Welcome to Ft. Lewis

It feels like it has been forever since I wrote a blog, and so I have had tons of thoughts bouncing around my head that I haven't been able to record. The worst part of it though is that I will think of something funny or see a weird sign on the road, want to blog about it, and then promptly forget it when I see the next neat thing. This trend over the last two weeks roughly has led to a massive amount of ideas coming and going as they please, and to my disappointment, will most likely be gone forever to the great depths of nowhere. That said, since my last blog, I have been a busy, busy girl, which is quite a change of pace from the Ft. Leonard Wood days (or the lost days as I like to think of them). I really should quit joking on the lovely Missouri, especially since I know I will be back there in a short 2-3 years, but when you compare that to Lewis the comments just roll off the press.

I wrapped up my last full week in Ft. Leonard Wood by continuing to look for jobs, and continually being frustrated with the Catch-22 of "experienced required." Apparently in this job market employers can be picky and have plenty of laid-off and experienced workers to choose from, making me the novice not so very appealing. To be super honest at this point, I cannot even really remember what we did our last weekend in Missouri beyond eating a Sunday brunch at Cracker Barrell. I had driven by it everyday on the way on and off post and was determined to have one yummy breakfast there before leaving. Last Monday was our official last day, Dereck graduated his bomb school, and I went to the gym one last time and packed the Civic. I am proud to say that the little car has fantastic trunk space, and after accessing all those tetris skills I accrued on gameboy, I felt satisfied that the little car might make it across the US afterall. The crazy part of Monday was that I had to be ready to leave for Kansas City at any moment, but also be ready to leave the next morning according to what the Army told Dereck. We lucked out however, and made the four hour drive across small Missouri county roads to the glowing Kansas City. Most of this drive was in the dark of the evening, so I had little to look at besides billboards about Mizzou, and when we got to the hotel we barely had the energy to get our stuff into the room.

Early Tuesday morning we woke up and ate those oddly generic hotel breafasts before heading across Kansas City and into Kansas. Dereck had warned me that this would be the boring part of the ride, and when it takes eight hours to cross one state that has praries and farms as far as the eye can see, this is no exaggeration. The first bit was interesting enough, with Kansas City and then the outskirts of Ft. Leavenworth to entertain me. I had lived there when I was little, but my three year-old memomory failed me, and I remembered nothing of the area. At this part of NE Kansas, everything looks like the rolling hills of Missouri, and I thought that maybe Dereck had been exaggerating, and then we hit....prarie land. At first the praries were mezmerizing and I spent several hours looking across them for prarie dogs, log cabins, and cattle. I also should mention at this point that I took pictures while driving the 36 hour joy trip, so go to facebook and see what all I am writing about here. In the midst of prarie land I saw Ft. Riley, and this was another post that I put on the black list. The Army has a thing about vast, cheap land, and unfortunately that never seems to correspond with cool, metropolitan areas, except for Ft. Lewis! Most of Kansas was empty space and signs telling drivers that abortion was sinful and displeasing to God. This lines up with the trial that is currently being held for the guy that shot an abortion doctor during a church service, and helped me to understand how this fervor could build so easily in the middle of nowhere. Kansas really is wide, open, and spaced out. I could drive miles without seeing signs of human existence, and without Dereck behind me on the road, I believe I could have easily felt like I was in another world. For a while we followed a string of billboards about a farm that had the world's largest prarie dog, a five-legged steer, a three foot long donkey, and rattlesnakes. Every mile promised that the fun and splendor was just ahead, and soon I found myself sucked into the tourist trap and ready to drop big bucks for entry. I mean how often can you see that many crazy animals in one spot? I only started to doubt when I saw a sign that said the prarie dog weighed 3,000 pounds and began to realize it must be a statue, and this was only confirmed by the shanty building off the interstate where all the "wonders" were housed. Crazy how the dumbest things are appealing in the middle of nowhere on a lonely Kansas highway.

