped at a rest area and was confronted with the hard, hot truth of the area:

( Arizona Truth )

The view, however, was fantastic!!

( Arizona Truth )

But I took my pictures as hurriedly as possible and re-entered my safe, air-conditioned, safe car AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!!

The rest of the drive down the hill was…hot…with me watching for any darting animals/reptiles across the road…and hot…and, well, down hill:

( Phoenix Hill )

And finally, I reached Phoenix. It was exactly as I had thought it would be, with palm trees everywhere, even as front yard trees, and dry mountains in the distance:

( Phoenix )

I had been given directions to both the house Heather and I would be staying in for the evening and to a nearby mall with a Borders Bookstore. Since it was only about 3pm when I arrived, I headed for the mall. The air was so thick with hot nastiness that I ended up parking on the opposite side of the mall from the Borders in order to park in an open air parking garage. This gave me as much cover as I was going to receive in order to clean the car and get it ready for a person to occupy the passenger seat and her stuff to occupy other areas. This turned into a huge project and 1.5 hours later I was almost finished when I got The Call. I immediately through everything I had stacked in piles outside the car hastily back into the car, grabbed my laptop and rushed to internet access. To get to Borders from this side, however, I had to go through a Sax 5th Avenue (I believe) and was shocked to find manikins more sunburned than the shoppers themselves:

( Sax Manikins )

Anyway, that is where you find me now, today, at this very moment, waiting for The Call…

…and The Call has been received and her plane is running late, which means she is on her way. WOO HOO!!!

…later…

Well, she made it. She boarded the plane and made it to Phoenix about 8:30pm. Pat and I picked her up from a very construction-laden airport and went back to their house, which is lovely. Pat, and her partner Jamie, live in a great one-story with some wonderful remodeling! Jamie’s son Eric was there as well, as well as their cute and fun dog, Janice Joplin. We had a lovely evening and a great breakfast the next morning:

( Pat, Jamie, Eric and Joplin )

Ok, so have I thanked Heather enough times for being my tourism director via the phone??? ‘Cause she like totally rocks!! The campground was great! Ok, so the train tooting right next to us several times an hour wasn’t that cool, but I eventually tuned it out and all was good and happy with Megan’s La-La Land!

This morning, unlike most other camping experiences, everyone else got up around the same I did (7am) and so making noise wasn’t a big deal. When I’ve stayed in National parks, etc. I have almost always been the first to rise and it’s difficult packing up tents and tarps without making any noise, but KOA’s must be different. Anyway, so I got up and headed out, with 7.5 hours to my first and only study town for the day, I was anxious to get it over with. Well, ok, 7.5 hours according to Microsoft Trips and Streets which estimates speeds based on a set speed for all Interstate Hwy’s, State Hwys, etc. Well, it turns out that Texas is one of the most beautiful states in the entire world, for one reason…75 mph speed limits!!!! What a wonderful concept! It cut that 7.5 hours down by a lot! (By exactly how much, that is mine and my speedometer’s secret!) :)

Well I went through some kick-butt country throughout the day! I started out in flat, flat, flat country of dirt and a tree every 100 miles:

( Texas )

During this section, I randomly found these tall sunflowers, but smaller than what we can buy up north widely growing in the median:

( Sunflowers )

Ok – complaint time – both Texas and New Mexico have a horrible habit of having a hundred million “parking areas” but no freakin’ rest area’s – i.e. facilities, bathrooms, toilets, things that people who are driving long distances filling up on sun tea need!!!!!

( Parking Area )

Well, I then passed into New Mexico and realized that I had been driving on Route 66 this whole time, I just didn’t know it because it is no longer Route 66:

( New Mexico & Route 66 )

New Mexico as a whole turned out to be a whole different world! It was like entering a different country! The population as a whole seemed to be much higher in the Mexican and Native American population and everything was more colorful and signs everywhere for even the most rinky-dink stores. The colorfulness even expanded to the freeways. All bridges and underpasses and cement fences along the highway were pink and usually with multi-colored patterns:

( New Mexican Bridge )

Gallup, New Mexico turned out to be a study town completely different from others. Like the rest of New Mexico had turned out, it was a complete mixture of Mexican, US and Native American influence. The buildings of Main Street were mostly on one side of the street with mostly parking on the other, between the street and the train tracks.

