Monday, July 12, 2010

The Adventures of Traveling...

So, I am actually doing what I set out to do. More or less. I was traveling from Michigan to California to work on an organic farm. I say "was" because I am not actually doing that currently. After some car trouble (ha ha ha at the word some), I am stuck in Salt Lake City, Utah. Envisioned it as a pretty cool city... no. Haven't gone downtown yet, but the rest does not impress just yet. The scenery was absolutely stunning at the beginning, but after a while, the gigantic rock mountains and barren desert makes me miss the woods and trees and lakes. But I digress...

Back to the "was" traveling bit... I spent July 10 traveling from Freeland Michigan to Gretna Nebraska (a little bit west of Omaha). Passed through Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska. Surprisingly pretty scenery in Illinois and Iowa - rolling green hills and blue skies. Spent the night at West Omaha KOA - great place by the way. Woke up at 1:30am to what I thought was a hurricane. Okay, I may be exaggerating just a bit, but when you are alone in a tent and the rain, wind, and thunder/lightning are threatening to murder you in your sleep, you would use the same vocabulary. After sitting in the middle of my tent, hyperventilating, watching the neighboring tents for signs of evacuation, and getting rained on, I decided I better sleep in the car, but what? You can't find your keys and you forgot your flashlight in the car AND there's a torrential rainstorm outside? What else is there to do but run to the laundry room at the KOA and bunker down. Ha ha ha would I have liked to have been a spectator to all of that nonsense. Short story long... I ended up finding my car keys underneath my air mattress and the knees to your chest sleep began in the back seat of the car followed by a brief case of the overslept.

Exciting, right? July 11 - not so great. There were 13 hours of driving that day. A little over six hours were spent in Nebraska and the same in Wyoming. Besides the exactly-the-same-the-whole-time Nebraska landscape and the crazy rain storms that popped up every hour or so, the drive was great (totally sarcastic if you didn't catch that). Traveled from Gretna to Salt Lake City, Utah. Passed through Nebraska, Wyoming, a brief touch into Colorado, and Utah. Stayed at the Salt Lake City KOA and have been here ever since... Not a bad place. Not a great neighborhood, but you feel a little safer because there are so many people around. More people to choose from when deciding who to murder. Makes me sleep well at night :)

Set out on July 12th, on time, raring to go and.... the car broke down. Overheated. Turns out the water pump was leaking causing the coolant to leak and then a head gasket to blow and then the oil to burn. I feel like singing "the head bone is connected to the..." only while crying. A tow to a dealership $72.00, a rental car $50.00, two extra nights at the Salt Lake City KOA $65.00, an extended vacation - priceless. Not sure what the cost of the repairs will be yet, but got some good people helping me out. I'd be thumbing it without them.

So here I sit at the KOA next to the electric outlet typing my life story and trying to figure out what to do for the next two or three days (depends on what the mechanics feel like - I put enough crying in for the day that I think some sympathy has kicked in) in this god-forsaken wasteland that is Salt Lake City Utah (no offense to any citizens - I just haven't found the good parts yet). My plans for the night you ask? Trying to find someone who will lend me an air mattress pump and chatting up the cute, possibly single, guy next to my campsite. Fate?? ha ha ha

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