it's not life that matters but the journey...

Here it is finally - my detailed account, with photos, of our drive from Chicago, Illinois to Port Angeles Washington. I'm splitting this into two parts, because without high speed internet, it's taking me too long to work with Photobucket. So today, I'm posting about our first three days.

In all, it took us 5 1/2 days of driving (at an average of 400 miles a day), through 7 states, with a range of climates, elevations, and surroundings. We drove a 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee (which already had 16,000 plus miles on it), packed full with three suitcases, three computer cases (with laptops), two backpacks, an ice chest, a cat carrier and litter box, a cat, and three guitars! In total, we drove 2,173 miles, plus the extra 60 or so miles that we drove to and from Devil's Tower in Wyoming. In all, it was fairly smooth driving, and we only had about three catastophes, which you will read all about. I think despite our difficult conditions (driving with cat, and with a car full of stuff), it was one of the most fun adventures I've had in a long time, and a great memory for both of us (though I'm not sure a great memory for Leo!)

I hope you will enjoy reading about our adventures and seeing the landscapes and other pictures - many of the pictures were taken from the car while we were driving, but it will give you a good idea of the variety of scenery we saw. I apologize that some of the pictures (the last ones of Devil's Tower) are big - I was having trouble with Photobucket and just decided to leave these full size. So some pictures are big.

Since this is a VERY lengthy post, I will put it

Day 1, Tuesday: driving from Mt. Prospect IL to Fairmont, MN

We woke up at 4 a.m. with the intention of leaving really early - but unfortunately once we started putting our things into our Jeep, we realized how much stuff we had, and we had to start throwing things away. It took us about 4 hours to pack everything in, throw the remaining things away, and finish cleaning up the apartment. We were exhausted by the time we turned in our apartment keys at 9 a.m. and got on the road.
It took us a couple hours or more to get out of Illinois, and much of the driving was difficult because of construction. We had an uneventful drive through part of Wisconsin (including Madison, which we’ve already visited), and got into Minnesota in the afternoon. Right after we crossed the border from Wisconsin into Minnesota, there was a rest stop where we could see the Mississippi River - since it was my first time to see it, I took some pictures there:







Wisconsin and Minnesota were both green and pretty with lots of farms and hills, and the weather was perfect with sun and fluffy white clouds, which were really low in the sky. Minnesota also had lots of these big white windmills, which I found fascinating. Here's some pictures of our drive:








Leo was really quiet most of the day, but unfortunately he was nervous and he peed in his carrier, so we had to throw out the towel we were using as padding. Once we got to Fairmont, where we would stay for the night, we stopped at Wal-Mart and bought some carrier liners for the rest of the trip, and we arrived at our Super 8 motel by 5:30. After checking in, we got Chinese take-out and ate it in the room - we were exhausted and slept by 8:30 p.m.

Day 2, Wednesday: Driving from MN to Rapid City, SD

We woke up at 6 a.m. and had breakfast in the hotel - muffins, cereal and coffee. We got gas and left Fairmont by 8:00 a.m. The drive was pretty much the same as the previous day through Minnesota, and even as we passed into South Dakota. Around lunchtime it started getting cool and cloudy, and then starting raining when we stopped in Mitchell, SD for lunch at McDonald’s. It rained for over an hour, and remained a bit cool and cloudy. The rain started and stopped all day, and we remained under a rain cloud for almost the entire drive through South Dakota:




We drove past the birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder (the author of the Little House on the Prairie books), and stopped at a rest stop in a place called Chamberlain, which is on the Missouri River in South Dakota. It was beautiful there, and the rest stop had gorgeous views, as well as this interesting mural.










Before getting to our destination of Rapid City, we stopped at the entrance to the Badlands National park - but we were tired so we decided not to pay to enter the park and get better views. But we did get some views of some of the rocks:








Here are more pictures of South Dakota:
























We arrived in Rapid City around 5:30 - it’s a really cute town, very full of hills and no tall buildings. There were a lot of Harley Davidson motorcyles in the parking lot, and we realized that the big Harley festival in Sturgis, SD (which is just west of Rapid City) was going to be that coming weekend, so the hotel was full of Harley riders:





Unfortunately, our hotel room was extremely small (and expensive - because of the festival, I’m sure), so we were a little cramped and uncomfortable. But because Leo had been crying almost all day, he crashed and slept all night long. In Rapid City we also realized that we couldn’t use our cell phones - the areas we drove through all the way between Chicago and Washington state are all Verizon and Alltel only. Thankfully I had a pre-paid calling card that I could use to call my mother, since I had promised her a call on the second day. We got a beer from the gas station, ordered some pasta to be delivered, and ate and slept.