Ok…complaint #2…dude, the freakin’ trains!!!! They came every 15-20 minutes and for some reason, I’m assuming because the train station was right downtown, had to honk their horns the entire way through the town…and it was loud…and it made me jump every time! It made the entire experience a little stressful.

Ok, so, similar to when I was in Mexico, I had 3 gentleman come out of their shops to beckon me into their stores and attempting persuasion after I said no. Overall, the architecture was fantastic!!! It was half the brick I’d become accustomed to and half adobe or other Spanish-style buildings. It was great! It was very colorful and also similar to the tourist towns I have been to in Mexico, was very vernacular in it’s over-signage and colors.

( Gallup, New Mexico )

I left Gallup and headed for the Petrified National Forest. I had found out at the Gallup information center that it would close by 5pm and as it was 3:30, I needed to hustle. As I continued to drive through New Mexico, I entered a small portion of green area before I hit Arizona:

( Green New Mexico )

The green ended up being short-lasting, however, and I entered a very dry and hot Arizona. The Welcome Center was very cool though:

( Arizona Welcome Center )

Well, unfortunately, I did not make it to the Petrified National Forest in time, but I did take a picture of the sign and of the beginning grounds:

( Petrified National Forest )

As I left and headed for Holbrook, where I was staying, I passed a Dinosaur Museum and these are the creatures that I met along the way:

( Arizona Wildlife )

Holbrook was only about 15 minutes away, so it also had it’s own wildlife:

( Arizona Welcome Center )

I went to the “best Mexican restaurant in town”, where the owner of my hotel took his family, and had some great fajitas…that later made me very glad I was in a hotel. :)

Hello all! Just wanted to let you all know that I am alive, safe...and not alone anymore!!! Woohoo! My journal's will probably start to lag as I now have someone to fill the empty hours with. I promise not to leave you hanging permanently, but full entries may wait until I return home.

Woohoo! Megan is not alone in the world!!! :)

I love you all right now! Thank you for all of your support!!

Hello and Salutations, all you wonderful people, you!!! Well, I left the KOA bright and early and headed out for a very busy day…4 study towns and 3 states! Phew! I’m tired just thinking about what I did today!

So, it took me a couple of hours to reach my first study town, so having not taken many pictures the past few days, my camera was poised and ready…in fact, it was so ready that the battery died at one point during the day and the disk got full at another part! :) But that also means that there were PLENTY of photos for me to choose from to document for you folks the countryside I visited:

( Day 32 – Part 1 )

Well, through all of that funness, I finally made it to Great Bend:

( Great Bend, Kansas )

Well, after Great Bend, I didn’t have far to travel to get to Garden City, Kansas. It was for farm country, very similar to what I had seen before, and I was in my second town for the day in no time flat:

( Day 32 – Part 2 )

( Garden City, Kansas )

Ok, so we left the land of cute little farms with cows grazing on hillsides, to heavy industrialized dairies, slaughterhouses and huge corn factories.

( Day 32 – Part 3 )

( Liberal, Kansas )

Well, I can at this point finally say, “HERMAN, WE AREN’T IN KANSAS ANYMORE!!! WOOHOOO!!”

I left Kansas and drove through a small part of, “Welcome to Oklahoma, Native America” and then into Texas – the northern hat section. I drove through several changes in topography during this jaunt:

( Day 32 – Part 4 )

Finally, we reached the final study town for the day:

( Pampa, Texas )

The rest of the drive was uneventful, same stuff as before:

( Day 32 – Part 5 )

Dude, Heather so needs to get a job as a travel agent as she has been so good as mine! She found me a fantabulous KOA…with wireless…and laundry!!! It was fantastico! (Ok, so I originally write this in Word and according to Microsoft, fantabulous is a word, but fantastico is not. WHAT?!?!!?!) Anyway, KOA = wonderful!

