We woke up in Courtenay, after I stayed up past 3am sending out messages to new WWOOF hosts. Later, when I thought about the fact that no one checks their e-mail and responds to it early in the morning before check-out at the hostel (10:30), so I set Tomko to making phone calls to some other host listings while I took a shower.
Shower was a general fiasco (dropping my magic soap in the hallway, spending a lot of time diluting it enough to mop it up) and the manager just said to shove our key under the office door and make sure the main door was locked on our way out. Thanks, awesome manager boy! Their British WWOOFer hostel-monkeys were also very nice. A++, Cona.
When I arrived from the shower, Tomko had two sort-of successes: A woman from Pender Island and a man from Quadra Island had both said, "Maybe, I need to check my computer to see what other WWOOFers are coming by." When Tomko named the farm that the man came from, I recognized it on two counts: (1) they're friends of the Parkers (from Refuge Cove) and (2) their profile says no smoking on the property. (Most profiles pick the "on the property but not in house" option.) I did not think that option appealed to Tomko, so I called the other person.
Ellen said that it would be fine, but she had two WWOOFers already... oh, and a third one just walked into the door. Paul, who we met later, had just landed on Pender Island the day before, bought a Westphalia, logged onto the internet from the library a mile from Ellen's house, saw her profile, drove up to her gate and called to see if she wanted extra WWOOFers. Sure, why not!
So we packed up from the hostel and headed south for our next ferry from Sidney.
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I indulged in sushi to improve our day, and we made it to the ferry with two hours to spare. I spent those two hours sitting in the ferry lane, pulling everything out of Byzantium and re-packing, since things had become pretty discombobulated with all our moving around and I hadn't re-packed properly since crossing the border. Now everything has a place and is where it goes.
Once off the ferry, Ellen's house was just as easy to find as she said it was. We pulled up to the gate around dusk and I called the house, where Ellen's partner, Rob, explained how to open the gate. He called it a cougar gate. Apparently there are cougars around these parts. (We had been warned of cougars before. If you see one, look big, spread out your jacket, and don't make direct eye contact, they say.)
Ellen and Rob had a couple over as guests for dinner, in addition to the rest of the WWOOFers--Paul, who I mentioned before; Remy, a boy from France, and a Quebecouis girl whose name I haven't quite figured out. Frank, who lives a 20-minute walk down the road, arrived during dinner preparations and displayed a newly-acquired black widow bite. "Did you go to a doctor?" "No?" Well, uh, okay dude, but that looks pretty unpleasant.
Dinner was amazingly delicious, conversation was nice, and everyone seemed pretty fabulous. Frank showed us the caravan where we are staying--small room with electricity, lights, and a space heater that only kind of works, but about twice as good as sleeping in a tent. (We may be sleeping in a tent later when more WWOOFers show up, since they pre-arranged and therefore "called" it... although maybe Paul will let us sleep in his Westy? Endless possibilities I am sure.)
In the morning, we learned the morning feeding routine for the animals: half a bale of hay and two buckets of barley with added minerals for the goats (about 15-20), half a Folger's can of Llama Tex for the llama, more barley for the sheep (5 of them), water and chicken feed for the laying chickens (about 80), special baby chicken food for the three-week old chicklets (swarming everywhere in their heated coop, numbers unknown). Eggs are collected and washed.
Then our activity for the day was getting two large Douglas fir trees worth of logs from where they had been cut down to the wood shed where Remy could split them with the gasoline-powered splitting machine. This involved getting into the goat/sheep/llama pen (which covers enough area that I can't see far enough to tell you how big it is), throwing them down the hill until they hit the fence (or careen off and roll somewhere further down the hill where you don't want them to be, dammit), then unhooking part of the fence that connected to the garden, pushing them through one-by-one, and then walking backwards to roll them carefully down the garden path without smashing the tomatoes. There are many tomatoes.
We were amazing and then had lunch followed by delicious baked apples with walnuts and vanilla ice cream. Mmmmm yeah.
Showing posts with label activities: driving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label activities: driving. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Salt Lake City to Olympia
The drive seems like a blur that includes about 16 hours and 900 miles.
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Shortly after getting out of the SLC metropolitan area, we passed into the state of Idaho.
Neither Tomko nor I had a very good idea of what the upper, leafy part of the potato plant looks like. At the beginning of Idaho, we saw a lot of corn and occasional hay, but nothing else: Particularly, we expected to see fields and fields of unidentified crops, which we could quickly assume to be potatoes.
By observation, Tomko and I determined that potatoes have above-ground parts that are kind of like soybeans in height and greenitude. We have not yet checked with the internet to verify this one way or another.
