2/19/2013
English 1A
Kristina Rogers
Coast to Coast
Growing up I was very lucky in the adventures I got to partake in. I was born in the bay area, Walnut Creek to be exact and then moved to Davis when I was six years old. I met this girl at school and her name was Morgan, and Morgan and I were inseparable from then on. When we were going into fourth grade Morgan and her family moved away to Philadelphia, but she and I wrote letters and talked on the phone and never lost contact. The last week of our junior year of high school, Morgan called me on the phone and said she had a new adventure for us. Her parents were getting relocated to Washington State. Her parents wanted us to drive one of the cars from Philadelphia to Washington. Last time I checked that was a really long drive, but Morgan and I had gone through crazy adventures before so why not! I honestly couldn’t wait, I had only been to a few states but never experienced them like I was about to.
The first week of summer had finally arrived and I was so excited to board my plane to Philadelphia. I usually really hate to fly because I get antsy and really impatient but somehow I must’ve tired myself out. Surprisingly, I fell asleep on the plane even though the couple behind me were arguing about what towels to put in their guest bathroom. I finally made it to the beautiful east coast and I basically sprinted off the plane to get to my best friend. I got to baggage claim and my bag was no where to be found. I figured that they haven’t gotten all the luggage off the plane yet so I wait, and wait. Nothing. I watched the same black bag with a blue polka dot ribbon go around the conveyor belt five times. The airline had lost my bag! I went to the office and they said they had put it on a later flight so they would deliver it to Morgan’s house when it got in. I had been in Philadelphia for fifteen minutes and I was already annoyed. I made my way out to where Morgan would meet me and instantly my annoyance went away when I saw her pull up in her old beat up navy blue suburban. She asked where my bag was and I told her everything that the airline office had told me. Morgan made a confession to me that she had never driven to or from the airport before and that this was her first time, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it except when I saw the “Welcome to Delaware” sign. She had driven us in the wrong direction and this was the girl I was going to drive across the country with.
We finally make it to her house in Media Pennsylvania and I walk in and give her sisters and her mom a hug and tell them how my flight was. Morgan and I were so excited to be starting this adventure together and we had two days to fit in everything we wanted to do on the east coast before it wasn’t one of our regular stops. We did what every teenage girls would do, we ate and shopped, a lot. It was the best two days I had in a long time, having my best friend all the way across the country was definitely really hard sometimes.
The day had come, we were leaving! Morgan’s dad Jay had packed the car for us so basically all we had to do was get up and leave. We woke up about five o’clock in the morning and we changed from the pajamas we were wearing into clean ones. Our first stop of course was to a star bucks, but our first major stop was in Ohio and let me tell you there is nothing exciting there at all! We kept driving state after state and things are definitely starting to look alike and we come to a town in Minnesota called Blue Earth. I could not think of a more red neck town than this. We desperately needed gas and we were both starving and the only place off the freeway that we could see was a Dairy Queen so we pulled into the parking lot and got out and the stench of cows and the sight of all of the lifted trucks around us was over whelming. Long story short is we couldn’t wait to get out of there! Our journey continued once we filled up with gas. We drove on seeing a whole lot of nothing like fields and cows and an occasional billboard. Morgan hated when I would see billboards because I would always ask her if she wanted to go see the largest cheese wheel or whatever the billboard was advertising.
We finally made it to South Dakota and Morgan and I had been talking about how we both wanted to see Mount Rushmore and we decided that we would. We called her parents and told them that we were staying the night in South Dakota and they arranged the hotel for us. We get to the hotel they booked for us and the lady at the front desk gives us a little smile. Morgan and I headed to the elevators and finally made it to our room. Once we opened the door, it was a giant suite with multiple rooms. I had never been in a hotel room so big, we were freaking out from the doorway we couldn’t even make our bodies move in any further. Once we got over our shock we explored the room and decided who was sleeping in what room and what we were going to do that evening. We called her parents and asked if they knew what they had booked and they said yes because that was the only room left in the city we were in because Sturges, which is a motorcycle convention was in town so all the rooms were taken. The next morning Morgan and I didn’t want to leave. We were nearing the end of our trip and we were both exhausted from driving such long hours. Even though we didn’t want to leave we were going to see Mount Rushmore and I was pretty excited about that. We get to Mount Rushmore and we are staring at these presidents faces and Morgan turns to me and asks how long should we look at this for to get the full effect, how am I supposed to know?! We ended up staying ten minutes and then we started driving towards our next destination.
Our next stop was Jackson, Wyoming. Morgan had been to Jackson before with her family because that is where they went skiing in the winter, but like a lot of these places I had never been. Driving into Wyoming was a lot like any of the other states a whole lot of nothing. The thing that I do remember about Wyoming was there were a lot and I do mean a lot of abandoned trains with tons of coal in them and we had no clue what they were for. Our navigation system then puts us on a two lane road and so we were like obviously these things are never wrong, but clearly we were wrong. In the midst of trying to find out where we are when everything looks exactly the same, we had come across this town called Lost Springs and it had a population of one. Yes, one person and no the sign wasn’t mistaken because we checked. We were so confused but thought it was hilarious at the same time so we of course had to take pictures with the sign. The number one rule that Morgan’s dad had was no driving the mountain at night. We were so exhausted by the end of the day that we just wanted to get to Jackson already so we drove the mountain, but of course they were doing construction. We had to spend the night on the side of a mountain in our car and there was a big truck with cows in it and every time one of them mooed it sounded like our phone vibrating so we didn’t get much sleep that night. When the highway patrol opened the road again we made it to Jackson. We had planned to go white water rafting that day and that was so much fun! Neither one of us had done that before but were both excited. It was so cold, even in the summer I was freezing! It was definitely a memorable experience because first off, it was so much fun and because of course Morgan had a crush on our guide. That was our last day in Jackson and we slept and got up from our nap and started on our final stretch to Washington.
We drove through Idaho and then finally made it to Washington, and even though we had driven all those miles the last couple hundred miles definitely seemed the longest. Once we finally made it to Morgan’s new home in Washington we were happy we made it, but sad the journey was over. Her mom and sisters greeted us outside as we pulled up and eagerly gave us hugs wanting to know about our journey and it was hard to explain because they just wouldn’t have gotten the inside jokes that Morgan and I had shared along the way. I’m so lucky to have experienced this adventure because most people never get to travel across the country, but let alone with their best friend.
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