Article Contributed on: 7/11/2007 12:12:53 PM
I just returned from a 9-day trip across a bunch of mountains.
I could say that it was a vacation punctuated with some topographical exclamation points, or I could count for you the number of times I nearly lost my Girl Scout cookies as we crossed over narrow passes in our newest RV.
My husband called this maiden voyage a 'test drive'. You never take a test drive for 2,400 miles in a vehicle. That's not a test drive. It's a test of lack of cell phone service.
While many of my friends and family in Denver and Washington were relaxing over the fourth of July, I spent the trip across Idaho with my teeth firmly gripping the dashboard in front of me. That is, when I wasn't in a mental fetal position and sucking my thumb. I tried not to ever look down or notice the number of times wetraveled a narrow and crumbling bridge every time a hulking semi truck was heading towards us.
Night drives were marginally better. I never really noticed with great clarity how many hundreds of feet we were above the tree tops waiting to impale my body should we forget to slow down around a curve. In fact, whenever we made it safely into any canyon, I did what any wife does who praises her husband for not allowing the family to plummet into trees. I hugged him after beating him with my purse.
I also never realized how hilly half of the country is. Everything is either on a mountain, at the base of a mountain or will eventually be buried by one (factoid: the Cascades are an active group of volcanoes, all of which will ruin your picnic).
I also never really realized before that google maps and road atlases deceptively do not show the hills. Everything looks flat, and this is patently unfair. Especially when we missed our turn-off in Utah and end up going over a concrete dam about 3 gazillion stories high and barely two lanes wide.
We also took a scenic through way and thought it might be 'neat' to go to Johnston Observatory at Mt St Helens. I didn't realize until afterwards that the observatory was named for a man who died at the scene during the eruption. That's a little ironic, like naming an all-you-can-eat meat buffet after Ed Gein. I nearly went "What About Bob" swear wordy when I saw just how high up we were (and always in an outside lane with a scant guard rail. Knowing we had to travel back the same way about did me in.
So, forgetting the fact that on any given day, I spent 2 days virtually at the foot of Mt Rainier which will erupt and drown half of the population of Puyallup due to glacial melt off (and congest traffic even further than Meridian already is), and the possibility that while I was staring into Mt. St. Helen's I was under the constant reminder that she was actively steaming.
We always seemed to be travelling above gorgeous treelines rooted into the sides of steep mountainous death in a vehicle with no gas mileage that could catch a rampant breeze at any given time and flop over the edge. And then people would cheer because we were slowing down the right lane.
To make matters worse, there were people cycling these winding and slim byways on their bicycles. And they were passing us as we crawled up to 10,000 feet.
They waved as they rode past, their legs of steel pumping tirelessly in brightly-colored pants. We could have drafted off of them as we had the semi trucks on the flat surfaces, but we would have only sucked them under our grille as we did the first group of Harley riders.
Poor guy. I still have his do-rag.