( The Amarillo KOA )

Well, I woke up bright and early this Tuesday morning, to the EH-EH-EH of the alarm that someone other than myself had set, but it was tie to get up, so… I hadn’t slept too well since the room I had shared a door with the room next to me and I could therefore hear much of what was going on in there, and he was very sick, all night. Hope he at least had fun first. But I had slept adequately enough to be determined that (please picture a puffed-up important-looking man with his thumbs in his suspenders), “Today Would Be A Good Day!” So, I went down to breakfast, still feeling it was appalling that it was only open from 6-9am, even though checkout was at 12noon. As soon as I was finished, determined to get the car repair moving along quickly, I called Firestone, only for them to tell me they weren’t recreating the problem again. So, I told them to give me pick me up in 10 minutes in the lobby and I would drive it around hard enough to heat it up to the point of breaking. 50 minutes later he showed up driving my car. I was taken back and asked, “And where exactly do you expect a 2nd person to fit???” Although there will be enough room for Heather on Friday, this was not Friday. He sheepishly apologized and said he hadn’t thought about it, but was a total sweetheart, so I did some minor rearranging and climbed in with books and my backpack in my lap and my feet on the gas stove. I then instructed him to drive the hell out of it and he did…and it worked, finally…well, it successfully didn’t work, I should say, and stuttered for him, several times by the time we returned to the shop. He told me he was pretty sure it was the fuel pump and that they had one more test to run. So, Harry and I went inside, assumed the now normal position and dove into mystery and mayhem! You know you have spent to much time in a waiting area when you stop a person from moving the table because the legs are broken and you made the same mistake the day before, make sure a lady knows that the cleaner bathroom is the farthest one, and can recite which sodas are in the machine to a Mom being interrogated for pop money, oh…and when all the guys know me by name…or nickname (“Oregon” or “Bacon & Eggs”…ask me some other time).

Anyway, after they ran the test Mike came back out and told me that it was the fuel pump and that if I want a warranty that is good outside of Kansas, he would have to get the part from the dealer and it wouldn’t be able to get there until 1-1:30. He then told me about the best Chinese place in Kansas, which was in walking distance, and was a buffet and cheap, when I got to lunch time. 12:30 came around and as I was about to head to the buffet, he came back in and told me she was ready to go and was out for a test-run. They had been able to get a part from a NAPA, who they don’t normally use, but are everywhere. He told me he had told the test-driver to drive it like he had stolen it, just to make sure everything was good. :) I concurred. So, $400 later and about 1:30pm, I left and headed for a USBank. I won’t go into the most depressing part of the day, but I ended up with another cold McDonald’s burger for lunch and didn’t get out of Kansas City until almost 5pm, but everything is good and I shouldn’t have anything to worry about…until I get home. :) (Thank you God, Angels, Mother Nature, Energy, and family and friends!!! I am truly blessed!)

So, with Heather acting as my campground-searcher via the phone, I left Kansas City, Kansas and headed west!

The trip was great:

( Leaving KC )

Ok, so it was rainy and therefore slow with people forgetting what to do in the rain. It cleared up about an hour later, leaving some pretty sky:

( Out West )

I passed through Topeka, Kansas:

( Examples of Pores )

And the all important town of Manhattan, Kansas, which had been dubbed the Little Apple:

( Manhattan )

I drove to my first study town in what seems like way too long…Junction City, Kansas.

( Junction City, Kansas )

They have obviously been working recently on restoring some of their older architecture, because they had some beauties! Many had been made with this porous stone that I am unfamiliar with, but looks great from afar:

( Examples of Pores )

It had been raining cats and dogs when I had left Kansas City and the air was cool and exactly how I wish all the study towns had been. I was completely comfortable for once and enjoyed actually working (not that Harry isn’t enjoyable company!)

The trip for the rest of the evening was gorgeous! And I passed the Russel Stovers Candy Factory!

( Candy Factory )

The sun setting and the puffy clouds were great!

( Evening Trip )

Using the Hutchison guide, we found a KOA about 40 miles further down the line. It is the most ideal campground, with happy families and the smell of BBQ. Makes me wish I hadn’t already stopped for dinner. :)

So, here is the official end of the blues and the official beginning of rock & roll!!

ROCK ON BABY!!!

This will be the shortest journal entry thus far – because I don’t have any pictures! Can you believe it? I spent the day…well…waiting. I waiting in my hotel room until checkout. Then I waited in the hotel lobby until about 4 pm. By then Firestone had been working on my car all day…and were still unable to reproduce the stuttering. They had even taken out the fuel filter just to check since I didn’t remember the last time I had it changed…no go, it was brand new. So, they came by and picked me up around 4pm and took me to my car. They were about to give me the keys when the nice man helping me (and not charging me anything thus far) let me know that all 4 tires were horrible. In fact, he wouldn’t have even used the back 2 to drive home that evening and the front two had each had a bald spot as well…so, we discussed buying 4 new tires, and he must have felt really bad for me, because he gave me the daughter-in-law discount and I got 4 new, better than what I had, tires for $299. So, I did some more waiting in their lobby and finally left around 5pm.

