I planned to leave my house at 5 a.m. this morning so it was completely unrealistic to set my alarm for 4:40. I left exactly one hour after my planned time. I drove out of the city with The Sultan by The Squires playing on my Colorado Public Radio music station, which sounds like it’s from a Quentin Tarantino movie set in the ‘70s. The snowy ridge line was on my left while the sun rose on my right, illuminating Henley like a freakin’ angel. He had tired eyes this morning. Maybe he’s just tired of road trips.
It was a very long day of driving. I covered a lot of ground, even more than I meant to, but all I really wanted to do today was get closer to the coast. Plus, it stays light so late, and I gained an hour when I crossed into the Pacific time zone. Now I have less driving to do tomorrow when I actually have things I want to do on the way. I didn’t do anything of note besides take in the scenery. It was some good scenery.
I don’t know if these big grassy things are called hills or mountains. They’re grassy like a hill, but they’re big like mountains, but not as big or maybe not at a very high elevation because they don’t have a tree line where many plants can’t grow above, like mountains do. Okay, they’re very big hills.
Utah was really beautiful. Those green, grassy hills leading up to dark gray rugged peaks covered with snow. At one point, I turned a bend and said Oh My God out loud. When you make exclamations out loud when you’re alone, you know it’s good. (Henley doesn’t count because he was sleeping.) There were yellow flowered fields, the greenest of green pastures speckled with cows and horses and little white deer (maybe deer?) I had never seen before. I stopped at great dog park in Ogden, outside of Salt Lake City. From Denver, you drive through foothills to get to the bigger mountains. In Utah, there’s houses and then in their backyards is just BAM, wall of rock up to a snowy peak. It’s incredible.
Oregon continued to wow me with it’s rolling green hills and snowy peaks back at the horizon. When it started getting dark, I pulled off at a rest stop. I kind of love sleeping at rest stops. It feels a little homey, I guess because I’ve done it so many times. The location is always different, but my too-small car and this furry dog is always the same. There’s usually a few other cars staying the night. It’s not scary that people are around; it’s comforting. We have this thing in common, like we’re in a club together. A weird, creepy club.
I bought Henley his own sleeping bag at Walmart. Thirteen dollars. When I was trying to fit it in the car, on the floor behind the seats with the rest of the camping stuff and it wasn’t fitting, I realized if it was going to be in here it might as well be useful. So I opened it up and I’m using it as a blanket tonight and didn’t bring my down comforter. Hopefully it will be warm enough.
I’m glad I’m sleeping among these hills tonight. The wind is blowing hard, rocking us to sleep.
I risk my life every day taking photos of Henley while driving. If my body is found dead in my car and they make me a statistic saying it must have been the texting, don’t believe it. It wasn’t texting. It was taking photos of Henley. Or eating Taco Bell.
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