We were ahead of schedule--we were going to Portland and then leaving for Olympia at 2am--so we were somewhat leisurely about our drive. We decided to stop in Boise, since who doesn't want to be able to say that they went to Boise? Also, it was about 4pm and I figured that if we wanted to hang out at a public library, then we better do it sooner than later (before all libraries close).
There are many reasons that you will find homeless punk kids hanging out around a library. We ran into several when be pulled into the library, asking Tomko for cigarettes. Libraries are great places because they have: climate-control, electrical outlets, computers and internet access, potable water and sanitary facilities, and because you don't need to justify being at a library. You can hang out and that's just what you're supposed to be doing. If you have no money but want to hang around a nice place for a while, libraries are where it is at.
After we chatted with the punk kids for a while, we went inside. The first thing I remembered to do was to call VW parts places to see if they had headlights that would fit my car. The first place said yes. $62 each, including bulbs and orange plastic bits and so on. Great. Fine.
I am shocked that I managed to get from Baltimore to Boise without front turn signals, without being pulled over a single time.
We went to the place and got the new turn signals. I got someone to come outside with me to see if I was attaching them correctly, and as I was putting in the driver's-side one (the one that simply disappeared and I never got to see the inside workings of), I realized exactly where the hook on the spring was supposed to go. I made sure everything else was lined up and the light was plugged in, then yanked the spring into place. Horray!
The passenger's side one (the one that fell out because I had not placed the spring correctly) was a lot harder and took a lot more time, because unlike the driver's side, this had pieces of the engine blocking most access to the place where you wanted to put the spring. After I repeatedly bruised the top of my hand and knuckles shoving against gravity and springs, and then using miscellaneous silverware from the car as levers, Tomko managed to place the spring onto a piece of metal. It was not the correct piece of metal, but this isn't relevant. I yanked on it and couldn't get it loose, proclaimed Byzantium healed, and we got on our way.
Boise has adoooorable rush-hour traffic wherein we were stationary for about thirty seconds.
Oh, also we got a sleeping bag in Boise. Apparently, my mother reports to me, there were like three sleeping bags in the garage that I could have taken from Maryland but no one checked the garage to find this out.
On and on we drove. We hit Portland around 1am, and then hung out at a gay bar waiting for our friend Davi to get off work an hour later. Then he jumped into our car and directed us to his house in Olympia, Washington, where we quickly fell asleep.
View Larger Map
Shortly after getting out of the SLC metropolitan area, we passed into the state of Idaho.
Neither Tomko nor I had a very good idea of what the upper, leafy part of the potato plant looks like. At the beginning of Idaho, we saw a lot of corn and occasional hay, but nothing else: Particularly, we expected to see fields and fields of unidentified crops, which we could quickly assume to be potatoes.
By observation, Tomko and I determined that potatoes have above-ground parts that are kind of like soybeans in height and greenitude. We have not yet checked with the internet to verify this one way or another.
We were ahead of schedule--we were going to Portland and then leaving for Olympia at 2am--so we were somewhat leisurely about our drive. We decided to stop in Boise, since who doesn't want to be able to say that they went to Boise? Also, it was about 4pm and I figured that if we wanted to hang out at a public library, then we better do it sooner than later (before all libraries close).
There are many reasons that you will find homeless punk kids hanging out around a library. We ran into several when be pulled into the library, asking Tomko for cigarettes. Libraries are great places because they have: climate-control, electrical outlets, computers and internet access, potable water and sanitary facilities, and because you don't need to justify being at a library. You can hang out and that's just what you're supposed to be doing. If you have no money but want to hang around a nice place for a while, libraries are where it is at.
After we chatted with the punk kids for a while, we went inside. The first thing I remembered to do was to call VW parts places to see if they had headlights that would fit my car. The first place said yes. $62 each, including bulbs and orange plastic bits and so on. Great. Fine.
I am shocked that I managed to get from Baltimore to Boise without front turn signals, without being pulled over a single time.
We went to the place and got the new turn signals. I got someone to come outside with me to see if I was attaching them correctly, and as I was putting in the driver's-side one (the one that simply disappeared and I never got to see the inside workings of), I realized exactly where the hook on the spring was supposed to go. I made sure everything else was lined up and the light was plugged in, then yanked the spring into place. Horray!
The passenger's side one (the one that fell out because I had not placed the spring correctly) was a lot harder and took a lot more time, because unlike the driver's side, this had pieces of the engine blocking most access to the place where you wanted to put the spring. After I repeatedly bruised the top of my hand and knuckles shoving against gravity and springs, and then using miscellaneous silverware from the car as levers, Tomko managed to place the spring onto a piece of metal. It was not the correct piece of metal, but this isn't relevant. I yanked on it and couldn't get it loose, proclaimed Byzantium healed, and we got on our way.