I got maybe 25 minutes away and…duh-duh-duh-duuuuuuhhhhhh…I got it to happen again. I actually was only 10 minutes away as I had been looking for a US Bank, so I drove it back, barely making it…just to find everyone who was capable of looking at it had gone home for the day. The guy working the front desk came out and got in and gunned it and found that it did stutter “when you got it over 3 G’s”, and he even called the guy who would be working on it at home to give him the report. Anyway, he then seemed to forget about me and getting me a ride to the hotel, but around 8pm another one of his customers finally was nice enough to give me a ride.

So, I was dropped back off at the same Microtel…just for me to be told they were full…I said, “What?” “We’re full. I am so sorry.” “I’m sorry…what?” My ride was long gone and there wasn’t anything in walking distance, much less another hotel. There was one in a short rides distance though, so she called them for me to be told that they were also full. Attempting not to break down right there and cry, I gave her a look and she said I could wait for her manager to get back from dinner (he had just left) and see if he can help in any way. Why not, I’d been waiting all day. So, an hour passed and he came back. He was very sympathetic and eventually, when he realized all avenues had been discussed, looked to see which rooms they had that were out of commission and why. He found me one, across the hall from my previous room, but with two beds and the only thing wrong with it was a 6” rip in the carpet. He then gave it to me for $25 since he wouldn’t normally sell it and he felt me on the cusp of tears. I thanked him profusely and am now in the hotel room getting ready for bed.

Well, what did I do with my day? I read over 600 pages of Harry Potter, Book 5, getting ready for Book 6.

So, that was my Day #30.

Well, it started out as a good day. I slept in until 10am…Woohoo! It was faaaaantastic!!! I got up, took a leisurely shower and got ready in time to check out by 11am. I decided that sometimes you have to go through bad days so that you will get these opportunities to follow them up with good days. (Wow, aren’t I sweet and naively innocent?)

I then attempted to take a better picture of my tan line, still very sorry that I wasn’t able to keep my bridesmaid shoulders line free. It’s not too bad though, and will hopefully fade by September:

( My Tan Line )

So, I left the hotel that hadn’t given me any internet connection, and was located immediately across from the Municipal Power Plant:

( PowerPlant )

and headed for Sedalia, Missouri, which was only about an hour away.

By the way, as of yesterday, I am now on TripTik #5:

( TripTik #5 )

The trip to Sedalia began to get a bit more arid:

( Trip to Sedalia )

Well, Sedalia was wonderful and is definitely in my top 10 – not Helena or Cumberland worthy – but still very awesome. It is a Main Street that begins at the railroad tracks and leads away in the shape of a crooked finger. Two major roads lead as offshoots perpendicular to the Main St., and are each one-way going in opposite directions, but only go about 2 blocks maximum. The Main Street itself is a 2-way with several stoplights. Because it was Sunday, there wasn’t anyone around, except little old ladies going in to the Bingo Parlor. There was usually at least one if not two cars on Main Street at any given time, just passing through, which meant that to get many places, you needed to drive through the downtown – this implies convenience.

The architecture was fantastic. They had several older pieces that were just magnificent and the rest were obviously well cared for. They still had a few project-type buildings, including several that still had horrible siding that needed to be removed, but that just meant more work to be done. Because it wasn’t an obviously solely a tourist destination, it will be very exciting to perform the interviews when I return and find out what it is like during the week, what type of activities they have there, etc.

Anyway, you probably want to see what I am referring to:

( Sedalia, Missouri )

The heat is still a major downfall for the area, and it is located in a very flat and arid part of the state. But the crook in the street gives lots of fun ways to experiment with shade and overhangs, etc.

As a parting shot of the land I saw the rest of the day:

( Trip – Part 2 )

This ends the good part of the day. If you don’t want more bad stuff, please don’t read on. I am fairly depressed at this point, and I wouldn’t want it to rub off on anyone. So, I say goodnight to those in a good mood.

( The Rest of the Day )

So, I am sitting, writing to you from the smoking session of the local Cracker Barrel in who-knows-where Missouri nowhere near a plug-in on a computer whose battery is a little over half-way empty. But compared to the rest of the day, what do I have to complain about???

( The Day of Ranting )