WE SET out from New Jersey on Friday. Since then a number of colorful ways to describe that state have sprung to mind, none of them especially complimentary. In the interest of maintaining an open mind, if anyone can think of any of New Jersey's redeeming qualities — other than that one outstanding pizza place in Jersey City, the name of which I've forgotten — please get in touch and I'll list legitimate ones below:
A Comprehensive List of New Jersey's Redeeming Qualities:
- That one outstanding pizza place in Jersey City
Then Connecticut via New York State. A slight detour from our usual route to the Granite State, because trucks, even rental ones like the one we were driving, are forbidden past exit 105 on the Garden State Parkway: over the noisy, congested George Washington Bridge, where we were slapped with a $32 toll for passage. In the end it cost us $100 in similar tolls and gas to get out of New Jersey. Clearly people are willing to pay for the privilege.
In Connecticut, an odd affair. Selectively loading my late grandparents' furniture, and in doing so moving objects that had been fixed points in my mental universe from my earliest memories. The heavy sofa bed with the vertigo-inducing pattern of its upholstery — my grandmother and their dog often occupying opposite ends — that occupied a permanent place along the wall of their living room, the chair by the window in which my grandfather routinely sat solving crossword puzzles and reading crime novels, the polished red wooden bed that they shared for decades: these things have now been uprooted, transplanted, and the soil that they once held firmly in place begins to shift, slide, erode. The present crumbles along with it into the surreal ghostliness of the past.
Fully packed and loaded, our first overnight stop on the westward journey would be Ohio, as it turned out. More specifically, Newton Falls. We ate a cheeseburger and meatloaf at the Kountry Kupboard (I can't for the life of me explain why these cutely misspelled naming conventions are so common in the US) truck stop at the Center of the World, which serves as a nice metaphor for all of America's gimmicky grandiosity. The waitress called us "hon." What'll it be, hon? Anything else, hon? Here's hoping that particular casual custom never dies out entirely.
I-80 is a toll road in Ohio. And so it is — even in its dual life as I-90 — in Indiana and Illinois. Each one of our four axles mirrored dollar signs in the toll booth attendants' eyes. By that point, one-third of the way into the overall trek, we were averaging one tank of gas (at around sixty dollars a pop) every two hundred miles. The mounting costs offset the minor thrill of being on the open road. The cost of fuel for the entire trip would, incidentally, end up totaling more than $900.
The second layover, having gained an hour in Indiana that in turn gave us an extra hour on the road, was in Wisconsin Dells, WI. We could hear the sounds of the highway — the steady hum of trucks barreling along — through the night. Around 5am or thereabouts the walls of our hotel room began to vibrate in time with a deep rumble. Must be an earthquake, I thought, still half-dreaming. It went on for several minutes. Then came the lonely honk of a train horn.
Before heading out, we stopped for some famed Wisconsin cheddar in a hangar-like grocery store that took pride in underscoring its employee ownership. Then on into dry, hot, blustery Minnesota. The lasting impression it left was twofold: a flat, dull landscape and the smell of cow manure. I know from past experience that Minneapolis is an exciting, vibrant city, and that other areas of the state are quite pretty; but on this trip, the Land of 10,000 Lakes left me bored and tired. South Dakota was the same, except for the fact that the smell of cow manure was a bit more intense. At least the never-ending parade of billboards for tourist attractions kept us amused.
Speaking of tourist attractions: Wall, SD, home to Wall Drug, was our third stop. Wall is a quiet town whose ambient noise is the whoosh and groan of I-90. The owner of the Sunshine Inn was uncommonly polite and eager to help; in just ten hours, about eight of which we spent sleeping, he seemed to acquire the familiarity of an old friend. After our short post-breakfast walk down to Wall Drug for some watery 5-cent coffee, he sprang out of the motel office, as if he were afraid we'd leave without saying goodbye, and gave us an up-to-the-minute weather report for the mountain passes in Montana along I-90. They'd had heavy, impassable snowfall the previous day, a storm we'd experienced as heavy rainfall and jagged bolts of lightning on the horizon just outside of Murdo, where every restaurant was closed for the season except one with a dingy salad bar, watery soup, a weary waitress, and burnt buffalo burgers.
Underway by 8am, which had by then established itself as our habitual departure time. Strong headwinds into Wyoming and Montana made for depressing driving; eight miles to the gallon would be a generous estimate. The surrounding landscape was the most scenic on our journey: dramatic mountain peaks and undulating hills with grazing livestock and lingering patches of snow. These are some of the reasons why the American west holds such a special allure for us. What better way to live than by spending every day in awe of such natural beauty?
Later, another lackluster dinner in beautiful Bozeman, home to Montana University and a higher than average number of faded Bush/Cheney bumper stickers. Ah, right, I remembered, Sarah Palin was once rumored to be eyeing some land around here, and sure enough, she had a cameo on Butte's local evening news, where a clip was played of her saying empty, contradictory, incendiary things to people who share the qualities of her rhetoric. Shame that such a gorgeous state has to be marred by the absurdity of its prevailing political mindset.
At last, the fifth and final day. Breathtaking mountain passes between the Sapphire Mountains and the Rockies led the way out of Montana and into Idaho. The panhandle, though only about 75 miles across, brought us through forested mountain passes before us dropping down along the beautiful Lake Coeur d'Alene and into the traffic on I-90 that cuts through Spokane. And this is where the real work begins: cleaning, painting, unpacking, installing, settling. Already the five days spent covering 2,600+ miles in a rental truck with a car trailer in tow have come to seem like a luxury.