Boise has adoooorable rush-hour traffic wherein we were stationary for about thirty seconds.
Oh, also we got a sleeping bag in Boise. Apparently, my mother reports to me, there were like three sleeping bags in the garage that I could have taken from Maryland but no one checked the garage to find this out.
On and on we drove. We hit Portland around 1am, and then hung out at a gay bar waiting for our friend Davi to get off work an hour later. Then he jumped into our car and directed us to his house in Olympia, Washington, where we quickly fell asleep.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Trying Not to Get Lost in Utah
Unlike previous maps, this map does not exactly show the route that we took during our trip.
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This is because we're not entirely sure where we went. When we hit point B (Neola, UT) our map seemed to think that we would be able to go straight and continue on that road. We were confronted with a T intersection and picked the right, whereupon we got lost in the middle of the Indian Reservation, where apparently people are not inclined to include street signs or other important markers that might let us have some idea as to where we were going.
Eventually, we got lost again, ended up in Roosevelt, and made a much more reasonable journey from there. (It's sort of a straight shot down Rt. 40 to I-80.)
Driving into SLC on I-80 is pretty fun. It goes zoooooom up and then zooooom down. All the cars know what they are doing and don't want to go careening off the highway, so they're all perfectly reasonable and polite.
We were on our way to Clay and Lisa's new house. It was only a few blocks from the highway, but I got lost again and was required to call Clay. (This usually doesn't happen to me! I have my Google map directions; I don't understand why it's been happening at almost every new city we've arrived in.)
We found it eventually because you can't fail to find things in Salt Lake City due to the SLC grid system. It's amazing, while incredibly confusing to outsiders since it simply sounds like a list of numbers and cardinal directions. We marveled at the house (which has been extensively remodeled) and hung out with Clay's parents and uncle. We ate pizza and chatted and then once the adults left we took some showers and went to sleep on the side room futon.
View Larger Map
This is because we're not entirely sure where we went. When we hit point B (Neola, UT) our map seemed to think that we would be able to go straight and continue on that road. We were confronted with a T intersection and picked the right, whereupon we got lost in the middle of the Indian Reservation, where apparently people are not inclined to include street signs or other important markers that might let us have some idea as to where we were going.
Eventually, we got lost again, ended up in Roosevelt, and made a much more reasonable journey from there. (It's sort of a straight shot down Rt. 40 to I-80.)
Driving into SLC on I-80 is pretty fun. It goes zoooooom up and then zooooom down. All the cars know what they are doing and don't want to go careening off the highway, so they're all perfectly reasonable and polite.
We were on our way to Clay and Lisa's new house. It was only a few blocks from the highway, but I got lost again and was required to call Clay. (This usually doesn't happen to me! I have my Google map directions; I don't understand why it's been happening at almost every new city we've arrived in.)
We found it eventually because you can't fail to find things in Salt Lake City due to the SLC grid system. It's amazing, while incredibly confusing to outsiders since it simply sounds like a list of numbers and cardinal directions. We marveled at the house (which has been extensively remodeled) and hung out with Clay's parents and uncle. We ate pizza and chatted and then once the adults left we took some showers and went to sleep on the side room futon.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Unceasing Corn: The Nebraskan Odyssey
Our intended route was from Omaha to Medicine Bow National Park, Wyoming, but this is not what happened to us.
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Upon leaving Omaha, we were made part of a gang war with automatic weapons at a Texaco. I believe the dispute was over the grade of their meth-corn. Wait, no, that's not right. We left in usually-trusty Byzantium, but her "Check Engine!" light came on. This was alarming, because it could mean roughly four hundred things, major or minor. Luckily, right off the highway was a huge Volkswagen dealership and repair shop. We pulled in there and they ran diagnostics. The sum of the troubles is that the car is old and could use some new widgets and wiring, but still runs good. While waiting for a while, we enjoyed free wireless internet and coffee. I abused the hell out of the free infinite coffee part, let me tell y'all. Eventually we left and got back on the highway, and the next several hours are a fugue-like dream that involves nothing but corn. Nothing. Endless fields and flatlands. I thought Indiana was bad! You readers are lucky.
TOMKO: Every time I see one of those little side streets, I want to drive down it until I get to a house, knock on the door, and demand WHYYYY.
CHRIS: There is land beyond the corn.
TOMKO: What, you mean like soybeans?
