On the road: the final leg

The final leg of our road trip turned out to be logistically way more complicated than I had anticipated. As it turns out, a) there are not many couch surfing hosts in the rural west, and b) there are just as few cheap hotels in the rural west.

By this point in our trip, I was also feeling ready to get back to Spokane, despite the tantalizing opportunity to visit Yellowstone in the dead of winter. With funds running low, snowstorms on the horizon, and both of us fighting off nasty colds, we decided to fast-track it to Washington and visit Yellowstone and Utah another time.

Beautiful Pike's Peak

The weather was perfect as we left Colorado, but the further north we drove, the worse it got.

 

Wyoming was a desolate tundra for hours, with icy wind buffeting the little Subaru and snow swirling across the slick highway. I drove the first 5 hours before we stopped for dinner in a tiny little town, and then Peter took the last couple hours until we got to the town of Sheridan to stay in a cheap motel for the night.

It was tempting to try to drive through the rest of the way to Spokane, but after another full day of driving, we decided it was best to call it a night in Missoula, MT, where we rented an Airbnb attic room from a local college student.

Our attic Airbnb

Despite being absolutely freezing, the attic room was a fun stay just for its uniqueness. Once I crawled into bed to warm up, I didn't get up again for nearly 11 hours, so exhausted from driving and sick from my cold.

The next day was beautiful and sunny, boasting jaw-dropping views of the mountain pass as we crossed over the northern Rockies into the Pacific Northwest.

It took just over 4 hours, but finally we made it to Spokane, WA, our temporary home for the next few months until our seasonal work begins.  

Finally in Spokane!

It felt surreal for the first few days to not be on the move. After almost 3 months of constant travel, of careful budgeting, of staying with strangers, of seeing new sights every day, of wondering where we might sleep some nights, the tiny Spokane apartment felt like luxury. And after all the trials of our travels, our relationship had changed in many ways as well, having achieved new levels of trust, communications, and understandings of one another.

As with all great journeys, there are more questions now than answers, not the least of which is, where shall we go from here? As that remains to be answered, all we can do now is keep living life to its fullest.

This journey across America has shown me the vast scope of our country, the incredible people who inhabit our land, the bountiful kindness that lives in all of us, and the endless diversity of life across the grand spectrum of the human experience. I am truly moved by the generosity of so many of the people we met and the stories they shared with us. Traveling the way we did, I feel I was able to see each part of the country through the eyes of those who lived there.

Rather than quenching my thirst for travel, I think more than anything it has only whetted my appetite.

And so the question remains, where shall we go from here?

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On the road: MO to KS to CO

The next two days of our trip were completely consumed with driving, about 10 hours a day through Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado. I expected to hate the drive through KS, but instead I found myself wishing we had more time there!

Our couch surfing host in Wichita was a lovely and very funny young woman of many talents who entertained us into the night sharing stories of growing up in Kansas over a delicious home-cooked pasta dinner. She left us a huge list of places to go and things to do in Wichita, but unfortunately we hadn't allocated enough time, so regretfully we had to leave in the morning to make it to Littleton, CO by night.

In Littleton, we spent 3 days with my good friend/old roommate Lea and her husband Steve. Lea was my first roommate in college, and the last few years our lives have kept us apart in different regions of the country, so it was great to catch up again. During our visit, we took a trip together to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, which held an impressive display of all things, well, nature and science.

After visiting Lea and Steve, we headed just a short distance south to stay a couple days with Peter's friend Shirley, in Colorado Springs. Shirley was an amazing woman -- one of those people you just want to grow up to be like. It seemed as if she'd done everything there is to do in life, from growing up on a farm, to working on archaeological sites in Montana, to studying the effects of video games on the brain, to fostering children, to teaching English to immigrants, to negotiating with foreign diplomats in Europe, and so much more. I have never felt more fulfilled with ideas and inspiration!

Big horn sheep herd on a mountainside

During our visit with Shirley, she took us to Garden of the Gods, a park renowned for its dramatic red rock formations. That same day was the beginning of some of the first snow storms we got, so the geology looked even more shocking in the low visibility.

Peter showing off his moves again ;)

Chilled from our drive around Garden of the Gods, next we drove to the sleepy winter wonderland of a town known as Manitou Springs. I would have liked to spend more time here, but there was so much to see and it was freezing cold.

We spent some time at the musty old arcade, playing skeeball and 25-cent target shooting games that looked like they'd been sitting in there since the 1950s.

As if we hadn't seen enough amazing sites that day, Shirley then took us to a little museum nearby called Magic Town, created by a local sculptor named Michael Garman. I wasn't sure what to expect, but my mind was blown.

Inside the dimly-lit museum was a miniature world of model buildings and people, each with their own personality and features, every detail of every scene scaled down to perfection.

Even more incredible was the arrangement of hidden mirrors throughout the displays, which made it look as if the alleyways between buildings went on forever, or rooms inside buildings extended further than reality. Only if you looked closely enough, could you catch your own reflection somewhere, giving away the secret behind Magic Town's magic.

The main room in Magic Town

Mirrors make the alleyway look longer than it really is

Projects created moving images in the displays

I never would have thought to go visit Magic Town on my own -- it looked like it could be kitschy from the outside, and the name of it sounds even more cheesy, but thanks to having Shirley as our guide, I was thoroughly enchanted.

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On the road: TN to MO

In 1804, my great-great(-great-great-great-great... etc) uncle Meriwether Lewis passed through St. Louis, MO with his good friend William Clark at the beginning of what became the renowned Lewis and Clark Expedition. While their goal was to explore and map out America's newly acquired western territory, Peter and I were hoping to just make it through the Gateway to the West without getting lost.

The drive took over 5 hours, most of which was through the rolling hills of rural Kentucky and Illinois. We listened to audiobooks and music, talked, and I tried to get some sleep when I wasn't driving.

Geese migrating over rural Illinois

At one point about halfway through the drive, Peter poked me awake and I felt the car rumbling over bumpy terrain as I struggled to pull myself out of my slumber. "Look! Look!" He urged as the car rolled to a stop on the shoulder of the highway.

Lo and behold, outside the passenger window there was a massive, dark, amorphous cloud flowing and ebbing across a brown field. Migrating geese!!! I had always heard about these epic mass migrations, but to see it in real life was phenomenal.

Unfortunately my camera was somewhere buried in the back under the rest of our gear, but I managed to capture a short video on my phone.

I was excited that we made it to St. Louis, MO by mid-afternoon while the sun was still shining, so we decided to try and go visit the iconic Gateway Arch before heading to our couch surfing home. Unfortunately, it turned out there was a ton of construction surrounding the arch, and we ended up driving in circles and back and forth across the river for nearly an hour just trying to find somewhere to get to it.

 

Finally, we admitted defeat, and I decided just to be happy with the photos I got from the road. 

Our couch surfing host was an older-middle-aged man who lived right near downtown in a big multistory flat. He had two big friendly dogs, and he showed us some of the work he does for a living, painting and refurbishing interior wood.


We enjoyed some nice conversation with him, cooked a big dinner in his kitchen to share, and then afterwards we joined him and some of his friends down the road for an open mic night at a local tavern. The open mic night was fairly bad, but entertaining, and afterwards we left early to get back and get some sleep before a long drive into Kansas the next day.

It would have been nice to spend more time in St. Louis, but the wild west was calling us, and we were both getting pretty anxious to hit the road again. We knew the next few days were about to challenge our driving endurance.

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