I promised myself a new computer when I retired, so we sent my dependable, hard-working, ten-year-old MacPlus and Bill's almost-worn-out Imagewriter to live with my mother and daddy.  When I finally settled in a bit and ordered the new computer, the shipment was delayed; then, I couldn't locate the power cord to the laser printer or my power strip.  I'm a little more organized now, but all of this is to say that the missive of our journey should have been written long before now, but it wasn't.  So there.

I never liked driving vacations.  Maybe it was because the ones I remembered as a child were to visit relatives rather than to exotic locations, or maybe it was the uninspiring scenery en route, or the fact that our 1953 Dodge was a cumbersome tank, or that riding in a car resulted in major upchucking if I tried to pass the time with my favorite leisure activity:  reading.  As an adult, while visits to relatives (not classified as vacations) were always by car, real vacations were by plane.

It was difficult for me to imagine that a two-thousand mile plus trip to our new home would be a vacation.  The thought of hard driving for ten hours a day with two loaded cars and a getting-more-agitated-by-the-hour dog was not what I would call a good time.  Bill, on the other hand, was like a kid again, imagining the adventure which lay before us through states we'd never visited, planning sidetrips hundreds of miles out of the way (with me always there to remind him a moving van was chasing us to our destination).

However, after weeks of sorting, weeding out and packing, finalizing things at work to accomplish walking out the door with a clear conscience, dealing with realtors in Washington and three cities in Texas, repairmen, appraisers, inspectors, the accountant and the attorney, and preparing to say good-bye to our belongings as the moving van pulled away from the curb, I was actually looking forward to the relative ease of the journey west!  As we pulled out of the driveway just before 6 a.m. (remember, I'm not a morning person!) to begin our trek half-way across the country, I was fighting to keep my eyes focused, but realizing that after years of planning and dreaming, we were driving into our new life, and that the journey there was the first chapter.

Although I said for years that I would keep my baby-car only until I retired, at ten years old with barely 75,000 miles on the engine, the little Honda was too good to get rid of.  In April, Bill had traded in his nine-year-old "bean truck" on a snazzy new Frontier with an extended cab and sunroof, and for the next month kept telling me my car wouldn't make the trip.  I knew differently, however, since my old friends at Huggins Honda had checked her over and pronounced her fit to roam.  At our first gas and potty stop in Vernon, an hour ahead of schedule (What?  You didn't think I would have a schedule?), Bill insisted on Texaco Super-Priced gas -- and there the car died.  Well, she didn't really die, she just shook and sputtered to the outskirts of town.  I guess a rich diet is as bad for cars as it is for people!  We limped to Quanah, where mechanics at the only car lot in town said we should try to get to Amarillo.

The good time we'd made early on our first day was lost in the Amarillo Honda dealership (actually it wasn't lost:  we had a picnic in the park and reveled in the cool June afternoon).  The diagnosis was carbon in a spark plug, and we were on our way before dawn the next morning.  Yes, I heard about how I should have gotten a new car the rest of the trip, but, as usual, I didn't listen.

Before we left, Bill bought walkie-talkies so we could communicate with each other on the road.  I thought it was unnecessary:  we'd gotten his dad a baby monitor so he could listen for his mother while she was sick, and we used it on our many two-car trips back and forth to Greenville.  It required some tricky signalling, but I thought it was adequate.  I have to admit that Bill was right.

Talking back and forth about what we saw on the road, the topic of the talk show on the radio, or the need to stop for something helped keep us awake and focused, but the little units really came in handy when I saw the exit I needed in Amarillo, and Bill couldn't get over to follow me.  We were able to communicate (although there was another couple doing the same thing who sounded remarkably like us that added to the confusion), and an anxious Bill and Bouncer found me within a few minutes.  We learned that we'd have the various conversation confusion in every city, and that when the batteries get low you get lots of static, but Bill's idea was a great one.  We thought we might use them here in the house and yard, but so far we've just hollered.

Texans will remember when the gas tax was increased a nickel to provide for badly-needed highway repairs.  Well, not only is every farm road, state highway and interstate in Texas torn up, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Washington had the same idea!  I got to the point where an orange sign in the distance automatically set my teeth on edge.  The only saving grace was that there was so little traffic that the slow-downs were minimal, and we continued to run ahead of schedule.

After living in West Texas for ten years and traveling the state with the Texas Education Agency for four, I was quite used to the long stretches of highway you can find yourself on in the Panhandle.  What I didn't expect was to see almost identical topography through most of the trip.  I anticipated snowcaps and evergreens to dominate the scenery from southern Colorado on, but that wasn't the case at all.

Except for the stretch of I-25 between Pueblo and Denver, we were lonely travelers on a ribbon of highway that periodically disappeared into the hills.  Odd-shaped mounds covered with scrub brush and the outcroppings of volcanic rock peeking up from the mesquite reminded me of mini-Mt. St. Helens,  and the dead cows and skunks dotting the landscape added to the loneliness and desolation.  All that was left of the original towns were boarded-up buildings clustered together along the highway and railroad tracks, and remnants of old homesteads balanced precariously on the dirt.  As far as the eye could see, there were no houses, no cattle, no evidence of habitation except for electrical wires, pump jacks, fencing (what were they fencing in or out?), and long dirt tracks that faded into the horizon.  And, unless they are disguised as rocks or fences, no cell phone towers!  No matter how hard it tried, the radio could not locate a station.  Even with all this, "desolate" didn't really seem a fair description.

