Truckin' up to Buffalo

Day 17: Monday, April 4, 2016
What a long, strange trip it's been! But we did it! We're back! We finally made it! We didn't make it all the way to Seneca Falls. Mom had the brilliant idea of having Dad and Mike meet us in Buffalo, and then Mike and I could have a few days in Niagara Falls to collect ourselves and get ourselves sorted out before the funeral: unpack, laundry, that sort of thing.

We started our day in Terre Haute, IN, birthplace of Jackson. In fact, we even went and did a stalker-y drive by and took pictures in front of his old house. Ah, East Garden Drive South! We've missed you, old friend! We had also missed our actual old friends. Fortunately, a few were able to join us for breakfast, and we were so happy to see even more familiar faces. Then, we did a little geocaching in the woods behind Dixie Bee Elementary, where Jack might have gone to school one day. We didn't get to see all the things I would have liked to, but we'll be back. Somehow, we manage to come back. In fact, this is Tucker's second trip here.

The rest of the day was literally just spent driving. We taught the boys to pee in a jug, because peeing on the side of the road gets more complicated when the road is an urban 6 lane highway without much shoulder in the middle of Ohio. (Huh-why-oh, as Jack says it). We did manage the usual rest area breaks and even a McDonald's/Panera break, as well. We finally met up with Poppa and Mike in a Tim Horton's parking lot outside of Buffalo for the "hostage exchange." We were so happy to have Mike back, but I was very sad to see my mom go.

Over the course of the last five days, I have found myself in a position where no one should ever have to be, though I'm sure it happens all the time. I have wanted nothing more than to shatter into a million pieces and fall apart. This loss is a devastating one, and I feel as though I haven't even begun the grieving process. And yet, that hasn't been an option. I have had to be strong to get myself and my children this far, and I'm starting to realize that I will need to be strong for just a bit longer. I've felt the cracks, though. I know they are forming. And my mother has been the packing tape keeping all the shards together. In her presence, I have felt stronger than I am. I always do. Like during childbirth or any of the other times I've wanted my mommy, it wasn't so much the task I wanted her to complete (though she always does, and willingly), but her quiet strength I wanted to siphon off and use as my own. And now I'm on my own for a few days, and I have to trust that the shards are all braced together and will somehow hold. My family needs me whole, so whole I will remain. Thanks, Mom, for helping me to stay whole.

*   *   *   *   *

This photo marks the end of our epic Family Rock Tour. As we plotted and planned over the last year, I never in a million years would have imagined that this is how our vacation would end. It still seems incomprehensible that this is how it went down. It hardly seemed worth sharing - such a depressing end to something that started out with so much hope and excitement. But I had been taking notes and jotting in journals the whole way, always intending to post updates and play-by-plays for all the interested family and friends, and I decided that finishing the journey here might help me to finish the journey in my head, too. So here's the story, in all it's glory. Perhaps now I can finally rest.

A Little Help From My Friends

Day 16: Sunday, April 3, 2016
So, no unnecessary stops, but this one was completely necessary! Some old friends of mine from college happen to live in Topeka, so we stopped for breakfast on our way past. MATT makes a mean waffle! I hadn't seen them since maybe 2009, so this visit was long overdue and not nearly long enough, but I am forever grateful that they opened their home to us and brought a little light to a very dark journey. I had no idea how much I needed a happy, familiar face. And the boys have not stopped talking about all the awesome Transformer toys at their house.  So, you know, there's that!

The "no stop" thing is rough, though. I had to drive past St. Louis without thinking about the Arch there. We bypassed routes to Chicago and so many other historical sites with cruel disregard. The traveler in me mourned their losses, but the wife in me knows there's just no time for any of this. Mike needs us, and we need him. Having my mother around is immensely helpful, and I wouldn't have made it this far without her, but she's just no replacement for Mike. And she's not supposed to replace him on this trip; that's not her job. But his absence is felt daily, and all I can really think about is getting back to him. Explaining all this to children, however, proves difficult. And I know I said I was ready to accept the consequences of kids in the car all day, but I don't think I really knew what that meant. At one point, our gas light was on, the DTE (Distance To Empty) indicator said there were 6 miles to empty, the nearest exit was 7 miles away, and the signs for the gas station were saying it was 2 miles beyond the exit, and none of my kids were wearing any clothes. As it turns out, my DTE indicator likes to scare me needlessly. We rolled in on fumes, but we rolled in just fine. More than half of us had less than half of our clothes on, but we were fine all the same.

Today was another long haul. I really just needed to get to Terre Haute, IN. We are staying at the home of some friends for tonight, and will meet up with some more friends for breakfast in the morning, and I finally feel as though there's a light at the end of the tunnel.  Terre Haute is within striking distance of home. We're almost there!

Rocky Mountain High/ I can see for miles and miles

Day 15: Saturday, April 2, 2016
I have made an executive decision. No more unnecessary stops. We are just going to power through. This is, of course, a terrible idea. Three kids in the car all day with no real stops is a recipe for utter disaster. I am aware of this. But we're never going to make it, so we are just going to go for it. I am willing to accept the consequences.

Driving through the Rockies was beautiful, and now I'm excited to go back someday and explore them with Mike for real. Our bag of Cheetos exploded, and I'm pretty sure Jackson's ear drums did, too. He spent most of the morning crying, and now that we are down, he is still complaining of tinnitus. Oh well. They'll heal, right?

