The Road Home: Part One

Prior to leaving Utah, much of my time was spent packing up my apartment. I went through all the odds and ends, decided what to keep, what to trash, and what to donate. In very little time, my apartment started to feel less like a home and more like an empty holding place. The nights were painfully silent. I sat there alone with my thoughts, wondering why something that's supposed to be beautiful had to break, and how someone who had promised to love and care for me could treat me the way I had been treated during those months. They are answers I'll never have.

I didn't have a close friend or family member around in Utah to turn to to take my mind off things. Even something as simple as a hug was so far away. It was great to talk on the phone to people back home, but I could only release so much emotion that way. So, all I could do was focus on what was ahead of me.

As the final days drew near, I found some joy in the little things. Like Stella being silly and loving the mess of packing and one of my favorite sushi rolls.

It was also refreshing to finally pick my dad up from the airport to help me in the moving process. It was his birthday and after hours of getting everything ready for the moving truck, we enjoyed dinner at one of my favorite Salt Lake restaurants for the last time.

The next day, just minutes before the movers showed up, I received a call from my mom. She was panicked and told me there had just been an earthquake. My poor mom. My dad is never out of town and the one time he leaves, there is an earthquake in Virginia. Luckily, there were only a few broken objects in her house. We carried on with the very last bit of packing and getting my car secured onto the trailer. I said goodbye to my apartment on the third floor and to the state I had lived in for the past year and a half where I had started what I thought would be my happily-ever-after.

Since we didn’t get on the road until dinner time and were completely exhausted, we stopped in Evanston, Wyoming for the night. We found a local restaurant that stayed open late and got a bite to eat. I had some delicious food there and found a cute little squirrel friend :)

The next morning, we got on the road early, ready for the first full day of driving. When I had driven through Wyoming in the Winter, I loved it! It was so “Wild West” and the surroundings were unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was cool to now see the state in the Summer. However, Wyoming was probably the worst state to drive through because of a few different things. There are hardly ANY places to stop along I-80, every town is small, many large trucks frequent this freeway, and the wind becomes insane while driving. So insane that they often have to close it down. Also added to the list this time was construction. They decided to close off 15-mile stretches of road and during these stretches, the opposing side of traffic would be driving next to you with nothing but cones in between. Talk about scary! Oh, and add wind turbines into the mix and it became a nightmare. Come on. You know they’re scary!

While I drove through Wyoming, there were two things on my mind:

“Home, home on the range. Where the deer and the antelope play…”

and

The Oregon Trail {preferably Oregon Trail II}

It got pretty serious where there was even talk of fording the river and bartering at the outposts because, yes, I researched where the old outposts used to be…

We found that pretty church while driving through Rawlins, Wyoming. Fun, little, old town.

After we FINALLY passed through Cheyenne, we were off to Colorado! Be on the lookout for those pictures, an interesting story, and the tale through Oz.

Have you been to Wyoming before? Has my enticing talk of the Oregon Trail interested you to go sometime?