Day 3, Thursday: Driving from SD through Devil's Tower to Billings, MT

We ate breakfast again at the hotel - breakfast rolls and muffins and coffee. We left Rapid City by 8 a.m. and got on our way to Devil’s Tower. First we passed into Wyoming, and the weather was gorgeous and warm - clear skies and sunny. Some views of Wyoming:







The road to Devil’s Tower, which was about 30 miles off of highway 90, first goes through the little town of Sundance, Wyoming (where Robert Redford has the annual film festival), and then turns into this winding, climbing narrow two-lane road which passes by farms and takes you higher and higher in elevation. After about 15 minutes or so of driving, we finally caught sight of the Tower in the distance, and gradually as we got closer and closer, it was just breathtaking:













Leo seemed to be crying more than usual during this drive, and I thought maybe it was because he didn’t like all the winding roads. He was scratching at the entrance to his carrier and seemed very unhappy. We stopped just outside the entrance to the park and took some photos, and also looked around the gift shop:













Then we decided to enter the park - it cost only $10 and took us closer to the foot of the tower. There are trails that go around the base of the Tower, and we could even see some people climbing up the side of the Tower - but unfortunately, we didn’t want to spend a lot of time there because we still had a lot of driving on the agenda for that day. So all we did was to take a few pictures and video because we wanted to get back on the road. Here's some close ups of Devil's Tower:











But before we could even take pictures and look around the visitor’s center and gift shop, we had a little diversion - - our first catastrophe if you will. Once we had stopped and parked outside the visitor’s center, we let Leo out of his cage to run around, and to use his litter box. We had been doing this all along - the first day he was not sure what was going on, so he peed in his carrier, but the second day, he did use his litter box when we let him out of the carrier. But I guess he hadn’t had a chance to poop before we left our hotel in Rapid City, and in all his nervousness, he had actually pooped in the corner of his carrier. So Masahiko had to clean up the cat carrier, and we had to throw away all the liners and towels, and then use our disinfecting wipes to clean the carrier before we could put Leo back inside. And of course the car was smelling bad, so thankfully we had some Lysol! In all we spent about 15 minutes, at the foot of this astonishing natural phenomenon, cleaning the poop out of our cat’s cage! But we laughed about it - it’s just the perils of traveling by car with a pet. Anyway, we took our pictures and got some souvenirs, and went back to the entrance of the park and had a Buffalo burger at the little restaurant there - we actually ate it in our car and then got on the road back to highway 90:







The rest of the day was spend driving through Wyoming, which was dry and mostly flat for awhile. After awhile, it became more mountainous, but there were so many miles of just plain desolation - miles and miles with no rest stops or gas stations or signs of civilization at all - not even any farms! But there were some pretty parts:
















For part of the drive, Masahiko decided to let Leo out of his cage for awhile, and he sat in the back with him. But that turned out to be a bad idea, because Leo was really crazy and climbing all over the place. So we had to put him back in his carrier - but before that, here he is chilling on the front driver's seat:




And then our second catastrophe occurred. While we were driving through all of this desolation in Wyoming, I started to smell a really strong gasoline smell. Of course I was worried that it might be the engine, but since I seemed to smell it more when the windows were open, I thought maybe it came from a diesel truck. But when the smell wouldn’t go away, we decided to stop at a little parking area on the side of the highway and investigate. It turned out that a can of belt cleaner (for one of the engine belts ) that Masahiko had put in the backseat of the car had actually spilled out all over the floor in the backseat and everything was covered in the smell. We had to take everything out, clean it all up, and then cover it up with a plastic bag. Thank goodness it wasn’t the engine, but the smell of that belt cleaner was really strong and didn’t go away for the rest of the day. We stopped at a town called Sheridan in Wyoming for gas, and got some souvenirs, and we passed into Montana around 4 p.m. We drove past the site of the Battle of Little Big Horn and several other famous Civil War memorials. There was one thing that I found interesting - that right outside of the Little Big Horn site and Warrior Trail, the Native Americans have built a Casino. Guess they’re trying to make something of their lives after such terrible treatment years and years ago. We finally arrived in Billings MT around 5:45 - Billings is really an ugly, industrial city, and our hotel was right in the heart of the industrial area, so not very nice. But it was a room, and we were tired. We got food from Dairy Queen and enjoyed the room, which was twice the size of the previous night’s room. We even had a refrigerator, microwave and an extra chair, which Leo slept in all night!



Stay tuned for part 2, the second three days of our trip with more pictures. Hopefully that will be posted tomorrow.