I rejoiced at the random stock tank and cows lounging in the sun, a shiny new trailer, and the ever-present pickup -- evidence that there were modern-day pioneers who saw what their predecessors saw in the land, the big sky, the peach fuzz that up close was probably grass covering the rocks.  What made them stop here?  How did these people make a living?  Where do they get groceries, go to school, go to church?

I thought northwest Texas was brown, but I realized as we headed toward Raton Pass that it was really green, now giving way to brown.  In the distance, however, we could finally see snowcaps rising above the stubby hills, but a distant view they would stay, until we crossed the Bitterroot Range in far west Wyoming.

Between Cheyenne and Casper, there were what appeared to be the modern day equivalents of the old outpost:  a tiny shack stuck beside the highway with a gas pump, a restroom on the outside, and a convenience store with videos to rent, cooler cases with beer and soft drinks, and exorbitantly-priced snacks, canned vegetables, and frozen dinners.  After passing exit after exit with signs proclaiming "No Services", we took advantage of each of these oases.

The speed limit in Colorado, Wyoming, and Idaho is 75 mph.  You could get to Austin in a little over two hours!  In Montana, the speed limit is "reasonable and prudent".  I set the cruise control at 80 and hit 85 on the downhills.  I only did that once or twice when I was teaching in Andrews and would race Angela Jackson to Big Spring, and only then because you could almost see the intersection of HW 385 and I-20 60 miles away!

The only problem we faced with these speed limits was that when we slowed to 45 in the construction zones, it was as if we were stopped!

We've gotten spoiled in Texas and often take for granted the thick stands of bluebonnets, Indian blankets, buttercups, and Indian paintbrush flowers along the roadways.  A wet winter helped make this spring's display spectacular, and we missed those on our trip.  West of Missoula, we finally saw the scenery we thought we would hit in Colorado:  high, fast-running rivers, thick pines, rocky gorges slashed between the hills, clouds wisping across ever-rising mountains, and wildflowers beside the road.  The flowers were nothing like those in Central Texas, but after two days of little green of any sort, it was a treat.  As we came down out of the mountains into Idaho, we saw spectacular Lake Couer d'Alene, a huge glacial lake dotted with sailboats.  Again, my expectations were completely off-base.  I expected a quaint mountain resort -- perhaps like Aspen or Vail -- but instead found a large city set in a lovely mountain valley.

For the first time, I felt like I was going to Washington.  It didn't last for long.

Almost before you are out of Couer d'Alene, you are in Spokane, and as you head west out of Spokane, mountains and pine trees disappear, giving way to a flat, brown landscape.  All of a sudden, we were back in West Texas, with tumbleweeds blowing across the highway and nothing as far as the eye could see.  Having only been east of the Cascades once, and then only a few miles down the mountains, I was in foreign territory, and found it hard to believe that the beautiful greens and blues of my Washington were so different from what I was seeing here.  No apple orchards, no fields of vegetables -- just desert.  I had a lot to learn about my new state.

After a couple of hours, evergreens reappeared and the Cascade Range came into view.  Climbing up to Snoqualmie Pass, it happened:  in our own cars we saw the sign "Seattle    87".  After years of dreaming, we were awakening.

We've continued to have so many of those wonderful moments.  They come as we're heading down the highway to the post office or lugging groceries out to the car or enjoying a pot luck supper after Evensong, and realize we're not on vacation.  Except that we are!  Our life has become a continuous vacation.

The house we rented sight unseen is in a beautiful setting:  up a narrow gravel dead-end road to our driveway, through a thick stand of trees, ferns, rhododendron, and countless other wonders, down to the little house on the bluff.  A wide deck stretches across the length of the house and affords us a 180° view across Mutiny Bay and the shipping lanes to the stately Olympic Mountains.  We enjoy nuclear submarines, ferries to Victoria, sailboats, barges, cargo ships, destroyers, and yachts.  From their names, we learn they are on their way to the Pacific Ocean for travel to Japan or Korea or Russia.  We revel in a variety of sunsets, painting the sky every shade of yellow, orange, pink, and red.  The Big Dipper and Milky Way hang just beyond our finger-tips.  The "purple mountains' majesty" is in our backyard.  So, often, is a family of deer, with their albino twin babies, enjoying our tomato plants (until we got smart and put up a little fence).  We were told in no uncertain terms by our neighbors where Bouncer was located in the food chain:  if she harmed any of the deer, she would have to be killed.  Yes, those were their words!

Every Sunday, this phrase is in our church bulletin.  Like Texas wildflowers, we have always taken the saying for granted.  A simple, trite little sentence that I'm only now really appreciating for its meaning.  Every day we get to start over.  Every day we meet new people (who are wonderfully helpful, friendly and caring); we discover new and different products in the grocery store (although I miss Blue Bell and Caffeine Free Diet Dr. Pepper, and Bill misses lima beans); we experience the delights of small town living (what a joy the Independence Day activities were!); we find a new road or an unexplored path. . .and so many of these new days are filled with sunshine and temperatures in the mid-70s!  I thought that when we retired, days might pass more slowly, but it seems they are passing faster than ever.  Our social calendar is full, our flower beds need weeding, there are errands to run, and mail to answer.  Every day is a gift so precious that we forget to remember yesterday.

We still feel like we are on vacation, even though we have our own cars, our own "stuff", and our dog.  We are truly blessed!

©1999, Nancy Ruff, All Rights Reserved