The sun began to set and weariness fell upon the drivers after the exhausting sojourn through corn-based nihilism. We saw a sign on the highway for a campground, which turned out to be just a bunch of acres owned by a single guy who rents it out as a camping stopover. He only wanted twelve dollars and change for taking up a spot and pitching a tent for the night. Not a bad deal, I'd say! Especially including the fact that the place had a (questionably up-kept) putt-putt course and a merry-go-round. Also, potable water, bathrooms and hot showers. The night was not offensively cold; sleep came easily, and we broke camp and hit the road early in the morning to finish the last of our trek through one of the most boring--and deceptively expansive--states in our union.
After an indeterminate time and at an indistinguishable place, the land began to slowly elevate and rise up, continuing to gradually do so as we crossed the continental divide. I was relieved to see rocks and hills once again, which I continued to see as we made our way to Salt Lake City, Utah, sleeping a night in a national forest in the interim.
View Larger Map
Upon leaving Omaha, we were made part of a gang war with automatic weapons at a Texaco. I believe the dispute was over the grade of their meth-corn. Wait, no, that's not right. We left in usually-trusty Byzantium, but her "Check Engine!" light came on. This was alarming, because it could mean roughly four hundred things, major or minor. Luckily, right off the highway was a huge Volkswagen dealership and repair shop. We pulled in there and they ran diagnostics. The sum of the troubles is that the car is old and could use some new widgets and wiring, but still runs good. While waiting for a while, we enjoyed free wireless internet and coffee. I abused the hell out of the free infinite coffee part, let me tell y'all. Eventually we left and got back on the highway, and the next several hours are a fugue-like dream that involves nothing but corn. Nothing. Endless fields and flatlands. I thought Indiana was bad! You readers are lucky.
TOMKO: Every time I see one of those little side streets, I want to drive down it until I get to a house, knock on the door, and demand WHYYYY.
CHRIS: There is land beyond the corn.
TOMKO: What, you mean like soybeans?
The sun began to set and weariness fell upon the drivers after the exhausting sojourn through corn-based nihilism. We saw a sign on the highway for a campground, which turned out to be just a bunch of acres owned by a single guy who rents it out as a camping stopover. He only wanted twelve dollars and change for taking up a spot and pitching a tent for the night. Not a bad deal, I'd say! Especially including the fact that the place had a (questionably up-kept) putt-putt course and a merry-go-round. Also, potable water, bathrooms and hot showers. The night was not offensively cold; sleep came easily, and we broke camp and hit the road early in the morning to finish the last of our trek through one of the most boring--and deceptively expansive--states in our union.
 |
| Our surprise campsite even had WiFi! |
After an indeterminate time and at an indistinguishable place, the land began to slowly elevate and rise up, continuing to gradually do so as we crossed the continental divide. I was relieved to see rocks and hills once again, which I continued to see as we made our way to Salt Lake City, Utah, sleeping a night in a national forest in the interim.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Indianapolis to Omaha, with stopover in St. Louis
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Our next day's drive was for us to arrive in Omaha, Nebraska, where our friends J and C have been living. J was moved to the wilds of Nebraska due to his unfortunate involvement with the Air Force.
"But Kylara," you may say, "Why did you take such a silly route? It would have made much more sense to detour up to Gary, Indiana and then take I-80 West instead of curling down around with I-70 West and then having to go south up I-29 in order to reach back to Omaha."
Well, yes. You are correct geographically, but you are wrong on two, no, three counts:
This means that we picked Chris back up at the Trader Joe's and bought some food with a gift card given to Tomko by my aunt Julie about two years ago. It was like magical, free money that I found while moving out of my house. We had hummus and pita and ginger beer: This could get us through any road trip.
In the car, we discovered that the three cans of soda that Laura had given us from her house had exploded when we left them overnight in the car in Lafayette. The car was miraculously saved from being sticky-coated by the other contents of the milk crate they were in: a pair of my pants and Tomko's jacket. Tomko's black zip-up hoodie is the same one that he has always had, yes, I'm sure you've seen him wearing it before.
Unfortunately, when we went into Trader Joe's I put the wet hoodie on top of the car. I thought that Tomko would get it when we went back in the car; Tomko either didn't see it or thought that I was getting it--at any rate, Tomko's hoodie now lies sadly in the parking lot of a Trader Joe's or somewhere near it. Rest in peace, little hoodie.
Dan Hunter guided us into St. Louis by cell phone and then showed up excited to introduce us to his roommate (and their dog, who inexplicably found itself very upset at my presence but seemed to like Tomko and Chris just fine). We went to eat at a diner place, the type with a dozen jukeboxes hanging on the walls as decoration, and saw bits and pieces of St. Louis on our walk.