Insanity began to set in around hour seven on the road, and I lived for the Colorado border that meant Denver was nearby, and sleep would soon happen. Kansas had been dusty and windy, and we even later learned that our highway would often be closed across the state because strong winds could knock cars off the roads. Colorado however meant the end to the flat lands and the first glimpses of the Rockies. And they were spectacular when peaking up over the plains in the windshield. The thing that struck me most about the Rockies, particularly in Denver is how they seem to jut out of the ground abruptly, without any gentle hills or inclines to preceed them. That night we ate dinner with our friend Eric Tonn who we knew in high school, and we all sat in awe at the idea that we were now at the age where you live as adults, us moving to Ft. Lewis, and Eric living in Denver. The next morning, Dereck and I decided to push as far as we could for the day. As I saw it, the further we got on Wednesday, the less we had to drive on the Thursday trek into Lewis.

So, I set my iTunes on random playlists and artists I forgot I owned, and we hit the road from Colorado into Wyoming. What can I say about that beautiful spot? Nothing except it was one of the most desolate and isolated states I have ever seen (and I have lived in the California desert!) We started in the SE corner and drove toward Cheyenne and then hit a huge national forest that dumped us into a dry, cold valley where the landscape was crazy and looked like the moonscape. Huge plateaus loomed on both sides of the road, and Dereck and I hit a portion of the highway where we were the only ones for a couple of hours on the road. We did manage to find a small town for lunch, and as we sat there, we both agreed Wyoming was not the place for us. The better part did follow luckily as we went from Western Wyoming into Utah and drove towards Salt Lake City. Slowly the dry valleys and rocks gave way to beautiful and scenic snow-covered mountains. Now we were in Mormon country, and the whole time I drove through the state I thought about Mormons I knew, their theology, and their book, keeping me surprisingly entertained. I was also extatic to be around mountains and signs of life- Wyoming had felt lonely, and here I felt like I was part of the road community. I also listened to an audiobook, my first to be honest, and I actually liked it. The story line was simple enough to follow while driving, and it was also a great break from music. Seven hours into the drive even the best songs start to loose their shine. We pushed on through Utah and entered southern Idaho, and the landscape change was crazy. The steep skiing mountains gave way to old, sloping mountains, which then gradually flattened out to the rustic potato farmlands. This is also the time that the land got boring again, and it didn't take too much to imagine how easily tornadoes can rip across the plains. The audiobook kept me sane until we hit Boise, and there we camped for the night at a hotel and had Mexican for dinner. The best part of driving long hours is that we were wiped out by 9pm, and ready to hit the sack for the next early morning. I will forever prefer to rise early and drive than drive into the late night.

Hitting Boise meant that Thursday we could make it all the way into Ft. Lewis in only six hours. Six hours sounded so short at this point in the journey that I was giddy with excitement. Never again can anyone tease me for not being able to make long car trips after the end of these 30 something hours. The northern portion of Idaho wasn't much to write about, but Oregon was excedingly better. We cut the NE corner of the state before entering western Washington, going north and then cutting across the mountains to Seattle and Ft. Lewis. Here is something that I never knew before: the eastern portion of Washington is desert-like since all the rain is trapped by the mountains that bisect the state. So, the first few hours of the trip I was antsy and had little to look at until the mountains and the huge descent that precedes it in Oregon. Again, photo evidence can be found on facebook of the journey. The highlight of Thursday was talking to my friend Shelly who I haven't seen since high school in Texas. It is such a comfort to know in life that people who you knew and loved years ago are still the same lovable person. We obviously had a ton to catch up on, and the best irony of it is that we Army brats had both married boys we knew in high school, didn't date until college, and now are officers in the Army also. I am continually keeping my fingers crossed that my friends turned Army wives will someday get stationed at the same post. Life is too circular for it to not happen.

Thursday afternoon we rolled into Ft. Lewis and scrambled to get housing on post before the offices closed. We were then lucky enough to get the last one available for our rank on post. Talk about coming in the nick of time! Following the office for housing, we promptly ate dinner and fell asleep, and to be honest, it was probably 7 or 8pm, but we had made it! I am a living testament to God's grace covering you for anything. There is simply no way I could have ever done the 36 hours otherwise, and now we were at Ft. Lewis, the place we have been waiting for for over a year, and what feels like the official beginning of our adult life together.