Day Five: Ohio to Base Camp

This day was just a day of counting miles.

Under a mostly cloudy sky, we traversed past Columbus, Ohio to Wheeling, West Virginia; after the tiny strip of the top of West Virginia, we were in Pennsylvania.

Heavy, looming forests encroach on every open field or edge of town; everything is green, and humid. The light looks different, all edges softened by the haze of water in the air. Ah, yes, I remember it well.

We didn't travel with a road map other than a basic overview of United States Interstate Highways, so when we were bounced off Interstate 70, halted in traffic due to yet more road work, we stopped for gas. We knew more or less where we were, and we knew where we were going, so we figured we could just abandon the interstate and find our way on regular roads. While Bernie sought a map at the gas station in vain, I took pictures of electrical things to pass the time.

I thought about Mel Trent, who has the knack of making prosaic things look intriguing. With that in mind, I snapped about ten shots of "stuff", including a picture of gravel. Thinking about Mel certainly did not make my pictures very interesting, but it was a good exercise.

Then it was back to the road, and we did find our way around the stopped traffic; by late afternoon we were off the highway and slowly making our way through the jungly land to Lewistown, Pennsylvania.

There my sister-in-law had waiting for me the biggest bag of Hartley's Potato Chips I've ever seen. "This is Sand's," she told everybody, warning them not to snitch my chips.

"Do you have the straps so Sand can just attach the bag to her head?" my husband asked genteelly.

We retired to the beautiful deck to relax and take stock of one another; the evening was simply beautiful. A birch tree tickles one side of the deck; arborvitae and euonymus screen the eastern view and make the area private and strangely life-giving. It's a place you can feel your heart recharging, worries slipping away.

We were absolutely honored to be invited to pitch our tent on the deck, and astounded it fit so easily. Even with a 7' x 10' tent on it, there is room for everyone to sit comfortably. I'll include a picture of the deck in a later post, when my camera battery is recharged.

RuthAnn and I sat out until late, catching up with each other. For me, it was a way of gradually changing my rhythms, from the aggravation of the road and the Press-driven computer work to the very powerful sense of peace and present.

Here it's amazingly easy to find that everything you need is at hand, and that what you "need" is not all that complicated.

Especially when you have a bag of Hartley's beside you.

More Oddly-Interlocked Things Than You Can Shake a Stick At

June 27, 2007

So we made the leap, and shot off in the dark morning air, shivering in the Vibe in spite of our jackets. Full of trepidation, we headed north on Highway 99 to meet the transcontinental Interstate 80, which would take us from California to Pennsylvania.

2673 miles, two adults and a Howie, a tent, bedding, and two scanty bags with just enough clothes to get by. Yes, off we went, and in Reno, Nevada (read into this that we only traveled two hours or less before we had to stop and buy the things I'd forgotten to pack: paper towels, doggie poop bags, doggie treats, and something else that was the most essential on the list but which I have already forgotten again) after we stopped to let Howie do his morning thing, I was bitten twice on the face by mosquitoes. Nothing like traveling while sporting pimple-like structures on the face. Serves me right, I should have been keeping up with my grape seed extract, the taste of which mosquitoes seem to hate.

We stopped for lunch in Winnemucca, where I was bitten on the leg by a fly. Yes, a fly. My skin swelled in a patch about four inches across and burned like fire. Damn flies.

After that, however, it was clear sailing across the empty expanses of Nevada, for hours and hours and hours. Thrills. Highlights? Nightingale Hot Springs. When I once again have unlimited internet access, I must investigate them. The steam rising from them looked like smoke. Got to figure out how to work that into a story somehow.

Hours and hours and hours. I wondered if we would camp for the night in Elko, Nevada, or push on towards Salt Lake; the desire to see the white sea of the Utah salt flats again was irresistible, and we did indeed push on.

We stopped at a rest stop on the far side of Salt Lake City, and when we let Howie out, we were arrested by a sign that said, "Watch for snakes and scorpions". Suddenly camping out didn't seem like a very good idea at all. Instead of looking for campgrounds, we opted to drive for another couple hours to Green River, Wyoming, where there was an affordable small hotel that allowed pets. Pets, no scorpions. It was good.

Remembering that we had once driven from Des Moines, Iowa to Cheyenne, Wyoming in a day's jaunt, we set off in the morning with the goal of getting to Des Moines, to spend the night with Filthy Pikers Cheryl and Terry Haimann. We forgot that the time change works against the traveler who goes from West to East, and we utterly underestimated how much of the busiest parts of the interstate would be messed up due to construction. We missed our ETA in Des Moines by two hours, though along the way, in Wyoming, we did see more pronghorn antelope than we could count. And a moose, grazing in a small pond!

We thought we could get to Pennsylvania in one more day. The miles were right. We were hyped. We got up early and set off ... and then hit so much damn roadwork that we lost three full hours of driving time. And then there was the reduction of speed: west, the limit was 75 mph. East, the best pace was 65. Remember those math questions from junior high about speed and distance traveled? No lie, you can't get as far as fast at 65 mph. Or at 55. Or at 45. Or at "Road Work: 15 MPH."

Exhausted and brain-fried, we stopped in Elysia, Ohio, at a scrumptious little hotel that allowed us to have Howie and only charged $60. We slept there the sleep of the emotionally and physically exhausted, but that was where the coincidences kicked in.

We had free Wi-Fi, and wanted to book our stay at a hotel in Pennsylvania that was in the right town and allowed pets. Bernie called up the hotel's website -- and found that they no longer allowed any pets. Campgrounds in the area did not allow pets. "We're screwed," he said to me.

"Coincidentally" I had just emailed my friend of 47 years, Bill, to let him know we would be in the area. He replied in seconds, because he was on his computer, too. Bill owns an apartment building, and though my next step in the "screwed traveler" occupation was to try to book a hotel some 40 minutes away from where we wanted to be, I flippantly asked if he had an empty apartment we could rent for a week.

The answer was within seconds again. Bill did have an empty apartment. And although we didn't camp out at all as intended, we did have an inflatable air mattress and bedding in the car.

I nominated Bill as Landlord of the Year, and thus, here we are, in an apartment, saving major amounts of dollars, our dog with us, and just spent an hour standing on the porch, cooling off to the feel of a thunderstorm's rain. The apartment is lovely ... and COINCIDENTALLY ... just happens to be three houses up from where we lived when we were still in Pennsylvania. Familiar street, familiar sounds. Too bad all the neighbors are different from 20 years ago.

The houses are the same, though. And so is the beguiling sound of thunder as the evening storms roll in.