Then we were off for Omaha! It's a loooong, boring stretch of Missouri west to Kansas City, and then a loooong, boring but somewhat curvy stretch of the Missouri/Iowa-Nebraska border along the river. Perhaps it is the Missouri River. Rivers are so terribly named on maps and infrequently identified when they're anything bigger than a sign next to a tiny bridge labelled "Mountain Lake Stream", so I really don't know. [Mountain Lake Stream: An actual sign and location found in Virginia. True story.]
At any rate, we got into Cedar Rapids, Iowa and crossed the river into Omaha, Nebraska. Then the highway flung us north and east and back into Cedar Rapids. I turned us around and we were teleported to another location without any of the proper exits, and ended up horribly lost and had to have J direct us there.
(A note to my friends: So far, you all have been really good at giving directions. Laura gave precise driving directions down to the second telling me what hills I'm passing over and when the road forks; Hunter prevented us from actually having to pay for parking somehow, and J managed to get me from the opposite end of town to his house in a city whose layout makes positively no sense.)
At J's house, we came in and were greeted by the two cutest Maine Coon/Siamese cats and then we were all like "welll... it's midnight," and then we all fell asleep.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Frederick, MD to Indianapolis, IN
We woke up at the house of our friends, Laura and Noah, in Middletown right outside of Frederick. Being in Frederick cut at least an hour off of our day's drive, and besides we hadn't had the chance to see them for a while.
So our first day of driving didn't actually start at my parents' house, but we let late enough Tuesday evening that it seemed like we might as well stick it into this map.
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When we left Laura's house in Middletown, we had to backtrack a few miles east to Frederick, MD in order to pick up some prescription medication and meet up with Chris at a Rite-Aid. Chris's friends dropped him off and we wandered the store and eventually left en-route to Indianapolis!
A bit about Chris. He's a guy from the Baltimore suburbs. He responded to a post I made on Craigslist Rideshare offering a ride from Baltimore to Indianpolis, Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, Portland, Seattle, or Vancouver Island. His plan is to get to Portland, stay there for a few weeks with some friends, and then get a ride up to Alaska, his intended final destination. He buys every third tank of gas and shares driving duties with me so that neither of us fall asleep on the road. Good deal.
Since he had friends in Frederick, he had no problem meeting up with us that morning, and we got underway.
The drive to Indianapolis was largely uneventful. It is a drive that I have taken many times before, because our end destination (in Lafayette) is the house of Penny, Tomko's mother.
On our way, we dropped Chris off at a Trader Joe's near the house of his friend Rachel and planned to meet back up there the morning of Thursday, the fifth.
It was pretty late when we arrived at Penny's house, maybe 10pm, and we crashed out asleep soon after arriving. The following day was full of missions and visitations. We saw Penny's parents and two of Tomko's four siblings, along with a niece and nephew who dropped by. We missed seeing a third sister, Maria, because we fell asleep again before she got off of work. But we did manage to see a good many people before we set off the next day.
So our first day of driving didn't actually start at my parents' house, but we let late enough Tuesday evening that it seemed like we might as well stick it into this map.
View Larger Map
When we left Laura's house in Middletown, we had to backtrack a few miles east to Frederick, MD in order to pick up some prescription medication and meet up with Chris at a Rite-Aid. Chris's friends dropped him off and we wandered the store and eventually left en-route to Indianapolis!
A bit about Chris. He's a guy from the Baltimore suburbs. He responded to a post I made on Craigslist Rideshare offering a ride from Baltimore to Indianpolis, Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, Portland, Seattle, or Vancouver Island. His plan is to get to Portland, stay there for a few weeks with some friends, and then get a ride up to Alaska, his intended final destination. He buys every third tank of gas and shares driving duties with me so that neither of us fall asleep on the road. Good deal.
Since he had friends in Frederick, he had no problem meeting up with us that morning, and we got underway.
The drive to Indianapolis was largely uneventful. It is a drive that I have taken many times before, because our end destination (in Lafayette) is the house of Penny, Tomko's mother.
On our way, we dropped Chris off at a Trader Joe's near the house of his friend Rachel and planned to meet back up there the morning of Thursday, the fifth.
It was pretty late when we arrived at Penny's house, maybe 10pm, and we crashed out asleep soon after arriving. The following day was full of missions and visitations. We saw Penny's parents and two of Tomko's four siblings, along with a niece and nephew who dropped by. We missed seeing a third sister, Maria, because we fell asleep again before she got off of work. But we did manage to see a good many people before we set off the next day.
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