The Elements

Today is our last day in DC before heading home and I find myself woefully behind in regards to posting. Driving has taken its toll on me physically, and I’m too stubborn to admit I’m not twenty-something anymore. With late arrivals and early mornings, I simply don’t last long at night after planning for the next day’s drive and updating our finances. I suppose we live and learn, and I’ve learned I’m not as young as I used to be. The lyrics of Toby Keith’s song have been ringing in my ears lately: “I ain’t as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was.” I find that song bothering me a bit, though. I don’t want to be good once like I used to be; I want to be better than I ever was. Having said that, one thing is for sure: I ain’t as young as I once was, and that just stinks!

The Mule (our van) has been a trooper so far, and a pair of new windshield wipers has effectively ensured we saw no more rain, and that’s a good thing considering how the weather has caused us to change our route more than once. In fact, the elements have had quite an impact on our trip. We started out on a bright sunny day, watched tornadoes pass to our south, read about them traveling across the same path we just drove, ran into massive flooding in North Dakota where we stopped to fill sandbags, and were halted in Medora where flooded roads in the Badlands prevented us from driving straight through them. We had to bypass Little Bighorn because those roads were flooded, and when we got to Yellowstone, half the park was closed due to snow. In fact, we never made it to our campground because a snowstorm burried it in 8 inches of snow that closed the roads, and we couldn’t drive to Old Faithful the next day until it all melted off the mountain pass. More snow the next day forced us to take an alternate route out of Yellowstone that added 2.5 hours drive time to our destination in Bend, OR. The nights were colder than expected in California, and didn’t improve until we made our way down the coast towards L.A.. By the time we made it to the Grand Canyon, wild fires forced us to leave the park by an alternate route on our way to Los Alamos. When we reached Albuquerque that night, smoke had settled like a blanket on the city as fires spread out of control across the state. Temperatures soared as we drove through Texas, and we completed our transition from rain, snow and ice in the North to drought and desiccating temperatures that soared above 100 degrees in the South. As we pushed through South and North Carolina, we saw news reports in truck stops of people dying from heat related complications. It is safe to say that we have experienced extremes that Mother Nature seemed to delight in throwing at us; however, although this country has certainly demonstrated nature’s multi-faceted power and fury, we have also seen our share of breathtaking landscapes and absolutely gorgeous days.

~Shawn Neely