esrosedotblog

Today is the 16th anniversary of our arrival in Palm Springs.

1997.

We drove cross country from Boston to Niagara to Indiana to somewhere in South Dakota. Wyoming.

We had planned to stop at the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone but had called the moving company and found they were ahead of schedule.

Not 070997 (see the numerology? It looks better as 7-9-97 but I don't write my dates that way) but 070797. Oh Oh.

Skipped Yellowstone dropped down to Utah, Ogden and then Salt Lake, on to Las Vegas and then Palm Springs. Home.

The trip was great. The first and last X=country ride. Once was great, not twice.

We had the new Cherokee and did a stop over at various places, taking time to see stuff that people don't normally look at as well as the old standards.

Niagara Falls. Great. Awesome.

Indiana to see friends, the nearly last stay in someone else's home. Not forever, actually. We tried it one more time on our first trip back east. Sucked.

I just can't do that. I lived off motels all my life so that is not a problem but I can't deal with home-i-ness that is not mine.

On to the Plains. No cities, the plan was to hit half Inter-State and go off the track, no blue roads, but not the super highway. 300-500 miles a day with stops for sights.

We saw sights. Looked and looked. Flat. Flat. Flat. Then not.

We stopped at an old fashioned amusement park, visited a prairie dog city, saw the Badlands, stopped at Wall's Drugstore and stayed overnight in a national park in that required group seating for meals. Awful experience.

The next morning we drove out and went through a tunnel where a mountain goat family were spending the night. They let us through.

And so on.

If I turn on the slide player in my head, scene after scene rolls through.

The foothills before the Rockies.

I don't mean to flash it by you so quickly but it is like anyone else's slides. A fast shuffle, in and out.

When we got here it was hot of course. We had kind of planned it that way. Start with the heat and then it is all down hill.

We didn't go back east for over a year.

These were two rules that we made for ourselves for a variety of reasons, one being that we wanted to get the desert thermostat hooked up, but the other was to insure that we got clearly that we were here.

It is one of the best moves I have ever made. Which is not saying much as I have not moved that often, unlike my husband who has many towns and houses in his life's wake.

I lived in two houses on the same street as a kid.

Then MIT. Three different rooms, same floor in one dorm then another. And so on.

Then the early career stuff in Germantown outside Philadelphia, up to Lower Bucks County the first house I sort of owned. Then four houses in Plymouth MA and then three places in Boston. But none of these involved big travel. Coming here was big big travel.

When you get to my age one realizes that there are "once in a lifetime" experiences even if I didn't plan it that way.

The great western move was one of those. We took the time and the trouble to see as much as possible. Did I mention both sides of the Grand Canyon, North and South?

Oh beautiful for spacious skies for amber waves of grain.

I had seen Europe, Japan, the usual winter resort places. But the US of A? Not until then.

Indelible.

Inspiring.

Wonderful.

The American West. Huge. Unending. Forever. A life spent in the cramped Northeast, a great place and a great time, cannot prepare for the going and arriving WEST.

Labels: California, travel