Driving through the Rockies was beautiful, but everything east of there was something of a nightmare. Did you know that there are almost 200 miles of Colorado east of Denver? Why is there so much Colorado not in the Rocky Mountains?? And did you also know that, on the Eastern Plains of Colorado, you can see for miles and miles because there isn't anything to break up the view? And because there's nothing to break up the view, not even trees, there's never any reason to curve the road? And did you know that there are more than 400 miles of Kansas? And that they are pretty much exactly the same as those last 200 miles of Colorado? That's 600 miles of NOTHING in a very straight line.  Let me say that again. 600 miles. Now, I am positive that those 600 miles must contain some beautiful scenery somewhere, and I'm sure they are full of good, hardworking people. But cheese and rice, that drive should be reserved for people who probably shouldn't be in jail but need something a little more extreme than community service. I never, ever want to do that ever, ever again. The only thing that seemed to break up the day a little was that these boys needed to stop to pee every other exit. I spent the day looking for places to pull over so the kids could pee out the door. (Yes, we pee on the side of the road. I have boys. They can do that. Also, we would never make it anywhere with dry pants if we always had to wait to find a restroom.) Incidentally, i found it very interesting that the roads in most of eastern Colorado are only paved for about 5 feet off the exit where they unceremoniously turn into hard-packed dirt roads. Even the roads that lead into what passes for towns out here aren't all paved. Do the ski resorts of Colorado really have so much pull in the state government that the good people of the Eastern Plains can't get some asphalt? I'm not here to judge, but, well, it seemed a little strange. By no means are all the roads in New York paved, but most of them are. The ones leading off the Thruway definitely are.

We are spending the night in Junction City, KS. The goal for tomorrow is to make it as far as Terre Haute, IN.  If we don't, we will never make it back to Seneca Falls by Monday night. I really need to make it back to Seneca Falls by Monday night.

We spent the day driving, but Tucker took several pictures from the backseat of the van. So let me amuse you with the photographic antics of my 5 year old. I took the Cheeto pictures, but he took the rest of the pictures in this post.

Ship of Fools

Day 14: Friday, April 1, 2016.
What an incredibly long day! We woke up in Tuba City, AZ, and we are ending our day in Glenwood Springs, CO. We have seen so many things in between! The first thing we saw was mountain lion road kill. I wanted to stop and take a picture, but then I decided that a picture of road kill was kind of, well, morbid. I also had this rather irrational fear that the mountain lion was just napping in a rather inconvenient spot and would wake up and pounce on me. But then when I got too far away, I really wished I had done it anyway. It was so weird seeing it on the side of the road like that. It was probably terrifying for whoever hit it, and i was glad it wasn't me. But it was such a beautiful creature, even in death.

As we got farther north, the landscape began to change. We were back in the Four Corners area, and the closer we got to Colorado, and the closer those distant white peaks became, the more I felt as though we were leaving the desert behind. Utah is an interesting place, though, and the landscape changed its mind a few more times before we arrived in Moab.  Moab is where we should have spent the night, and we are waaay off schedule, but I desperately wanted to see Arches National Park, even if it was just for an hour and a half.

As it turns out, 90 minutes is not a very long time when you're trying to see awesome things in the desert.  We had a quick tour of the visitor's center, but I promised the kids we would visit the gift shop AFTER we saw some cool rock formations. They were unimpressed, but we moved on. We didn't have time for much, but we were going to see Delicate Arch if it killed me. Delicate Arch is the most famous arch in the park, maybe even in the world (because, really, how many other arches have you heard of?). If you've ever seen a Utah license plate, that's the featured arch. So we drove all the way out to a spot where you could hike to a lookout to see the arch in the distance. There was no time for actual hiking. I have a 4 year old with me! This little walk was about as much hiking as we could handle. But it was a fun walk! There were rocks to climb over and things to see. It also took significantly longer than I had anticipated. When we realized how late it was, and that the Visitor's Center closed at 4:30 (WHY???), we hopped in the car for a mad dash back to entrance. Nona and Jack hopped out as I rolled past in the parking lot, and got there just in time to have the door shut in their faces. But Nona saved the day and got the guy to give us our badges anyway. She was not about to let her grandsons be denied their Junior Ranger badges two days in a row! We had to wait outside, and that meant no gift shop, which you would think was the biggest tragedy of the trip, but we got our Junior Ranger badges, and that was enough for me. And as it turns out, the tokens for Arches are sold online. So everything was awesome after we discovered that.

Photo Credit: Tucker Barg
He worked really hard on composing this shot.

Oh, wait.  Did I saw "awesome"? I meant "awful". Everything was awful. It was dinner time, and we were only as far as we were supposed to have gotten the night before. I had wanted to be almost to Denver by now. Also, Jackson was starting to complain about his ears when we arrived, but he was all-out crying about them now. No amount of "pinch and blow" seemed to help. We gave him a decongestant, and continued on our way. The best way to help him is to get him down to a lower altitude as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, we need to go up to get down. We found some Afrin in Fruita and that seems to be helping, though. It's strange to be driving past all these places I had intended to stop, and to know I had hotel reservations here, or there's a park I had wanted to visit there.  Someday, we will just have to come back and finish what we started. For now, I have to get my poor Jackson east of the Mile-High City without rupturing his eardrums.